Sacrifice 5
I won't be Broken Again
"Hello bo-... gentlemen."
Colonel Sally Po caught her mistake quickly, smiling as she came up on the four pilots. "I apologize. It seems you aren't boys anymore, after all, are you?"
Trowa took a swallow of the scotch in his hand, head lowered. He didn't look up at the Preventer colonel. "We haven't been boys for a long time, Sally."
Wufei stood, shaking hands with her. "Colonel."
"Captain. Let's get back to first names, shall we, Wufei?"
Wufei faltered, but collected himself quickly. "As you wish... Sally."
Duo also stood. "Hello, Sally." His voice was soft. There were dark smudges under his eyes from lack of sleep. The dread that had been rising in him was becoming more and more real, a premonition of something he couldn't begin to guess at.
Part of him desperately wanted to know what was going on. The rest of him desperately wanted to board the next shuttle and fly right the fuck back to L2 to curl up in a single bed in a dingy L2 flat and pull the covers over his head. He wasn't so sure he wanted to be a hero anymore. He just wanted to be a no-name grunt, handing out the rations and the vitamins and the water bottles and the vaccines to the kids he'd grown up around all his life.
Sally's call had woken him up from a sleep so deep he had almost missed it; it was a kind of exhausted sleep that was an escape from things. Even a quick cold shower had not been enough to completely wake him up. By the time he made the two-hour trip to L1, he felt like he was in a bad dream he couldn't wake up from. He couldn't even pretend to be carefree or joking anymore.
// What the hell. The masquerade is over. I don't have to pretend anymore. //
She looked him over a minute, taking in his grim appearance. The boy who called himself the God of Death. With the look in his eyes and the expression on his shadowed face, he looked the part. When he sat back down, he threw back a sobering swallow of his own drink. Jack Daniels on the rocks.
She started to greet Quatre as well, but Duo interrupted her as he lit another cigarette. "So tell us, Sally, what do you want? You didn't call us from all over the colonies just to catch up on the old times, did you? Because I got kids dyin' of malnutrition and delirium back in shitty L2 hellholes, so I'd appreciate it if we got down to the brass tacks."
Sally looked at Duo sharply. This was not the laughing flirt of a pilot she had known during the Wars. The young man had changed, somehow. And not for the better. She remembered when she had heard that he was from the L2 slums, back during the war. She couldn't believe it then, not with that easy grin and joking manner. She could believe it now. He had taken on the cynicism and despair that could only come from the destitute American colony.
Sally started to speak, then looked over at the bartender. "Could I have a drink, please?"
"What'll it be, ma'am?"
She looked back at Duo. "Whatever he's having."
"One JD on the rocks, coming right up."
~*~
Sally took a big sip of her drink before speaking again, as if she needed it.
"We've got a situation, men. A situation that's... out of hand. An operation is going down that the Preventers would like all of you to look into. A weapon left over from the Wars. He's dangerous. More dangerous than anyone you've ever seen. More dangerous than anybody any of us has ever seen. We knew about the project, but we'd been told it was discontinued, and the subject destroyed. We've recently found out that information is not accurate."
"Pardon me, Sally-baby, but why us?"
She looked over at Duo, scowling. "Because somebody accused you guys of being the best. And because all four of you have a very personal interest in this situation." She took another swallow of her whiskey.
Duo's dread deepened. "This has to do with Heero, doesn't it?"
The other three pilots looked at each other, startled. None of them had said his name aloud in two years.
Sally looked at him, and her gaze was dark. "Just come back to my office. I'll show you as much as I can."
~*~
Within an hour, the four young men found themselves situated around a television in Sally's office, in the L1 Preventer precinct.
"What is going on, Miss Po?" Quatre asked, his brow furrowed in confusion.
"You'll see." She was being edgy, jumpy. Duo didn't like that, and from the expression on his face, neither did Wufei. Sally could shoot you, but she wouldn't be roundabout about it.
The black-and-white film started. It was obvious from the beginning that it was a tape from a security camera.
~*~
Wufei looked like he was going to throw up. Duo was pale as death itself. Trowa and Quatre sat in stunned, shocked silence.
Duo watched, even though he couldn't believe what he was seeing. A young, dark-haired naked man sitting up on a metal table. He tore his wrist free from a steel manacle to snatch the scientist leaning over him by the neck. He killed the scientist, broke the man's neck with a flick of his wrist before effortlessly shattering steel brackets holding his other arm and legs. Fearless and with amazing calm, he rose and walked to a vault.
"That's Heero..." Duo's voice was a cracked whisper. Tears were rolling down his cheeks, but he didn't notice them. "Holy Mother of God, that's Heero... he's not dead. He's not dead..."
"No," Sally said, her voice quiet. "He's not. At least... not physically."
"What do you mean?" Trowa asked.
"Just keep watching."
Trowa looked back at the screen as Heero stood before the vault door. Then the Perfect Soldier reached out to brutally rip away the steel cover plate from the control box before rewiring it with superhuman efficiency. Half a minute later, the vault door slid open and Heero Yuy emerged naked into the corridor, standing unafraid in the fluorescent lighting.
// He's grown taller, // Duo thought, still unable to believe what he was seeing. It was like seeing someone come back from the dead.
Wufei stared at the screen with the dazed expression of someone who has been hit hard by something they never saw coming. So did Quatre. Quatre was almost too shocked to breathe, and he wanted the hell out of there. He did not want to watch Heero murder anyone, no matter who they were or what they had done. But neither he nor Wufei could turn away or close their eyes, because Heero's carefully controlled, deadly violence was the most morbidly, horrifyingly fascinating thing either of them had ever seen.
Heero's muscular body was covered with scars, his obvious strength enhanced with a dozen synthetic stimulants and steroids. Despite his power, he was still slender, not bulky, and moved with lethal feline grace. A genetically engineered predator. He walked purposely down the halls, and here the camera angle switched to a platoon with semiautomatic weapons. Twenty heavily armed military scientists charged around a corner to come face-to-face with Heero before they leapt back, firing frantically.
Heero raced through the bullets as if they couldn't touch him. He was hit once... twice... three times. But he kept going. He charged the scientists. They watched as he killed them, one by one.
// Oh my God... // Duo thought. This was not the same boy who, a long time ago, had gently pulled his braid to shut him up. He watched as Heero jammed stiffened fingers into the first scientist's throat, rupturing his larynx, cutting off a scream. He ripped the soldier's face into bloody shreds, jerking out one eye with his downward rip. He lashed out with a powerful judo chop to the scientist's neck, paralyzing the muscles. He brought the knife edge of his hand down, smashing the collarbone before breaking his head. Pivoting, Heero broke another scientist's nose with the side of his hand and brought the lower palm of his right hand up in a cobra strike, driving nose cartilage deep into the man's brain. The two scientists hit the tiles, the second one still twitching.
Heero laid hands on the second scientist's gun, firing. And from that point on, he took them out point blank, stopping to strip an empty clip from the gun and reloading it with a magazine from one of the butchered scientists. When it was over, dead men littered the hall. The walls were painted with blood. Heero himself was covered in it. Remorseless, the remaining Gundam pilots sat stunned as they watched him throw the rifle aside.
He walked away, leaving a trail of blood. He was shot in the chest, the side, the shoulder. He was bleeding badly.
// No one could be walking with wounds like that. No one, // Wufei thought, disbelieving.
Cameras followed him as he made a violent path through the Labs, randomly encountering scientists and killing them. He didn't let a single person live, massacring them effortlessly. He made his way through another vault, then got to the last barrier between himself and freedom, a thick cage of steel bars like those used in maximum-security wards for the criminally insane. Covered in blood from both the scientists he had killed and the blood that was still running from his wounds, Heero reached up and shattered the lock with his bare hands.
// Bending steel... Jesus Mary and Joseph the carpenter from Brooklyn... // Duo's eyes were still wide and incredulous.
Sliding the door open, he walked forward calmly and entered an elevator, rising to the surface of the underground facility. Seconds passed and the Perfect Soldier reappeared at the top elevator door. He killed the scientists in the lobby, then leapt through a plate-glass window to land in a cement lot twenty feet below.
He landed in a roll and was quickly on his feet again, running in the dark, midnight streets. The exterior cameras followed him until he was lost in the darkness.
"I recognize that place, Sally." Wufei said, looking at her. His voice was choked. "That is here. That is on L1. No doubt about it."
Sally leaned forward and lifted a trembling hand to turn the video off. She turned grimly to the pilots, who could not return her gaze. Wufei looked shaken. Quatre had covered his face. Trowa bowed his head, trying to concentrate on what he had just seen. Trying to believe it. But it wasn't just beyond belief. It was impossible. Heero had taken three bullets and had kept going. Just kept going, as if he had never even felt them.
Sally looked at Wufei. "We know it's L1. This is his second documented escape attempt in ten years. Last time, he killed two. That was before the Wars, when he was eleven years old. This time, he killed thirty-seven, including four L1 cops that tried to detain him after seeing his picture on an under-the-table all points bulletin. The tape is only twenty hours old. From the information I've secured, he was caught by another sector of the Project very soon after. They've abandoned the labratories here on L1 and moved him. But they got sloppy this time. There were eyewitnesses."
"That's not him."
Quatre, Duo, and Sally looked at him. Trowa repeated what he had said, softly. "That's not Heero. Heero's dead. He's been dead for two years. They said they were going to dispose of him. Colony L1 came out on Telnet two months after they took him and disavowed the Project. They said the experiment had been discontinued. They said he had been killed. Lethal injection. The news was all over it."
Sally shook her head. "They lied."
A harsh whisper from the corner of the room. "I'm gonna throw up." Duo scrambled to his feet and ran to the bathroom, his face shocked and pale. A few seconds later they could hear the sound of his retching.
Trowa and Quatre looked at each other helplessly. Wufei gave them a disgusted look and walked over, knocking on the door. "Are you okay, Maxwell?"
Duo's voice was hoarse, full of tears he wouldn't let fall. "No."
"Can I come in?"
"No. Maybe. I don't know."
Wufei pushed the door open cautiously, came in, and closed it behind him. Duo was sprawled across the tile as if he had been wounded, his head still over the toilet, bangs hiding his face. The smell of vomit hung in the air.
Sally came, just outside the door. "Can we help, Wufei?"
"No, woman. Back off. I'm handling it." Wufei kneeled beside Duo carefully, putting his hand on the Deathscythe pilot's shoulder. Duo flinched as if Wufei slapped him.
"Just... just can't believe he's alive, that's all," Duo whispered.
"Me either," Wufei admitted, moving his hand to Duo's back. He grabbed some toilet paper from the roll and handed it to Duo. Duo took it, wiping his mouth.
"So what are we going to do?" Duo asked finally.
"We're going to get him back. I told you we'd handle it. And we will. He's one of us. We're not going to let them hurt him." Wufei's voice was sure. Confident. It was exactly what Duo needed at that moment. Duo could hear the smoldering fury in Wufei's voice. That fury, that promise of swift justice had burned in him ever since the death of his wife.
Heero had always been... the leader. The confident one. The do-or-die guy. Ever since he was taken... they had fallen apart. No one would take the lead. No one would take his place. No one felt qualified to. But they needed that die-hard strength, that unbreakable determination. Wufei was the one who had to take that position. Otherwise, they could never be what they had been before.
Wufei was committed, at least, come hell or high water, to the pursuit of justice. What had happened to Heero ate at him...had been eating at him for the last two years. To have to fight for four years... just to be someone's laboratory experiment again? Was there no justice in the world? Wufei could not accept that. Would not accept it.
// I will find who did this, Yuy... // Wufei thought silently. // You have suffered too much for someone who has helped to relieve so much suffering for others. You do not deserve this. If there is any justice in the world, any hope of making sense out of this life, then the people who did this will not go unpunished to do it again. I swear to you, if I have to chase them to the ends of the earth, I will find them. //
"Can you do this, Maxwell?" Wufei asked.
"I'm in."
"Are you sure?"
"Dammit, Wufei, I said I'm in."
Wufei wanted to say: You're a damned good soldier, Maxwell, you may whine and joke off the court but when you're fighting, you're a man possessed, I wouldn't ask for anyone else at my back. You'll put your own life on the line whenever someone asks for it, and I liked you back then because we were allies and you were a good one, but after fighting beside you I loved you, you crazy American bastard, and as long as I live I'm going to be there when you need me, no matter what. I'm going to help you get him back. If it's the last thing I do. Instead, he said. "Good. Glad to know bureaucracy work hasn't made you soft."
~*~
When the two pilots emerged from the bathroom, Duo was pale, but composed. He looked at Sally steadily. "We'll handle it on our own. Our own course of action. But, I have a couple of questions."
"Go ahead."
"Was there a man called Straub when you went into the Labs to collect bodies? Was a guy named Straub positively identified as one of the victims?"
Sally grabbed her folder, going through the notes. "Yes. William Straub. Leader of Apocalypse L1. Both sectors, L1 and L2, were operating under the guise of weapons research facilities. Straub was listed as the Leader of Weapons Development for the L1 lab. Not illegal, but not looked well upon by pacific civilian colonists."
// If people had only known what weapons were being developed there... // Trowa thought and shuddered, remembering the way Heero had butchered the scientists.
"And he was dead?"
"One of the deadest. His chest was beaten in. Every rib broken and rebroken. His breastbone was smashed like fine china. Looked like almost every bone in his body was broken at least once. One contusion on top of another, hundreds, no way to tell how many. Ruptured organs, crushed skull, one eye jarred from the socket."
"Good," Duo said viciously, and Quatre looked over at him. Duo looked back at him. "I hope Heero made him scream first. I hope he did it slow."
"Duo..."
Duo looked at the floor and said nothing. There was a period of silence that none of them seemed willing to break.
"My second question is, like... more of a condition. We'll do it. At least, me and Wufei are in. How about you guys?" He looked back up at Quatre and Trowa.
"Yes," Trowa said, his quiet voice unflinching.
"Right beside you," Quatre added, his reply almost a sob.
"Right." Duo looked back at Sally. "We're in. But if someone hurts him, I want them to have to answer to me. No questions asked. Because I promised him something... and I couldn't keep it two years ago. I'll be damned before I break that promise now. No one is allowed to hurt him. No one is allowed to kill him. If they're in danger, they run. But they don't hurt him."
"Duo," Sally replied, softly. "He may be too far gone."
"There's always a chance," Duo said, his expression determined and hard. "The only guy with no chances is the guy who has his chances taken away from him. I'm not going to let that happen to Heero."
"That isn't the Heero Yuy you know, Duo. That is Soldier 2457. And you need to be prepared. He may..." Sally trailed off, then finished. "He may not even know you. Any of you. We don't know anything about his mental state right now. He's different, Duo. He's changed."
Duo looked back at her with immovable resolve. // We'll make it right. //
"Just brief us Colonel. Tell us what you want us to do."
TBC...
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