Author: Jei

Warnings: Lime, Violence, Language, Minor Death (OC), Post-War Canon/Romance/Sci-Fi

Pairings: 1x2x1, 3+4, Other Pairings.

Rating: PG-13

Summary: A time of political unrest and violent protests reveals that there is more to Heero Yuy than anyone had previously known. Now, while on the trail of a new rebel movement, those closest to him struggle to understand this 'new' version of him, only to find that nothing has changed at all.

Disclaimer: This piece of fiction is the intellectual property of the little turnip that could. The basis for this fic, Gundam Wing, is the property of someone else.

Author's Notes: Honorable mention goes out to my plaid-colored cheerdragon! My thanks for the moral support.

Note: Sequel to Axiomatic. I'm told that prior knowledge of Axiomatic is not essential to the understanding of this fic. Submitted to gwyaoi's 2006 novella challenge.

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Additive Identity

"On your left, Russ."

"Shit!"

Satisfied that he had been alerted to the threat on his flank, I turned the main thread of my attention back to the center of the battle. Ground troops were advancing on my position, so I triggered the scripted surprises I had prepared for them around my perimeter. A yelp from across the room let me know the results of that encounter.

"Yuy," Joel called through the headset. "Could use some cover while I take on Frasier's horde."

"Acknowledged." I diverted some resources to his sector and sat back for a moment to watch the ebb and flow of the deployed forces surrounding me. I saw an opening in the northwest, but no one taking advantage of it. A pity. Securing a corridor through the pass would have made the battle Joel was conducting unnecessary.

My mental proximity alarm went off, but it stood down after a moment once the intruder had been identified. "Hey, babe," he said, ruffling my bangs in greeting. "It's not quite six, yet. Still company time, isn't it?"

"Training exercises," I explained blandly, muting my headset's receiver.

"Is that what they're calling it these days? Awfully... 'colorful' for a training exercise. The sound effects are a nice touch, too. Wish I got those."

I activated my mic again. "Russ. Someone's tunneling under your shield."

"Augh, crap!"

I flipped my comm off again. "See? Russ is getting good training in realtime apps. It's a skill he needs to work on, actually. He's much better off-line."

Duo poked a finger at the side of my head. "You're still playing computer games, Yuy."

"Hey, you have your training exercises, and we have ours. And to be more accurate, we're testing Frasier's mod. We add to the rules of engagement every minute or so. Makes life more interesting."

"I don't get how you'd have any gameplay left in the end, if you just keep restricting yourselves more and more." He complained, but that didn't stop him from watching the game progress across my monitor.

"I wouldn't call them restrictions." In fact, it was time for another rule change, and the updated text scrolled into being along the top of the screen. Oh, that was a good one. I set about dumping my suddenly detrimental resources where I could, and decided I could afford to take a small hit from making sure that some went into being a bomb for the architect of my sudden flurry of activity.

"When are you going to be done here?"

I knew the time without having to glance at the countdown in the corner. "Game's almost over. We play for time to keep things under control." Sounds of excited activity from the other side of the office increased as they attempted to gain an advantage in the final half-minute. "Or maybe just to increase the pressure," I conceded, targeting their base while they were occupied trying to take the lead. With six seconds left in the game, wails of outrage and oaths of vengeance rose from the other team, and I allowed my satisfaction to show with a slight curve of my lips.

Duo ruffled my bangs again. "Nicely done."

I pulled off my headset, exited the game, and gave him my full attention. "Do we have plans for the night?"

"Trowa's back. Told him we'd get dinner with him and Wufei after he finishes his debriefing."

I nodded to make my acceptance of the plan official. Trowa wasn't always in town. "I'll pack up."

Frasier poked his head over the wall of my cube and grinned grudgingly at me. "Good game, man."

The world would be a lot more civilized if people would shake hands with their opponents and praise them after a battle in real life. "Your mod seemed pretty airtight to me, except for that exploit you already know about."

"Yeah, I'll fix that as soon as I can. Then maybe we can try it again next week."

"If we have nothing better to do." Duo was quite right in saying that the business day had not quite ended yet. It was simply fortunate that this Friday afternoon had been free. Our department got enough work to keep us busy, but not so much that we couldn't keep up with it. Sometimes that diligence paid off.

Trix's head popped up beside Frasier's and she glared at me. "Damn you, Yuy."

I accepted the curse with a smile. "Nice try, Trix. It was a good play, but it came too late."

"Not my fault I came up last in the rotation. Do you know how long I'd been sitting on that, just waiting for it to be my turn?"

"Maybe next time."

"How about right now?"

I shook my head. "Sorry, I've got plans."

She eyed Duo, acknowledging him for the first time since coming to my cube. "Come on. Who would you rather hang out with? Him or us?"

Duo smirked a little too toothily, and I kicked him in the side of the foot as I stood up before he could say anything I just didn't want to deal with. "Sorry, Trix. Maybe next time."

"Fine." She dismissed Duo with a little toss of her head. "Have a good weekend."

"You, too," I answered as I left the office, sweeping Duo along in my wake. Of course I always enjoyed seeing Duo, but sometimes I had a bit of an uneasy feeling in me when he visited me at my desk. Even after three years, he was still questioning my decision to turn down a position as an active field agent.

He couldn't resist bringing the matter up once we were safely out the doors and heading back to his office, where presumably we would meet up with the others. "Playing computer games, huh?"

"Sharpening our skills," I answered mildly. I would have to remind the others not to get too hasty in the end, even if they thought the prize was near. It could lead to one's untimely demise.

"I tell ya, tech support's probably the only department in the building that could get away with that."

"Guess I'm lucky to be with that one department, then." Against my better judgment, I let an edge seep into my response, but not wanting to continue this any further, I changed the subject. "Any idea how Trowa's mission went?"

He resisted my shift in topic for a whole three seconds before yielding to it. "Well, he's back in one piece, so it couldn't have been bad..."

*****

The Technical Support Response Unit was an entirely different department from the guys down in IT. They were the ones responsible for keeping the internal systems up and running, securely and efficiently. Nevertheless, Une still had me reviewing their logs on a regular basis. The system was still based on my designs, though there had been upgrades to deal with current security threats. Such is the nature of technology. I had faith in the IT techs, as did Une, but she preferred to keep her finger in things. She ran a tight ship, and used me to report objectively on IT's performance.

I was reviewing the logs when my CO's voice rang out across the office. "Yuy!"

"Sir!" While shouting out messages for the entire office to hear chafed at my sense of security, not to mention etiquette, I had to admit that it was efficient. Cubicles were intended for better communication, after all.

"You're up!" he hollered back.

I shut down my files, stood, and strode down the walkway to the boss's office. I had one of the longest walks out of everyone because I had secured a piece of prime real estate in the back corner of the suite, but I certainly didn't mind it. I liked my seclusion. It even had a convenient escape route right next to it. I'd already figured out how to avoid tripping the emergency exit alarm.

"Oooh," Frasier cooed. "Yuy's goin' to the principal's office! Someone's in trouble now!"

I flicked the bobble-head toy on top of his cubicle wall as I walked by. We had a solid team put together, but sometimes, they could be a bit juvenile.

His assessment wasn't entirely incorrect, however. There probably was trouble somewhere. No, there was definitely trouble somewhere. The world was nominally at peace, but there were still plenty of hot spots. Our assignments were typically handed out to whomever was available at the time, loosely based around a rotation. It wasn't my turn, which meant someone had asked for me, or the job was important enough to require me. That could have been because of my particular skills or my clearance.

I stepped into Schafer's office, but he didn't motion for me to shut the door behind me. He had only a short message for me: "Head on up to fourteen South. There's an Agent Wallace with work for you."

With a nod, I left and did as I was told.

When I arrived in that section, I consulted the roster in my head and located her office without having to ask. This time, I was instructed to shut the door before taking my seat.

"Agent Yuy. This is my partner, Agent Furikawa." I nodded to the man at the other desk before she continued. "There's been some trouble down in the African continent lately."

"The internal power struggle continues," I commented, acknowledging my familiarity with the subject. That was where Trowa had just come back from last Friday. He had given us a brief summary of the situation down there over dinner.

"They've been going it for years, now. As long as it was pretty self-contained, we were content to let them fight it out and just make sure they didn't get too carried away with anything. Well, now they've gotten carried away." She flipped open a file and slid it across the desk to my side. The folder was opened to a photograph of a Preventer's badge. "It's a fake."

"There's no number on it," I observed. Trowa had failed to mention this over dinner, but then, it hadn't been a debriefing. Besides, this was big. While we trusted each other with our lives and few other important things, we did have a strong belief in operational security. This wasn't the sort of thing one talked about casually.

Furikawa scowled. "But other than that, it's damn authentic. Someone got a hold of a legitimate badge and used it as a template. We've had people working on this non-stop since we uncovered it. The bad guy we snatched this off of had been using it to gain access to apartments, offices, whatever. He got into the home of one of the mid-ranked players down there and slaughtered the guy's family just as a warning. Ended up killing the guy later anyway, even though he was in protective custody." He paused for a few seconds. Respect for the fallen, I suppose. "He's gotten into at least one office and obtained confidential information. And so far, we've found two incidences of impersonating an agent to exchange 'favors' for not getting into trouble for illegal activities."

"Do we have him in custody?" I asked.

Wallace shook her head. "He's dead. Got into a shoot-out with local authorities down there. One civilian, two cops, injured. One cop dead."

The authorities down there would not be happy. "Are we looking for the source of the badge?"

"Yes. The force down there said that the guy had an accomplice, maybe even two, so there may be more of these badges floating around out there. They're chasing down leads, but haven't come up with anything solid yet. The thing with the most promise is this." She motioned to a laptop on her desk. "Just came in today. They're pretty sure it belongs to the guy, but they haven't been able to get into it. Security's pretty tight on the machine. Too tight not to have something important on it. Think you can get in?"

I nodded, but added the caveat. "These things take time."

"As soon as possible, of course," Wallace agreed amiably. "We have other leads we can pursue in the meantime, but we think this is our best shot. There are others out there, and they're dangerous. We need to know what's on this computer."

"Understood." I accepted the laptop from her. "I'll let you know as soon as I find anything."

*****

"Enter!" was the response I received when knocking upon the door. The terse invitation was typical when his mind was occupied with matters of higher importance.

I went in and shut the door behind me. "Why do I always end up tangled up with IAB, Chang?"

He glanced up from his computer's monitor. "We don't let just anybody do the legwork for Internal Affairs, Yuy. These things need to be entrusted to trustworthy individuals."

I smiled. "Is that what you tell yourself to make up for getting caught up with IAB all the time, too?"

"Perhaps." His returning smile faded once the pleasantries were over. "What do you have for me?"

Taking a seat in front of him, I gave him a quick summary of what I had just reported to Wallace. "This guy's laptop. The security on it was mostly proprietary, but it responded to standard decryption protocols, once I figured out what to run them on."

"I don't think they have a sophisticated computer crimes department down in that area."

"You're glad they don't, anyway. Having to allow us to hack the machine for them places the information squarely in our jurisdiction."

"That is convenient," he admitted easily. "What did you find?"

"We got the guy's name. A few of his contacts. Some communications, accounts. I briefed Wallace on all of it. She's going to be working it out with the local authorities. She told me to come see you about what I found on our leak."

"Do you have a name?"

"Not yet. But we can probably get it, or at least narrow down the list of suspects. It's someone local down there. Someone 'official', with more power than just a local police officer. Given the area, it's likely to be a Preventers agent, though the organization wasn't named. Male. Traveled out of the country to Sudan back in April."

"Sudan, hm?" He tapped his keyboard a few times in thought. "Preventer business?"

"I'm hoping so. It'll make the search go down a lot faster."

He accessed the global Preventers database and started entering search parameters. "Hmm, there are one hundred forty-eight people in that office... Seventy-two badges. Forty-three male. And... no missions to Sudan."

"Search the requisitions files from that time. It may have been a 'fact-finding' trip attached to a separate case."

"Requisitions," he muttered to himself as he switched databases. "This will be quite offensive if it turns out he is using our own resources against us."

"Of course he is." He raised an eyebrow at me. "We'd do it, wouldn't we?"

With a faint smile, he granted me a nod of concession. We had certainly made do with what we had. "He must not have expected the case to reach this level. It's easier by far for us to track him through the Preventers system, rather than through the local level, but if the case had stayed local, they would not have been able to track him from this end." The light from the monitor shifted, and he had his search results. "Let's see here... Here we go. One flight to Sudan. No, two. Different people. Same mission."

"Reason?"

"Interviewing a source. We can get them both in trouble."

"Or we can narrow it down some more." I gestured at the keyboard, and he ceded his seat to me. I got access to our tools department and started pulling financial information on our two suspects.

Wufei cast me a dry look. "Don't you need a warrant for that?"

"I assumed you would be filling out the necessary paperwork any moment now," I answered blandly.

He shook his head, but pulled the appropriate sheets from his file and filled in the time, subject, and cause, and left the rest for later. "I remember a time when you actually had to go to the bank for these records."

It was a time before the world became a unified whole. Since the end of the wars, global systems had become the hottest thing. It was convenient, but I had to admit, it probably should have been a bit harder for me to gain access to sensitive personal information. It was for that reason, among others, that there was still a large population of hold-outs, unwilling to subscribe to the global community idea. "Mostly direct paycheck deposits, it looks like. Their annual bonuses were tiny."

"I don't believe that's the information we're looking for."

"Is this where you tell me, I've been spending too much time with Maxwell?"

He snorted. "He would spin some yarn about how the suspects could possibly be disgruntled by their meager pittance, so it was our righteous duty to look into it."

I smiled. His assessment was spot on. "Hm. Jackson deposited a sum of six thousand credits to a retirement investment account two days before one of Donnelly's kills."

"Donnelly's our guy of the laptop?"

"Yes. He killed a witness in protective custody."

"Ah. Pay for a tip?"

"Hmm. That would imply that Jackson is not a full-on 'accomplice', then. A full accomplice wouldn't get reward money like that."

"Six thousand for a man's life." Wufei shook his head. "It doesn't take much to convince a man to betray his loyalties."

As a price for a man's life went, six thousand wasn't too shabby. They'd gone for far less before. "So if he isn't the full-time accomplice... his partner, perhaps? There's no financial evidence of it, but that could just mean that he's not in it for the money."

"Maybe. We can look into it. In the meantime, we can follow up with this Jackson character. If we compile a case against him, maybe they can get him to flip on his collaborators."

"That will be a job for the locals."

He nodded. "Good work, Yuy." He paused, then appended a dry snort. "As if you needed to be told that."

"Praise from you is something to be both honored and treasured," I answered, mocking him with a slight dip of my head, though not with complete irony. I remembered that I was still sitting in his chair, so I stood and returned to the proper side of the desk.

From the lack of a withering glare, I assumed he was trying to be serious. "Between peers, perhaps, but not as token words granted thoughtlessly. I apologize for forgetting for a moment that you are not simply a tech support agent."

I took no offense at the implication against either my job or my department. "Not 'simply', perhaps, but it is what I am."

"I know what the attitude is toward our support teams sometimes," he mentioned curiously. "Does it ever bother you?"

"I know there are some agents that think they're... 'all that', as Duo says, but I've long since learned to stop being offended by the idiocy of others." There were enough idiots around that I would never get any sleep otherwise. Sadly, there were some people that weren't idiots that sometimes thought that way about the non-field operations. Those were the ones that I couldn't dismiss so easily. "I'm sure you get annoyed by their general attitudes enough as it is, even being in the same department and having the same rank or higher as they."

"You have the same rank or higher as well, Yuy," he pointed out dryly. "You're even higher ranked than your so-called CO."

I shrugged. "They gave me the promotion, and then offered me leadership of the department. After I refused, they couldn't very well demote me."

"They should have known better."

Standard procedure was usually to do it the other way around. I supposed they never thought I would turn down the offer. "Was Une one of them, do you think? I know she knows better, but she likes to test the waters from time to time."

"Well, you do have the habit of surprising her."

"Don't we all?"

He conceded the point with a nod. "I'm not sure Une had a hand in the matter. The organization has gotten large enough that no one person can oversee it all anymore. It got that large a long time ago. It's only recently that Une's been more willing to delegate."

"The budget talks are still going on, too, aren't they?"

"Yes, and unfortunately there aren't very many people to which she can delegate the task of those Senate hearings."

"And people wonder why I turn down positions of authority." I had no patience for such things. I would have made a terrible head of the TSRU. There was much more to be done as a high-ranking peon.

A knock on the door sounded. "Come in," Wufei called.

The door opened, and Duo stuck his head in. "Got some follow-up on that... Heero?"

"Reporting," I offered as an explanation. Duo's office wasn't that far from Wufei's. I wouldn't have made a social call on Wufei without also dropping by Duo's office as well. "Chang has me working for him again."

He grinned. "Heh, well if you'd join us up here, Wufei wouldn't be able to order you around anymore."

I grunted. If I had ever had to rearrange the office layout, I would keep all the field agent offices on the ground floors. I turned back to Chang and gave him a brisk nod. "I'm sure I've kept you from your work long enough. Let me know if you need anything else from me."

Our brief moment of water-cooler-like chat passed, and Wufei returned to business. "Will do."

*****

::Your attention to aesthetics will not improve the efficiency of the interface device.::

::I am well aware of that::, I answered, continuing my work without interruption. Some of the components were simple to replace, like the wires. Things like the electrodes required care. ::I have the cycles to spare. Might as well spend them improving our design.::

::We have already removed all of the temporary bridges and materials. The design has been tested and validated for this iteration of the hardware.::

::Time to move forward to the next iteration, then.:: And we did love moving forward, didn't we? What good was it to be a learning system if we never learned anything? Though it did seem perhaps a little hasty to increment version numbers before the previous version was ever deployed in the field. On the other hand, if I were to follow that philosophy, we would be back several pieces of hardware. I didn't have much cause to use the interface more than experimentally. My fingers had served as a sufficient input device thus far.

Direct linkup was more like a hobby, something I worked on in my spare time, and at times like these, alone in the office and on call for the night. Agents sometimes needed urgent technical support at all hours of the day, so we consulted the mighty rotation again to get our overnight assignments. Whole nights could pass without a single call, but it was still necessary. It suited me just fine, anyway. Duo was also working late tonight. He had uncovered a link between his case and Wufei's, and the two of them were spending the evening making correlations.

Making sure everything was temporarily secured first, I hooked the interface device on over my ear and adjusted the extensions until the electrodes and transmitters fit snugly in place. I had the input and output ports jury-rigged into a loop for testing. A second passed before I confirmed the signal. ::How's it feel to you?::

::Initial link-up is sluggish, but within allowable parameters. Increase the amplification rate in the lower receiver by two point three percent to achieve better signal processing.::

I allowed the interface to collect data for a few more seconds before removing it. ::See, that wasn't so bad, was it?::

::Adding two more points of contact would increase the data transfer.::

I knew that. He knew I knew that. We had two more points of contact on our previous version. ::I didn't say that I was expecting this interface to measure up to or improve on the last one's performance standard. I think of this one more like... interface-lite.::

He disapproved of my terminology, but he picked up on what I meant. ::How many intermediate layers of interface do you intend to create?::

::If this one performs as expected, it should be sufficient.::

He said nothing articulately, but I got the feeling there was an implied, 'it better.' Unnecessary ranks in the hierarchy were just sloppy.

After adjusting the lower amplifier's output as suggested, I connected the cable trailing out of the device, snapped everything back in place, and slipped the interface back on. It pinched my ear this time, but I would have the opportunity to adjust that at my leisure at a later time. Maybe I would change the mounting to make it more flexible. For now, I plugged the interface into the front dataport of my computer and booted up the listener.

::Connection confirmed.::

Another small step forward. Given our combined capabilities, it was probably unnecessary to approach the problem in a unit-test fashion, but we were both fans of orderly methodology. I made sure I had cleared the data from our last run before continuing. ::Initiate start-up procedures.::

::Initializing...::

::And no cheating.::

He proceeded with the boot protocols, ignoring me, but I interpreted his silence as mild indignation. He knew how to operate within parameters. He also knew when I was joking.

I closed my eyes when the data started rolling in. It was admittedly harder for me to not cheat. I didn't have Zero's advantage of hard programming. This was a road we had been down several times before in the course of our experimentation. The point was to be able to accomplish our goal of paring the interface's driver down to a universal minimum, and once installed, grow it out as necessary to adapt to the format of the system with which we were connected. Using prior knowledge of the system, rather than only what we could glean from our base set of operations, defied the point of our exercise.

Compartmentalizing to that degree was possible, but it was easier for me to just sit back and let Zero drive, for the most part. We were synchronized with the system within seconds, going through the files I had recently worked on as a test. Since being called onto the Donnelly case, life had been pretty routine. I pulled up what information I had leftover from the job on my drive and ran through it. Wufei had told me that the local authorities had taken Agent Jackson into custody, but that the man denied any knowledge or involvement with Donnelly, the death of the witness in protective custody, or the counterfeit badges in circulation. I didn't have much, but I thought about revisiting the files again anyway. I needed a subject for my test run, after all.

Going over the files, I thought about Duo and Wufei doing the same thing upstairs. I wondered how long they would be at it. I hoped they would go home and get at least some sleep tonight. I'd be here on call until morning, but I only had to work a half-day tomorrow. My sleep schedule would probably be thrown a little off. When Duo went to bed tomorrow night, assuming he didn't work late again, I would be there next to him, but likely I wouldn't be able to sleep. Which was fine. I was content just watching him for a while.

The thought conjured up images in my mind's eye. Neither of us was the type to keep framed photographs on our desks at work, but I suppose I didn't need one. I knew details about him that even a camera's lens couldn't capture.

My eyes snapped open once I sensed a subroutine running that I hadn't been aware of and visually confirmed what I had thought was going on. ::Stop that, Zero,:: I commanded, a little bit mortified, even though there was no one around to see but me.

::I am testing our access to the video cache.::

::Stop that::, I insisted, hoping I could put a halt to it before the image fully resolved itself. As much as I never tired of looking at him, I didn't think I needed a picture of him laid out naked beneath me on my desktop. And oh lord, it looked like it was slowly animating. ::We have access to the video cache, okay? Testing complete.::

The 'testing' went on for a few more microseconds before Zero decided in his own good time that he had collected enough data to conclude in the positive. With a sigh of relief from me, he released ownership of the video buffers back to the system. It was times like this that I wasn't sure where I ended, and he began.

::I was only using the image that was at the forefront of your mind at the time.::

I started to make an argument for decency, but decided I would get nowhere with a computer. ::Just use my common sense next time, would you? Feel free to paint him sleeping or smiling or something. It's not like you don't have access to any other images in my mind.::

He spent a few cycles processing my request before subsiding with what I considered to be an exasperated sigh. 'Humans!' he would mutter if he had a body, throwing his hands up.

I got that a lot from him.

::That is because you can be alarmingly unreasonable sometimes.::

::I love you, too, Zero.::

::No, you don't.::

Only because our relationship was far too complicated to be summed up in so simple a phrase. Not that my love for Duo wasn't entirely complicated as well.

::If you 'love' him, I do not want you 'loving' me.::

::Oh? Why is that?::

::He makes you unreasonable.:: Zero offered me a flashback of a time when Duo had dragged me away from my work -- and from Zero.

::He makes me interesting.:: I filled in the blanks of Zero's flashback, notably the part where Duo and I had had gloriously hot sex after I had been dragged away from my work. That had not been the scene featured on my desktop just moments before. ::And it's not like we didn't compromise. He gave me time to finish what I was doing.::

::Five minutes.::

It was enough. Well, maybe I had saved a little bit of my work for later, but hey, who could blame me? Duo had come in to distract me with the declaration that he was hot, he was horny, and he was really looking forward to a good lay that night. I was happy to oblige. After Duo had declared his intention to march forward in search of my hormones, he carried through on it.

::You gave him thirty-nine minutes of foreplay, intercourse, and post-coital activity, followed by twenty-eight minutes in a somnolent state.::

::Hm, was that all?:: Well, as Duo said, he'd been hot and horny, which was somewhat infectious. I couldn't expect us to go much longer than that. There were plenty of other nights that more than made up for that. ::I would have dozed even longer if you hadn't interrupted me.::

::My point exactly.::

::Sorry, Zero, this is one fight you're not going to win, and you know it.:: We'd had this discussion many times before, in fact. We always just ended up agreeing that Duo was a part of my base programming and he wasn't coming out. Actually, Duo had worked his way into Zero's basis as well, but Zero was hardly going to admit it. Or if he did, he would blame it on me.

I got the silence I called a disgruntled huff this time. Deciding we would both be happier if I got my mind back on track, I returned to my review of the files on hand. Absorbing data through the neural linkup was always an interesting process. The information ultimately ended up in the same form inside my brain, but its appearance during transit sometimes allowed for a different perspective on things, prompting me to rearrange the pieces into a new configuration, studying it until the discrepancy jumped out at me.

Picking up the phone, I dialed the number for Wufei's office. I stopped mere millimeters away from slapping the earpiece into the hardware that was already on that side of my head, and took the time to transfer the phone to the other side while waiting for him to pick up.

"Chang," he answered.

"Yuy here. I have some more information for you on the Jackson case."

There was a brief pause. "You're not still on the Jackson case, are you?"

"No." There had been no further requests for work on the matter. "I was just going over the data."

"Do you normally do that in your spare time?"

"Sometimes. I reviewed the bank information from the suspicious deposit into his account. He may not have been the one that put it there. The tax information is missing."

"Could it be an input error?"

"It's probably automated these days." It seemed everything was going automated these days. Much as I liked my computers, there was something comfortingly traditional about a human being involved in there somewhere to validate the process. Automation solved a lot of the problems that humans could introduce, but humans could detect some of the problems that computers couldn't. I had managed to slip a mere misspelling of my name past automation, after all.

::I can efficiently process a 'traditional' string-compare.::

::Because you're plugged into my processors, thank you very much.:: Let credit go where credit was due. I moved on, explaining the rest of my idea to Wufei. "The money was put into Jackson's retirement account. For tax purposes, they track the source of the money. There are some rules that determine what kind of taxes or penalties have to be paid on the money, depending on the source and annual totals and such." I only knew because I had been so bemused by the notion of a pension plan when joining the Preventers that I had researched the matter. "If this money came from him, it should have said."

Wufei made a contemplative sound, seeming to take my knowledge of the trivial for granted. "You think someone framed him?"

"I think it's worth looking into. It's been two days, and Jackson has continued to deny all of the allegations, you said. Maybe he's telling the truth."

"Hm. The money was deposited as cash on-site, as I recall?"

"Yes." An electronic transfer would have been far too easy to trace.

"Banks have surveillance cameras. I'll let our people down there know, see if they can confirm. Once again, good work, Yuy. Thank you for your help."

This time, I could tell he wasn't just saying that. I smiled. "Hey, I just want Duo home at a decent hour."

He snorted. "I'll see what I can do. Chang out."

*****

It hadn't been all that long since the last time we had had lunch with each other, so the enthusiasm with which Relena greeted me was unwarranted for that reason. The long hug she gave me spoke of relief, and I could tell she had been hard at work keeping our government together again. I hugged her back.

She held on for a few more seconds, indulging in the social inappropriateness of such a lengthy embrace now that we were safely off her front step and within the foyer of the Sanq embassy, before she finally let go to give me a kiss on the cheek and withdraw. "It's good to see you, Heero."

Her warm smile belied her hostess' professional grace as I offered my arm to lead her through the estate to the balcony where we typically lunched in good weather. It had taken years for her to win recognition for her personal achievement; the respect and responsibility afforded her were the result of a hard-fought battle. But that didn't mean she couldn't enjoy being treated like a princess every now and then.

"So how have things been going for you lately?" she asked, eager for news from the outside world.

I refrained from shrugging. She didn't like that. "Not bad. A little busy lately. I was on call at the office this week. Duo's been working late the last couple of nights. Caught a break in one of his cases. Finished up with the lead last night, though, so he gets this weekend off." The case hadn't been solved yet, however. He and Wufei had just reached a point on it for passing the information they had uncovered back to the local authorities. Duo was never fond of that, of depending on others to follow through for him.

Relena squeezed my arm. "I'm sorry for taking you away from him, then."

"Don't be. We already had the leisure of sleeping in this morning. And Quatre's in town tonight. The five of us are getting together for dinner." And between lunch and dinner, there would still be time. Besides, I think he liked having the apartment to himself once in a while.

"That's right. I'm sure I will run into him at work this week."

"Try to stick by him for a while. I'm sure he'll be a breath of fresh air." Budget talks in the Senate were an interesting time for everyone. The few times we had seen Une in the office over the last couple of weeks, she had been decidedly grumpy. Now Quatre had to testify in defense of some subsidies the government was thinking of cutting. He maintained his sanity by observing the proceedings with a dark humor. I think he kept a running dialogue in his head snarking at those around him. I was certain he wouldn't mind sharing his observations with Relena.

Duo just thought Quatre passed the time picturing Sandrock playing in the Senate House. Perhaps it was a mixture of both. I wasn't brave enough to ask.

Relena smiled impishly at me. "Quatre has always been a delight to work with."

"How much longer do you think the budget talks will last?"

"Ugh, do not even ask," she groaned, losing her levity to swoon dramatically. I adjusted for her weight as she leaned against me, keeping our course straight. "I hate this time of year. Suddenly politicians think they can decide whose welfare is more important than the next man's, whose interests are better served, for everyone in the entire sphere over. It's terrible, and especially terrible when there are reasons why we need to be concerned about a man's welfare right now, and we're too busy with this nonsense to deal with them. But that's work, and I don't want to talk about work."

"You started it," I teased her. "You asked me how things were lately, and what do I do other than work?"

"Duo," she answered slyly, and a little too promptly. "You do Duo."

I glanced at her sidelong. "Has Quatre gotten his hooks into you already?"

"Maybe I'm the one that has hooks in him. Ever think of that?"

"No."

Miffed, she tossed her hair in my direction. Her silence lasted only a few seconds before she turned back to me, earnest once more. "So how has Duo been?"

"Busy lately," I repeated, an obviously empty answer. "He keeps himself busy. He's been working that case down in Sudan, the one with the fake Preventers."

My attempt to distract her worked for a few moments. "I'd heard about that. How far along is the investigation? I think someone was taken into custody?"

One of the things that made her a good politician -- not in the oily way, but in the way that made her effective -- was her knowledge of things even outside her jurisdiction. Especially in a globalized system like ours, everything was interconnected, and both she and Quatre wished the majority of the government could understand that. "Our first suspect turned out to be a false lead set by his partner, or so it seems. They have the partner in custody now, but he's pretty slick, hasn't given anything up yet. They're still working on him, but if they can't find any solid evidence to charge him with, they might have to let him go."

She sighed. "It's ironic that sometimes the best agents are the worst agents."

"That's what Duo says sometimes. 'Waste of talent.'"

"And he's talking about these traitorous agents, is he?"

My short pause was probably incriminating enough. "He is. Or possibly about new recruits that haven't figured out how to channel their energies properly."

"Would you agree?" she probed casually, using some of those skills she wielded every day against me. "About the new recruits?

"I wouldn't call it a 'waste of talent'," I answered mildly, wishing I could be certain of my honesty when I was on to her. "I'd say that they just haven't found their niche yet."

She slowed our steps so she could study me intently. "You're a patient man, Heero Yuy."

"I can be when it's worth it."

We disengaged as we approached our balcony table. Continuing in my role as the gentleman, I helped Relena into her seat before taking my own. She fussed a little with the table settings before the meal was brought out, politely waiting for things to settle again before proceeding with her train of thought. "I know the prize is worth it in the end, Heero. But patience isn't the same as complacence. You know that. Isn't it better to take action, Heero, instead of just waiting for things to happen?"

That was an unfair question. Well did she know my field record. Considering the topic, I maneuvered carefully. "Some things just can't be rushed, Relena."

She frowned at me. "And some things could use a little poking." She poked at her salad with her fork as if in example.

I smiled as a speck of her vinaigrette jumped off her lettuce and onto the edge of the table top, narrowly missing a plummet into her lap. "Some things poke back, Relena."

*****

Zero woke me promptly at oh-six-hundred. I hit the snooze button as I stretched minutely, convincing my body that it was time to start the day. Duo shifted sleepily beside me, and I decided my eyes would be more happy to be open if they had something nice to look at. There wasn't much to see in the pre-dawn light, but then again, I didn't need the light to tell me what I already knew. I traced his familiar contours with my eyes, and what I couldn't discern visibly, I made up for it with my memories.

Duo wouldn't need to get out of bed for another two hours yet. My hands got itchy, wanting to follow the lines of his body and feel that tangibility for themselves, but I didn't want to wake him. I slipped out of bed before I gave into the temptation, gathered my clothes silently, and headed to the bathroom.

Breakfast was an easy habit these days. I watched the slow rising of the sun as I munched my toast. The atmosphere of Earth made it mellow, smoothed it out to a soft drift into wakefulness, but daybreak was different in the colonies. It was a heady sense of anticipation, and then the light spilling over the curve of the colony like an intense revelation. Or, as Duo put it once after a late night/early morning movie, it was the sort of sudden splash one expected would kill all the vampires after a long night of undead rampaging.

I loved him anyway.

After breakfast, I still had a few minutes before it was time for me to leave. I decided I could sneak back into our bedroom for a quiet good-bye.

He was wrapped around my pillow when I returned. I didn't want to wake him, but he stirred as I closed in on his position, and in a moment of indulgence, I decided it wouldn't hurt to nudge him the rest of the way into wakefulness. I sat on my side of the bed and waited for him to fully register my presence. I didn't have to wait long.

"Mmm," he sighed sleepily. "Time already?"

"Aa." I pushed his bangs from his face. "Don't wait up for me."

He snorted. "Like I was gonna." With a lazy stretch, he opened his eyes. "You got your gear all together?"

"You helped me pack it last night."

"Did all your homework?"

"Yeah."

"Got your lunchbox?"

"I'm not a kid on my first day at school, Duo."

"Got your jacket?"

Now that one, I conceded to. I lifted the uniform jacket in my hand, showing it off to him before I shrugged it on. It had barely even settled before Duo's hands were smoothing it over my shoulders. He tugged the collar into place, fingers playing with the bump in the seam for a few seconds before he deemed it ready. He finished the routine off with a hug, falling into the embrace like he could go right back to sleep there.

At length, he released me and pushed at my shoulder. "Well, get a move on, then. I'll see you when I see you."

I kissed him first, then did as I was told. My situation sat on an awkward threshold. I wasn't deployed in the field very often, which gave Duo less to worry about. He didn't like it very much when I left without him. One small incident of disappearing on my own and being held prisoner in an abandoned military base and eventually ending up in a short comatose state, and suddenly people start worrying every time you go out that one day you're not going to come back in one piece. But at the same time, he sometimes worried if maybe I was out of practice with this whole wetwork thing. I wasn't.

It was amazing how things could snowball so quickly sometimes. Agent Nilsson had been released for lack of evidence, but naturally the local agency kept close tabs on him. He guarded his actions very carefully. Fortunately for us, however, some of his associates did not. He made casual contact with an Agent Rimes at a neighboring office. The message seemed normal, but it must have been a pre-arranged signal. Rimes was not nearly as clever as Nilsson had been, and the Preventers were able to pick up the scent again.

One clue had led to the other, and suddenly there was a stronghold in the countryside that represented a clear threat to the stability of the region. Using the fake badges, along with other contacts and their established history in the area, the insurgents had been slowly stockpiling arms, technology, and connections. We didn't yet know what they planned to use their stash for, if anything, but it was time to put them out of commission, before we found out after the fact. Now that their operation had been compromised by the pursuit of the falsified credentials, we couldn't be certain that they wouldn't pack it all up and move to a new, secure location.

Perhaps the local offices had needed Preventers assistance in tracking down the multi-jurisdictional leads, but when the time came to put together a three district strike force, they moved swiftly, assembling a squad of the best SWAT forces in the area.

Teams like that needed coordination. Intel was key to an operation of this nature, and that was where I came in. The case had taken off without us as the local forces pursued the leads with no more need of our assistance, but the call came in to the office on Tuesday. They were putting together a raid, and someone with a skill set like mine would make the mission run much more smoothly.

When I met the men that I would be working with, we sized each other up. They were veterans for the most part, confident in their skills and their practice. I could see that I didn't impress them much, but I was used to that. Once the briefing got underway and I brought up important points necessary to the safety of the team, proving that I had both technical expertise and practical knowledge of troop movement, that I was familiar with interior tactics from a friendly and enemy perspective, I had what I needed from them: their respect and their trust.

The late afternoon was spent gearing up, arming ourselves with the best the requisitions office had to offer, plus a few choice pieces that I had brought for myself from Preventers HQ. We shipped out in early evening into our ready positions, and when night fell, we moved in.

Our target was an old industrial complex. Expected resistance force of thirty. We were fairly certain that the majority of the insurgents did not stay on-site with the stash, but that was a sacrifice we were willing to make in exchange for claiming their resources as soon as possible. Our immediate objectives were to cut them off from the bulk of their stockpiled arms, and to block them from the elimination of their data centers.

Capt. Friedman hovered over my shoulder, watching me work as I initialized and calibrated the sensors I had directed his men to deploy. Each sensor device could be remotely controlled, and I tuned each of them until they collectively delivered to me a complete picture of the enemy force over the six central screens in front of me.

First came the heat scan. I relayed the troop counts to Friedman. There were a few sentries monitoring the perimeter, but they were not on full alert. Their people were spread out, which would work both for and against us. It was easier to face smaller groups of foes, but that meant the later groups would be more prepared. Our approach possibilities did not allow for enough stealth to take all of the men out quickly and quietly.

I located the resources squirreled away within. For ease of transport probably, the stockpile was kept mostly on the ground floors. There was a shipping bay providing access to the outside, but it was locked up tight and well-guarded. The position was defensible from their point of view, but that also meant it would be easy to pin down the guards in that area and block off access to the weapons from the rest of the men. Unfortunately, we couldn't stop the guards from making use of the weapons themselves. The troops holding that position would have the most difficult time of things, depending on how lucky they were. I left the logistics of the swift surprise attack to Friedman to go install the last of the interfaces I would need for maximum information.

Making sure my gear was secure one last time before stepping out of the van that was my command outpost, I ran low and fast behind cover to the pole hosting the cables leading into and out of the building. While it was possible that I could have left this task to one of the others, discussion had revealed myself to be the best person for the job. The force had strong offensive experience in raids, but there was no reason to risk the electrical work to people with no prior history in dealing with such things.

That hadn't stopped the squad from assigning a shadow to me. Despite the competence I had demonstrated during the mission briefing, planning, and beginning, Officer Dennis' duty was to cover me, and/or keep me out of trouble. Since work behind the scenes didn't always translate into good field skills, I couldn't be offended. If I were in their position, I would probably have assigned an unknown agent backup as well. Since the officers were elite, and I had no intentions of starting anything prematurely with the men inside the building, I was sure I wouldn't be babysitting. All the same, it felt odd having someone at my back with whom I was not familiar.

Foregoing the safety straps that workers typically wore to keep themselves attached to the pole, I caught the bottom rung of the maintenance 'ladder' and pulled myself up silently, scaling the tall wooden pole to the top. It was thick enough to provide some cover, but annoyingly enough, the rungs were not aligned to the cover position. At the top, I braced myself on one rung, and wrapped my other leg around the pole, freeing my hands to pull my equipment out of my vest.

It was a simple enough job to accomplish on auto pilot. With a scrap of my attention, I kept an eye on Zero's internal diagnostics. He didn't like our proximity to the power cables. The buzz set my hair on end, and the stray electromagnetic interference danced prickles across my brain. I assured Zero that I didn't like it any better than he did and finished my job as efficiently as possible. Once my feet were back on the ground, I nodded to Dennis and we returned to base.

Back at the van, Friedman was revisiting the mission plans with his men, but he took a moment to confirm with his man on the ground that all had gone according to plan. Dennis assured him that it had, but I heard a strange tone mingled in with his reply. Incredulity, perhaps? No matter. I slid back into my seat in front of the monitors and checked my uplink. With all systems green and no sign of alert from our target, I snuck into their network to see what I could see.

Pinging down their connection, I could make a rough estimate of the location of their data centers based on the response time. Cross-referencing the numbers with the physical map, I narrowed the possibilities down to a single room and notified Friedman of my find. Access to the data room was far more central than the weapons store, so preservation of evidence was going to be tricky. Friedman glared surprisedly at me when I told him that hopefully the would-be terrorists wouldn't consider the information on those computers to be critical to their operation. Apparently, he had hoped there was some network magic that I could do to make the machine erase-proof. There was a thing or two I might be able to do to keep them from wiping their drives, but there was nothing I could do if they decided to put a bullet through them.

Soon enough, the time for plans was over. It was time to engage the enemy forces and break all of our carefully laid plans. I watched as the blips on the map arranged themselves into the proper formation, keeping an eye on the body signatures on the monitors to track the enemy status. After I confirmed that all of the players were where we expected them to be, Friedman gave the go-ahead for all forces to move out.

They quickstepped forward, and I cut the building's lines of communication as they burst through the back door just in time to catch the two men guarding the side entrance by surprise. Monitoring the base's traffic and seeing no disturbances, I let the team know that no one had been called to check out their sector. They appeared to be unnoticed so far.

At the fork in the road, about a third of the team moved toward the rear in the direction of the weapons cache, and the rest moved forward. My monitors reflected my split attention. Once the teams signaled that they were ready, I cut the power to the rear of the building. The quiet as everything powered down suddenly was immediately evident, and as the enemy hastened to the rear to investigate, our forces rushed in behind them, closing them into a smaller workspace and cutting off their access to most but not all of the stash.

Weapons fire brought the rest of the building to an alert state, but once the power had gone off in the rear, the SWAT team had gassed the offices where many of the men were sleeping, waiting for their guard shifts. I notified Alpha team that two of the rebels had managed to stumble out under cover of the smoke. One waited around the corner, looking dazed but mobile, while the other dashed up the stairs to meet up with the rest of their command crew. A few of our team members stayed behind to secure the sleeping prisoners, and the rest poured up the stairs to greet the remainder.

I guided them through the halls, and on Friedman's mark, I cut the power to the rest of the building. The upper levels had more windows, yielding more moonlight by which to see, but we still had the advantage. I kept an eye on the siege in the weapons room while tracking all of the men upstairs, calling out cover positions and spying flanking maneuvers before they could become a real threat to our men. More gas was deployed, and one of the bad guys inside shot out the windows for ventilation.

The sound of the shattering caused me to glance out the front of the van toward the building, and in the side view mirror, I caught sight of an old pick-up truck moving cautiously down the main access road with its head lights off. The muzzle flashes and loud reports of the weapons would have made it immediately clear what was going inside. Surely they would not be so self-sacrificing as to try to storm our team from the rear.

I notified Friedman that I would be unavailable for a short while, swept the interior of the van looking for something useful, found nothing, then slipped out the front passenger side door, not closing it hard enough to make a sound. I laid low, and when they approached the van, their pseudo-stealthy movements indicating their ill-intent, I slid around to the opposite side while maintaining cover. Only two pairs of feet were visible underneath the van, and a good look at the truck showed that they were all there was.

Continuing around the vehicle, I caught them about to fling open the sliding door, guns at the ready to slaughter anyone hiding inside. A chop to the neck felled the first man. As the second man swung his gun in my direction, I grabbed his hand and sidestepped him, pulling him forward as I did. He stumbled over the fallen body of his comrade, and I aided his imbalance with an open-palmed strike to his lower back. The gun came loose from his grasp as he tripped, and I applied its butt to the back of the man's head.

Satisfied that they were down for the count, I re-entered the van and took in the information on the screens. I quickly informed Bravo that there were three men huddled in the back of the weapons room, apparently holding a conference of some sort. Hopefully they would surrender soon and end the stand-off. One of the bad guys on Alpha's side was getting close to the data, but a grenade convinced him to flee the area quickly. Officer Bradley had been inordinately proud of himself earlier that evening when he had showed off the duds he carried as part of his arsenal. I had to admit they were effective as a diversionary tactic.

As an afterthought, I informed Friedman that the situation on my end had been resolved. Seeing that nothing else required my immediate attention, I went back outside to bind the two men with some cables, then returned to my position.

Once the guys upstairs were taken care of, the guys downstairs folded easily enough. I called in the buses that were on standby just outside the range of the conflict. There was a lot of handcuffing going on, and then the injured were hauled away. Final score: one bullet hole on our team, five on theirs. One of their men was critically injured, but otherwise, it was a good raid.

Now came the fun part for me: pulling rank to try and claim the data for my office. Always a delicate operation when it wasn't your men that had just risked their lives to get it.

*****

Duo managed to intercept me in a hallway on the way into HQ proper from the airfield. Transports weren't going in and out so often that it was difficult to keep track of them. I gave him a tired smile as he fell into step beside me, glad for the company. It made the long walk back to the office seem a little less lonely and grim.

"You good?" he asked casually, eyes fixed on the backs of the pilot and co-pilot walking some twenty meters ahead. If it weren't for the gear, I would have flown commercial. If it weren't against regulations, I could have flown myself. I had the license -- ha, license! -- but I was sent out to assist in intel and assault, not fly. The Preventers bureaucracy didn't like muddling their waters by mixing things up.

I bumped my shoulder against his, deliberate enough for him to know I wasn't just stumbling from exhaustion or injury. I just wanted to feel him against me, no matter how briefly. "I'm good."

"You gotta report?"

"Yeah. Have to turn the gear back in to Reqs, first." He held out his hand in a silent offer, and though I didn't need to, I accepted, passing the handle of the wheeled cart over to him. Its drag and weight had been negligible, but somehow now, I felt at liberty to tilt my head one way, and then the other, to loosen up my neck muscles.

"Too bad your case isn't officially linked to mine," he commented idly. "Then you could report to me."

"It'll probably end up back on your desk for correlation. Or Wufei's desk. The local field office down there is taking care of following up on all of the supplies we found, in conjunction with the local law enforcement. I'm sure something in there will track back to one of the international circuits you've been working on."

"Great, give me more work, then. If I end up working late this week, you've got no one to blame but yourself." I smiled obligingly at his teasing, and he smiled back. "It's all them, then?"

Briefly, I lifted the case I carried in my other hand. "Dead hard drive. I've got data recovery to do."

"It get toasted?"

"Bullet." I had warned Friedman that there was little I could do against one of the alleged terrorists putting a hole in the data units, but there was maybe a little something I could pull out of my hat, now that it was after the fact. Reconstruction made my job harder, of course, but tech support here at HQ was the finest center for such things in the world for good reason. I had been allowed to walk away with the drive because there wasn't any unit down there that could get anything useful out of it, but still, it was strongly implied that I was to share whatever data I found with the locals. And I would, so long as I didn't think it was something they didn't need to know.

"Working late, then?"

I shook my head. "Think I'll get some sleep tonight instead, get a good start in the morning. By the time I finish with the reports, it'll probably be late enough. I can set some scans going tonight and have it ready to go for tomorrow."

"How late did the raid go?"

"You know how it is. The raid itself is over almost before you know it. It's the cleanup that takes you to dawn, and that's just what's on-site." Anticipation kept a person's edge sharp for a while, and then the adrenaline brought a person through the action to the other side, but after a certain point, it was just sheer stubbornness that kept a guy going. Maybe I had gotten my hands on the data without too much fuss simply because I managed to outlast the people I had been discussing the matter with.

"Don't suppose you slept on the plane."

With two strangers at the helm? Right. I twitched the strap of my backpack with my free hand, implying the presence of my laptop within. "Got an early start on those reports."

"Mind if I drop a snack off at your desk while you're reporting?"

I glanced at him sidelong and made an amused sound.

He held up a placating hand. "Hey, I'm not questioning your ability to take care of yourself or anything here. But you do forget to attend to the basics sometimes."

"Hey, I'm not the only one that forgets to eat or sleep every once in a while."

"No, but the next time I forget, it'll be your turn to fuss. This time, it's mine."

Couldn't argue with that logic. I hid a lopsided smile. "Fine. I won't object if you should leave me something on my desk, then."

He released a ghost of a chuckle. "Just for that, maybe I shouldn't."

"I wouldn't object to that, either."

His laugh this time had a little more substance to it. "I know Sally's given you the go-ahead on this stuff, man, but that doesn't mean-- No, wait, you were like this even before Sally okayed you. Never mind."

"I do what I have to." Despite the mild-mannered tech geek persona that I apparently cultivated without even trying, I would still do what I had to.

"Some things just don't change, do they?" he sighed cheerfully.

The wheels on the cart made a different sound when they transitioned from the concrete of the airfield walkway to the tiled interior hall. The regular beat as they hit the grout marked the moments that passed as I contemplated his rhetorical question. "Some things."

He seemed ready to question me on the topic, but something gave him pause, and whatever it was, it lasted long enough for us to get to the end of the hallway. Our paths would part here. He handed the rolling cart back to me with an almost apologetic air. "Well, break's over. Back to work. Dinner's on me tonight. If you're not done for the day when I get to your cube, I'm making you done for the day. Got it?"

"Got it."

"Okay." He squeezed my shoulder, letting his hand fall away via a smooth glide down my arm. "I'll see you later then."

"Aa." I watched his retreating back for only a few seconds before I resumed the long trudge toward the office of requisitions.

*****

"Hey, hotshot. Back from the frontlines, eh?"

I grunted neutrally at Frasier, letting that serve as both an answer and a greeting, and flicked the bobblehead toy affixed to the top of his cubicle wall as I passed. Frontlines, indeed, only I would be referring to the Offices of Triplicate. Naturally, they were running short-staffed, and there was a wait before someone could process the return of my gear. After signing on three different lines, I got to visit the evidentiary office to get the damaged hard drive certified. Four stickers, three bags, and two signatures later, I was finally allowed to sink back into the comfort of my private domain. It was an open-air cubicle, but everything was where I wanted it to be. No one walked past it on their way to somewhere else unless the building was on fire. It was filled with my clutter, and while an eyebrow or two might be raised, there was no one to suggest I have it any other way.

I logged in to my workstation, scanned the messages that had stacked up in my inbox while I was gone, then committed myself to finishing with the bureaucracy before getting too settled. I got up, waved to Trix on the way to my CO's open door, and knocked on the frame. He gestured at me to enter and close the door behind me.

"Yuy," Schafer said, pointing at the chair in front of his desk. "You look beat."

Did I? I must have been getting old, then. "I just got through with processing," I answered, seating myself. I liked the chair in my office better.

He snorted derisively. I liked him. He didn't have too much patience with all the red tape. Actually, he blamed me for having to put up with it -- if I'd just taken the damn job, he wouldn't have had to. What would he do if he knew I'd supported his promotion in my place? "You'll be happy to know, then, that I called ahead to Minchella's office for you."

"Not really," I murmured, knowing I wasn't sotto voce, but maintaining the illusion anyway.

He maintained the illusion, too, and pretended he didn't hear that. "The AD's busy for the rest of the day, so he'll make do with your written report. You lucked out, Yuy."

"Ah." Now that I could be happy about, and I expressed my gratitude with a tip of my head. Minchella had jurisdiction over interdepartmental affairs. My marching orders usually came from Schafer through him, and I would have been reporting to him next. The assistant director wasn't an inherently annoying man, but he worked under the shadow of Une. Any other office, and he'd be a fairly important man, but it was hard to aspire to greatness when the ultimate in rank sat in an office several floors above you.

Schafer waved his fingers toward his computer monitor. "I just got the preliminary report from the guys in the local branch. Looks like everything ran smoothly down there."

I nodded. He'd also be getting a copy of my written report.

"I hear you saw some action, too."

It was barely worth mentioning, in my opinion. "I was the most qualified on the team for splicing into the network and power lines."

Schafer blinked at me for a moment before shaking his head. "I heard you took out two guys on your own."

Oh. That. Also hardly worth mentioning. "They presented an imminent threat to the mission. I was the only one available to take them out."

"You weren't expected to take part in that kind of action," he commented mildly.

I took no offense. I wasn't, after all. "I apologize if that generates extra paperwork for you."

He coughed, covering his amusement. "This is the part where I remind you that there are people on the company payroll that are always available for you to talk to, if you find yourself dwelling on the violence you unexpectedly encountered." I kept a steady look on him, and he laughed. "Hey, it's part of the script. Don't blame me."

I waited until I was able to say something with a straight face before I spoke. "I'll keep that in mind, sir."

"I'm sure you will," he retorted dryly. He didn't know my complete history, but he knew my history in the organization, which was more than enough to prove the reminder unnecessary. "You brought work home with you?"

"Yes, sir. Hard drive with a hole in it."

"Will you be needing any help with that?"

"No, sir."

"Enough with the 'sir'," he grunted impatiently, almost but not quite rolling his eyes. "You and I both know where you stand in this department."

"I stand within the department, sir," I answered blandly.

We swapped steady stares for a couple of seconds before he dropped his eyes. "God knows why," he muttered, but he let the matter pass. "Matthews will be your contact again when you have something you need to pass along to the locals. Sounded like they had plenty of other evidence to plow through, though. Do what you need to do today to make yourself feel like the overly responsible agent you are, then get out of here for the night. Understood?"

"Understood."

I left his office, and nearly ran into Trix around the corner of a cube as I made my way back to my area. "Hey," she greeted cheerfully. "Good trip?"

I made a neutral sound and continued along my way, with her trailing along behind me. I've never quite understood the completely banal questions people asked after missions. It wasn't as if I were being recruited for surveillance at a tropical resort.

"Oh, and your boytoy came by." I ignored the peevish note in her voice. "Dropped something off at your desk, I think."

I kept my smile to myself as I reached my sanctum and found a ration bar and a juice box sitting squarely in the middle of my workspace. I plucked the post-it note off and read the scrawl that was Duo's lazy handwriting, the one he used when he didn't want the casual passerby to be able to interpret his words. Best the breakroom has to offer. Sorry. Make it up to you tonight.

Even without eating the gift, I found I suddenly had the energy to answer at least a couple of pointless questions.

*****

"Hey, aren't you the one that just got back from a job?"

"Mm-hm."

"Then why I am the one getting the foot rub?" He squirmed happily on the sofa, the rest of his body expressing the joy his toes could not while held within my hands.

I rubbed soothing shapes into the sole of his foot, imagining that I was marking him, branding him with my special, hidden symbols. It wasn't good to be possessive, to try to lay claim to a free man's soul, but it was reassuring to think that some sign of me could linger on with him, wherever his life's journey led him. "Because I find this relaxing."

He sighed contentedly as I switched to his other foot. "Well, hmm. I feel like I should argue with that, but this is too damn good."

I couldn't help feeling smug. "Then stop complaining, and question not life's simple pleasures."

"Mmmm. Simplify," he murmured to himself, and I wondered if he could feel the way I wanted to inscribe the word into his foot, that maybe from there it could seep gently into his heart. He felt receptive to me. I made a note to myself to turn his mind to goo more often. "It was quiet in your office today. Was someone out?"

Though I had come to know him for five years, and slept by his side for three, I still had difficulty seeing how his mind leapt from one thought to the next. Trying to discern the patterns made for an interesting hobby, one Zero had long since surrendered into my hands with a furious huff of exasperation. "No, not that I noticed."

"Hmmm." His heel shifted as he pushed forward into my massaging thumbs. I discreetly coerced his foot a little farther from my crotch. I wanted to relax, but not that way. Maybe tomorrow night. "I usually get a little more noise when I drop by to visit."

"Maybe because I wasn't there."

"Heh, since when are you the life of the party, Yuy?"

"The noise is meant to tease me, not you." If there were more women in the office other than just Trix, I could imagine there being catcalls and whistles. Instead, some things were said about balls and chains and sweethearts, announcing his presence in the office, along with a few 'hey, how's it going's. The others spotted him earlier than I could at the back of the office. There was that small disadvantage, but the benefits outweighed it.

He made a sound to express mock disgruntlement. "I can be teased just as much as the next guy."

"Do you remember that time earlier, who was it, Joel? He told me my girlfriend was here to see me, and then you got in his face and smiled and told him to say that again?"

There was a short pause, and then he levered himself up on his elbows to look at me down the length of his body. "Did I do that?"

"Mm-hm."

"Oh." He settled back down with a thoughtful look on his face. "Must have been having a bad day or something, then. I didn't mean anything by it."

"Hn." Didn't mean anything personal or offensive, sure, but that didn't mean he hadn't been serious. There were still some old barbs stuck beneath his skin, the wounds healed and scarred over with the needles still embedded within.

"And that Trix of yours," he mused toward the ceiling, shifting to pull his braid out from under him. "Was she having a bad day today, too?"

"Not that I'm aware of," I answered cautiously, wondering how long they had spent in each other's company unsupervised. Just long enough for Duo to drop by my desk, I had thought. I hadn't been in with Schafer for that long. "Why?"

"She didn't look happy to see me at all. I know she's not jealous or something, you said, but seriously..." He took a moment to twiddle with the tuft at the end of his hair. "I don't think she likes me that much."

I couldn't help it. I suppressed my snicker enough to turn it into a choked snort, but that was as much as I could manage.

He got up on one elbow again to shoot me a mild glare. "What?"

Since I had already given myself away, I let the laugh bloom into more of a chuckle. It faded as his silence stretched, and then I was left blinking at him. "...You're kidding, right?"

"Um, no. What's so funny? Am I right?"

"Just a little," I hedged uncomfortably, trying to infuse my answer with humor. Sure, they weren't at each other's throats, but when they smiled at each other, they were baring their teeth.

"Really?" He sat up entirely, pulling his feet out of my lap. One went to the floor. The other he drew inward almost defensively. "Well, why not?" He stared impatiently at me while I treated him with a faintly incredulous look. "No, really. Why not? Is it that obvious or something?"

Duo was no Quatre, but I'd always believed him to be pretty decent at reading people. Reading anyone except him and me, anyway. "Well.... you don't like her very much, either, you know."

He looked genuinely confused. "What are you talking about? She's nice. We get along..."

I turned in my seat to face him more squarely, using the time the action bought me to think. It was difficult enough to explain that I generally preferred not to try. When I did try, something somewhere was always sidestepped and missed. But now the issue had been brought forth plainly. Duo had asked himself. And if he wanted to understand this, then I would do what I could to help. There could be no better time than now. But would it break that fragile balance? Or perhaps the better question to ask was, did I want to break that balance?

"You two get along because you know I'm not happy when you don't get along. I consider myself fortunate to have people with such regard for me."

"You're stalling." His eyes had narrowed, and I didn't know whether that was because I was putting off his question, or because I had implied an equality between the two of them.

I sighed softly. I wanted to break the stalemate, but I didn't want to break the balance. But I knew as well as anyone else that sometimes, things had to be broken before they could be put back together. "I get the feeling that... you don't like it that the two of you know a different Heero Yuy."

He processed that for a few long seconds, and I imagined that I could see the dark thoughts flickering in his eyes before he grinned. "Yeah, but at least I know the real Heero Yuy."

Frustration swept through me, and I couldn't banish it quickly enough. At least I stopped myself from snapping at him, but the irritated edge still crept in there. "No, you don't, Duo. Or at least, the Heero you know is no more or less real than the Heero she knows."

"Whoa, I was just kidding, Heero." He held a hand up in that universal 'calm down' gesture.

"I'm not." He really did consider his answer a joke, but I refused to let him get away with that, not this time. "The two of you knew me at different times in my life. That's it. If you saw different things, then it's only because of the different circumstances, but it was all me. I don't know why you can't accept that. You didn't miss anything. Anything that I was then is still here now." I remembered having a conversation like this, once upon a time. Once upon several times, really. Every time I thought I had him convinced that it really wasn't so strange that I seemed different from I had been when he had first gotten to know me during the war, it turned out I was wrong.

"Hey, wait a minute here. Are you pinning this whole thing on me? You think I'm jealous of her or something?"

I could see the annoyance and pique that jumped into his expression, and needing just a few moments away from that, I got off the sofa, grabbed my empty mug of tea off the side table and headed for the kitchen. Obviously, I had misjudged something. This wasn't where I had wanted this conversation to go.

I heard his quiet footsteps come to a halt at the threshold of the kitchen, but I stubbornly ignored him as I rinsed my mug out far more thoroughly than necessary. Yes, I was going to finish this discussion, but only after I figured out where I wanted it to go from here. When I had pushed the limits of decent cup-washing and finally had to set the thing down in the drying rack, I took my time drying my hands on the dish towel hanging near the sink, and only when the spaces between my fingers were most assuredly dry beyond reproach, I turned.

He was learning against the doorframe, watching me warily. I watched him back, and then because it was my turn to speak, I did. "I don't think you're jealous of her."

He waited a few seconds to see if I would continue, but when I didn't, he took it upon himself to prompt me. "But you obviously think something."

It was a little bit of a question, a little bit of a challenge. "I think..." I hesitated, then committed myself to what fraction of my thoughts I wanted to share tonight. "... that for whatever reasons... you aren't fond of those five years I spent away from everyone. And I think you take that out on her, just because she's a part of that time."

There was no immediate response to that. I went to his side and slid my arms around his midsection. "All of me," I murmured over his shoulder. "What you see and what you don't. It's all right here, right in front of you, for whenever you want it."

I disengaged and went into the small room of our apartment that served as a home office, closing the door halfway behind me. I didn't want to shut him out, but I thought the both of us would appreciate a little time alone with our thoughts.

*****

"Henry!"

I started to get out of my seat automatically when I heard my order come up, but Trix caught my eye over her shoulder and nodded at me, indicating that she would fetch it since she was already up for her own. It wasn't long after I had settled back into my seat that she returned to the small table, setting my drink in front of me.

"That still cracks me up," she said, sitting down across from me.

"What?" I responded absently, wrapping my hands around my cup and absorbing the warmth. The night wasn't cold, but it was still comforting.

She snickered. "Henry."

"That was your idea." And a good one, too, if frivolous. Especially considering the fact that her alternative suggestion had been 'Sparky'. It hadn't been uncommon for the group of us to go out during college. If it wasn't a coffee shop like this one, then it was a burger joint or café or something. For such a short name as 'Hiro', I had been impressed with the number of ways it could be taken down incorrectly. One day, Trix had suggested that I provide a more common name instead, and 'Henry' had simply come to mind first.

"You just don't look like one."

"Really?" And here I had thought it to be an appropriately geeky name. "Then what do I look like?"

She poked at the whipped cream atop her coffee in thought. "I dunno. A 'Hiro', I guess. Sorry. A 'Heeeeee-ro'." A brief smile snuck onto the corner of her mouth as she drew out the syllables of my name quite deliberately, though I sensed the amusement was tempered with a faint pensiveness. She had adapted well enough to the slight name change after she had joined me in my world, but the deeper source behind its necessity was something a little bit beyond her realm. "Either one, I guess. They're about the same anyway, aren't they?"

"They are," I answered automatically, but a moment more of thought led me to append my statement with a thoughtful negation. "And they aren't."

"Oooh, deep as always, Yuy." Her eyes smirked up at me as she bent her head to her straw.

"They should be, don't you think?"

"Dunno. Why do you think they aren't?"

My reason stopped short of the air as I realized that it wasn't really me who thought that. "They should be," I just echoed, turning the matter over in my head.

Correctly picking up that I didn't want to go any further with that line of discussion, she leaned back in her seat, played with her coffee a bit, then sighed. "It seems like a while since we've been out like this."

"Busy at the office, I guess."

"Yeah, you were busy as a bee, buzzing over your broken little hard drive. And you managed to put that thing back together, too."

"It wasn't a perfect reconstruction." That was impossible. But I'd gotten enough of it back together for some useful data to be extracted. The local authorities had taken the men apprehended at the site of the raid into custody and were running them through the justice system. Much of the information that I pulled off the hard drive had given hard evidence that tied the men to the local rebel movement. Beyond that, there had been other communications with some of the suppliers of their hardware, and that data had been retained for the use of the regional Preventers office. The police forces got what they needed for the arrest and conviction of the men making trouble in their area, but the contraband case moved out of their hands when it breached the international level.

"I don't envy you that task. Way too tedious for me. And you don't even know if there's anything worth it at the end of the tunnel. And it's just plain hard." She pouted a little. Her skills were appreciated within the department, but she excelled at real-time apps, something that didn't come our way all that often. "I don't get how you do it, how you can consistently do it."

It wasn't the most interesting of tasks, but there was something to be said for taking something that was broken and putting it back to rights. Once the physical remains of the drive were salvaged, it was mostly a case of reading what there was off of it and attempting to fill in the blanks for those places that were lost. Zero was quite helpful when it came to that part. Large-scale pattern analysis was a particular forte of the system.

I was happy to do something that I knew no one else could do. I was even honor-bound to do the things that no one else could do. I considered myself fortunate that I had already been leaning in favor of joining the Preventers when Zero came to roost inside my head. Otherwise, I might have resented his presence pushing my obligations in a direction I hadn't wanted to go.

But none of that made it into my answer. "It's my rugged good looks."

She laughed loudly, toning it down a notch only when she remembered that we were in a public place. "Rugged? I don't know about that."

"Alright, maybe there's a little practice involved, too. Next time a dead disc comes in, feel free to volunteer to take it."

"I think I'll leave that to you, thanks. You hear back about what you found on that thing?"

"It helped solidify their case. The more interesting stuff was in the rest of the evidence they gathered. Some of it's gone high-level again," I mentioned apologetically. It wasn't normally good operating procedure to discuss the details of our work where others could listen in, but they had discovered some of the contraband had been liberated without permission from government facilities, and when cases involved the government, things started getting need-to-know. We probably hadn't gotten there quite yet, but one could never be sure when it would. It was better to err on the side of caution.

She flicked a stray crystal of sugar on top of the table toward me. "Shoulda known. Anything you work on is always high-profile."

An exaggeration, to say the least. "Part of it has ended up back on Duo's desk again. He's not exactly thrilled."

I noticed her almost literally biting her tongue on something I probably didn't want to hear, even though I had added a faint smile to let her know that it was a joke. I suppose that, if I really wanted to avoid these situations, I could have just avoided mentioning Duo at all, but in my experience, avoiding a problem never led to a solution. A few seconds later, she found something neutral to say. "So he's been busy lately, too, eh?"

"Mm-hm," I answered around a mouthful of steamed milk. There had been evidence of weapons-grade particles found in the stockpile, similar to the type being used in some experimental prototypes for non-military purposes. The materials were strictly regulated, however, and refinement beyond a certain point was not permitted. It was a serious violation of international law if someone was refining and selling the particles on the black market, warranting the involvement of high level Preventers agents. There were only a few private institutions known to be carrying out research in the area, and a handful of government labs. Duo and Wufei had been assigned to look into it.

"Hmpf. No wonder you didn't seem to mind hanging out with us last Friday."

"We hang out as a team every first Friday of the month, Trix." It was a bonding exercise or something. Pizza, games, occasionally a movie.

"Yeah, but you usually cut out early to go home to your boytoy."

I always stayed at least a little while. "You know that's never really been my scene."

"We're better company than he is."

And Duo wondered why I thought he was kidding when he finally asked about her dislike of him. Now I wondered just how correct I'd been when I'd offered my opinion to him the other night. "This isn't a competition, Trix. What is it about him that puts you so on edge?"

She hid her miffed expression in her coffee, which was hardly a denial. I pinned her with an expectant look, however, and forced an answer out of her. She'd started this. "I just... I just don't get what you see in the guy."

::I agree.::

::Oh, hush you. You don't like him for entirely different reasons.:: So I assumed. I suppose it all boiled down to the same thing, though: they didn't think he was right for me. "Why not?" I asked Trix patiently.

"He's an ass."

"That doesn't tell me anything. Could you be more specific?"

She resisted for a few seconds, but the feminine urge to talk about these sorts of things overwhelmed her. "He doesn't respect you."

That wasn't entirely out of line with what I'd thought, though I wouldn't have used such harsh words. "How so?"

"He doesn't... I don't know. He doesn't like me. Yeah, shut up. I don't mean it so shallowly. It's just... I dunno. Like he thinks he's so cool, with his shiny pretty special agent badge and office above us and stuff. He doesn't respect your job. He's always making little zingers about how we're goofballs or something. It bugs me."

Duo didn't think he was 'so cool', but I'd agree that there was something about my job that bugged him. Trix wasn't the only one that bugged. I exhaled softly. "Okay. I know Duo isn't perfect. I'm not perfect either."

"That's such a load of crap, Heero. I swear, guys are so stupid sometimes. Yeah, I know we should accept each other's flaws because no one's perfect and all that, but that doesn't mean you should just lie there and take a beating."

Was she comparing me to a battered spouse? That wasn't right at all, but I'd let that go as one of her own little quirks. Six months ago, she'd worked on a case involving an abused woman and her kiddie-porn loving husband. She'd been understandably vocal about her distaste of such things ever since. "We're working on it, okay? If it makes you feel better, you're not the only person that sees flaws in him. You're just the only one that thinks he's an ass."

"Your words, not mine."

"You just called him an ass not even two minutes ago."

"Oh yeah. Have I called him a loser yet?"

"Can we talk about something else now?"

"Like what? The current socio-economic-political climate in the world today? Boring."

My mind automatically applied the disdainful label of 'civilian' to her before I remembered that she was a fellow government worker. That made it even worse. I consoled myself with thinking that she was just joking, but I decided a pointed comment on the matter would make for a good transition to other topics anyway. "It's far from boring, Trix. There are a lot of unstable regions in this world right now, and it's not just because of local problems. Anti-government protests aren't uncommon these days, and they have some very good points about the way the world is run right now...."

*****

My phone rang, and I automatically checked the ID before answering. I guess even Schafer got tired of shouting across the office once in a while. "Yuy."

"You're a busy boy, Yuy. Your services have been requested for a 'special investigative task force'."

I could hear the quotation marks around the phrase quite clearly. He knew what it meant. "Ah. Effective immediately?"

"Yeah. Report to Agent Chang's office. And don't think that, just because you're off doing 'special' stuff, you can slack off on your work down here."

I smiled at Schafer's version of a joke. "Understood. Yuy out."

Glancing around my workstation, I decided to pack up my work laptop and bring it with me when I reported to Wufei's office. When I arrived, I found a desk full of folders and briefs that hadn't been there the other day. I knew the two of them had been hard at work for the last couple of days, but it seemed to have gathered an expected amount of momentum this morning. Knowing the nature of our enterprise, I shut the door behind me and sat down in front of the desk without preamble. "What's going on?"

Wufei gestured to the mess on his desk while Duo at the secondary workstation turned around in his swivel chair. "The investigation started with replica Preventers badges. From there, we found two sources of corruption within government offices, along with one black market dealer. And from that, we uncovered a small terrorist cell -- the one you raided -- along with a source of outlawed weapons. And now from all of that, we're starting to track down a few more sources of contraband, and it's high time we formed a group to pin down these glimmerings of a huge ring operating beneath our radar. Until now, each lead has been tracked independently according to jurisdiction, but it's clear that there needs to be a force at the global level to analyze the overall patterns and make the connections. There's been far too much going on in the world lately for it to be a coincidence."

He hardly needed to convince me of that. There were a lot of angry people out there these days, making claims that the government wasn't doing its job. They weren't exactly incorrect. It'd been ten years since the formation of the ESUN government, and they were still ironing out the details. A few weapons in the wrong hands could bring things in a very bad direction. I scratched at my chin as I glanced quickly over the paperwork scattered over his desk. "Not that I'm not thrilled to be working with you... but this isn't exactly special ops. What do you need me for?"

Duo snorted. "Too good to play in our sandbox, all of a sudden?"

Was that another barb against my choice of jobs? I shrugged and let it pass. "Just want to understand my role here."

"The brass is sticking with the 'task force' label so far," Wufei said. "Like you said, the situation hasn't elevated to 'special ops' status yet. This is considered an extension of the anti-terrorism task force."

We had all been off and on members of the anti-terrorism task force over the years, but it had been fairly quiet on that front lately. "Still doesn't quite explain what you need with me."

"Several of the leads seem to have connections to government offices."

"IAB again?" Sometimes it was rewarding working with Internal Affairs. Rooting out foul play and self-interest within the institution that was supposed to be protecting the civilians was a good cause. On the other hand, sometimes it was pretty demoralizing, too.

"That, but more than that, government clearance. We're going to be pulling some high-level files. We may not need you, but it would take too long to find someone else and clear them for this work. We need to move fast on this, need to find out how far this goes."

I smiled crookedly. "Oh, well in that case, I guess I can help. Not as if I have anything better to do."

"Gee," Duo put in. "Way to make a guy feel wanted, Yuy."

"That's what our nights are for, Maxwell."

His lips twitched as he tried and failed to hide a grin. He resorted to wiping a fake tear from his eye. "Aw, 'Fei, my little grasshopper's all grown up."

Wufei rolled his eyes. "So much for keeping this meeting professional."

"Sorry," I apologized, with a minor though significant degree of sincerity. But really, Duo started it. "Do you have something specific you need me to do right now, or shall I go over what you've gathered so far?"

*****

When there was a knock on the door two days later, Wufei grumbled, but called out a welcome. Quite unexpectedly, it was Trowa that entered. He was something of a nomad, saying that he was most comfortable living that way. As long as he checked in every once in a while with somebody, there were no complaints from the rest of us. He was much better at it than I had been, five years ago.

"I have information for you from Morocco," he said as a greeting.

Duo raised an eyebrow at him. "I didn't know you were a member of this task force."

"We're members for life." That was, sadly, true. There would always be terrorism somewhere, and for some reason, the government thought we were best qualified to deal with it. The squad had other members, as well, but they were typically recruited on a case-by-case basis.

"What do you have?" I asked, moving a packet of papers off of my computer keyboard. Adding Morocco to the grid could have potentially interesting ramifications to the overall pattern. Zero was already recomputing our analyses before I got the relevant data out of Trowa and into the computer. It was guiltily gratifying to find time and time again how right I had been about Zero's utility in non-combat situations.

"I know where the RX-32s went."

There was a silo out in old Petersburg that insisted they still had their entire stock of RX-32s on the base. They were simply 'misplaced' during the post-bellum conversion. Apparently, they'd been misplaced all the way in Morocco. I dutifully entered the new datapoint into the computer and connected the dots on the map. The web of lines shifted in my mind's eye, flashing as different hypotheses were tested and discarded. Morocco had ties to Syria. Syria had stores of fuel, some powerful engines. Syria had a twice removed relationship with Cuba, who had several threads joining them to West Virginia...

"Hello?" I pulled myself out of the golden haze and blinked at Duo, who bestowed an amused, tolerant smile upon me. "Looks like we lost him again."

"Sorry," I answered reflexively, playing the conversation of the last couple of minutes back for review. Sometimes I got carried away with my internal dialogue. "Yes, the bomb in Ireland showed the manufacturing signature of Sri Lankan design, but I don't think that means much. The process has become popular lately. Instead, I think it's more interesting to explore the similarities between..."

"Whoa, did we lose him again?"

My mind absently recognized the five second pause, but it was irrelevant. "There's been a lot of criticism about the world government coming out of these states, hasn't there?"

Wufei tapped a pen against the notepad he was currently studying. "Yes, I suppose. But there's been a lot of criticism coming in from all corners of the world, and the colonies, too."

"But these states all have a history of violence. Which is probably why we don't even think twice about the criminal activities happening in these places now. They've been happening off and on for years."

"You think there is some significance in it now?"

"Hmm. I don't know." I couldn't tell if that vague feeling I had was just a guess, or a possibility generated by Zero, emerging as a likelihood with each new piece of evidence we uncovered. "I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of them decided to take arms against the government. But all of them? Granted, some of these states seem to be traffickers more than buyers, but... I think it's worth looking into."

Duo twirled a pen over his fingers. "What, a world wide conspiracy to overthrow the government? Wait, I'm sorry, 'another' world wide conspiracy to overthrow the government?"

"They were pretty good about being quiet for a while," Trowa noted. "Like they were waiting to see where the government would go."

"And obviously, it hasn't gone where they want it to go."

"They've got a coalition representing their interests in the Senate."

A wrinkle formed on Wufei's brow as he thought about it. "The one pushing for more decentralization in the government, you mean?"

"It started as a nationalist movement, really," Trowa answered from where he was, leaning against the wall by the door. "On the one hand, they want less government interference with their lives because the government isn't all that efficient about things." Duo snorted, but Trowa pressed on. "But on the other hand, the global government, global system, global economy, global community... all of these 'global' things that the ESUN government is trying to push is aimed toward unity. Which equates to homogeneity. The abolition of national borders means the abolition of national identity."

"Which ultimately leads to a lack of motivation and innovation," I said, remembering some of the things I'd heard in the media sound bites. "It's not bad, as movements go."

"And all of these states we're looking at are pretty strongly nationalist," Duo mused, studying our wall map.

"The coalition has been very civilized so far," Wufei put in, taking the side of the opposition for the sake of discussion. "Their presentations in the Senate have been quite orderly, regardless of the increasing complaints from their home countries. They've even been quite willing to compromise in some cases."

Trowa shifted his weight against the wall, switching from left foot to right. "That may be true of the lobbyists, but not necessarily true of the people they represent."

"They haven't gotten much done," Duo pointed out. "Especially not to the ground troops. Compromise is bad for morale when you're in the trenches. People don't fight for compromise unless they think they're going to lose everything otherwise. Yeah, I could see the natives getting restless if the big talkers aren't getting the job done."

As the titular lead investigator of our group, Wufei charted our course. "Right then. Barton, are you staying?"

Trowa nodded. "I can stay."

"Do the paper pushers know you're here?"

"I signed in with the front desk."

He snorted. "File the appropriate memos, then work with Yuy to dig up the information on the people doing the violence, see if there's a pattern of escalation, something to confirm this theory. Let's see if we have a weapons ring or the preparations for a coup on our hands. Maxwell and I will continue our investigation into the weapons behind the violence. That should help us actually find the people, if they're there."

"We're going to need a bigger office," Duo commented to the room at large.

*****

I was at the end of a 'business lunch' with Relena, asking her about the current political situation, when my cell phone rang. I glanced at the ID, murmured an apology to her, and answered it. "Yuy."

"Sorry to interrupt your lunch, babe," Duo said on the other end. "But we've found the source of the plasma."

That had been troubling us for a while. We had turned a mole who had informed us of a courier job he'd performed. He didn't know what had been inside the case he had carried, but when he turned it over, we had it scanned and found traces of high-energy ionized gas and a storage field within. In conditions attainable exclusively at Lagrange points, that sort of plasma was used in the manufacturing of gundanium. Within Earth's gravitational field, such a thing was impossible, and of course strictly prohibited anywhere within the solar system, but it was possible to produce a lower-charge version of the plasma. Theories on its possible use in such a state were still being tossed around, but actual research on the matter was expected to be proposed and conducted within the next year or two. Someone was jumping the gun. "Where?"

"About an hour outside of the city. Soladyne. We have a guy we think is good for it. We're going to run out there and pick him up. Wanna come with?"

I glanced over the remains of our meal on the table. It was a Saturday, the first time Relena had been available to answer any questions I had about the nationalist movement within the Senate. Lunch had officially been over fifteen minutes ago, but I estimated that I had gotten as much out of her as I could for the moment. "Yes, I'm done here. I'll meet you back at the office."

"Alright. We won't start the party without you. Maxwell out."

I snapped my cell phone closed and slid it back into my pocket. "I'm sorry, Relena, but it seems my time here has come to an end."

Having politely averted her attention while I was otherwise engaged, she now turned back to me and accepted my apology with an amiable nod. Her words, however, were spoken in a business tone. "Has something come up?"

"Just an arrest to be made." Not one of many. We were keeping tabs on some of the other suspects we had, not wanting to tip our hand too early on in the game, but the plasma on the black market was too important to let go. "I hope my hasty departure isn't too unseemly."

She waved it off graciously. "Do you have any more questions you need answered?"

"No, I think you've answered any questions I have right now. I appreciate your time."

"Of course, Heero." She smiled as I got out of my seat. "And don't think that this counted as one of our regular lunches. I'm still counting the days from the last lunch we had."

"I wouldn't have it any other way." I bent down to kiss her cheek. "I'll see you later, Relena."

Soon enough, I was in a van with Duo and Wufei, on our way to the town that had sprouted next to Soladyne Labs. Formerly a French national laboratory, it was now run under the administration of the ES Bureau of Energy. While we were in transit, I shared with the others what I had learned from Relena. We had already done some research on the matter, which had led to some philosophical discussions within our team. Considering the chaos of years not long ago, of course we were in favor of global unity, but the nationalist platform did have some valid points. Only Wufei had any real sense of cultural identity, but we all agreed that global homogeneity was dangerous. We also agreed, however, that a global system of governance did not mandate monoculture, and that steps could be taken within the framework of the ESUN charter to prevent that from happening. Indeed, the coalition had already proposed some measures and had the Senate agree to some of them, but apparently that wasn't enough anymore.

Relena informed me that the nationalist movement within the Senate was getting more vehement compared to their quaint aspirations in previous years, but it still wasn't sufficient to bring any serious attention to the matter. Their support of the decentralization of global power had been present from the start, though a few more states had added their voices to the cause since then. The decentralization movement had gained some momentum with the growth of the world government. A global system was a nice theory, but it was a logistical nightmare to run. There were hiccups all over the place, enough to stir the flames of discontent. They had led to protests in some places, and even a riot in another. The nationalist movement was a handy rallying point, whether or not the problem could be fixed by downsizing.

The trip to Dr. Kapasi's apartment was a quick one. The complex sat next to a newly built one, looking a little small in comparison to the luxury living space that had taken over the landscape, but it wasn't actually that shoddy. It was probably nicer than the flat Duo and I rented. Of course, we liked to consider our place temporary. We had, in fact, considered it temporary for the last three years.

We kept things looking casual as Wufei knocked on the door. When no one answered after half a minute, he tried again, calling out the scientist's name. Still nothing. Duo went down to fetch the building superintendent, who let us in with a little bit of hand-wringing. It seemed like his first experience with responding to a warrant. I didn't think we looked that intimidating, but I suppose the badges compensated.

A quick search of the unit proved that Kapasi was indeed not in. A cereal bowl in the sink from breakfast and fresh milk in the refrigerator assured us that he was still a resident, but inspection of his desk and living spaces did not yield any information specific enough for us to determine his whereabouts. Luckily, his neighbor came out, cradling a fluffy feline in her arms as she craned her neck trying to see what the fuss was about. Duo slipped on an engaging smile and questioned her, and found out for us that Kapasi had left about an hour earlier, carrying the briefcase he normally took with him to work. He did that on Saturdays occasionally.

We thanked the lady, convinced her that we truly did not require any more of her assistance in the investigation, locked up behind ourselves, and drove out to Soladyne Labs. A security guard sat at the front desk. Wufei flashed his badge and made nice with him. "I understand that you have a Dr. Ephram Kapasi that works here."

The guard turned a wary look upon Wufei, and then the rest of us, his eyes flashing toward the pocket where Wufei had stowed his badge. "Yes, sir, that's correct."

"Has he come in today?"

He hesitated before checking the chart in front of him. "He signed in forty-five minutes ago."

"We'd like to see him."

"I can page him for you." His hand moved toward the phone sitting on the desk.

"We'd like to visit him in his office," Wufei explained firmly. We weren't about to give the man advance warning that we were coming for him.

"I can page him for you," the guard repeated, doing his job bravely. "It's authorized personnel only in the offices area."

Wufei pulled his badge out again, along with a little packet of papers. "We have government clearance to enter class three restricted areas, and we have complete authorization to arrest Dr. Kapasi. You can have someone show us to his workspace, if you don't want us wandering away, but if he's here, we will be going wherever he is and we will arrest him."

The security guard lost a little of his courage, faced with three people radiating utter confidence. "Um, I'll need to check your badges, if you don't mind...."

Actually, Duo may have been radiating something else. I turned to him after handing over my badge, and though his hands were tucked nonchalantly into his pockets, there was a bit of smugness around his eyes. He shrugged slightly when he caught my eye. What? he mouthed innocently. I let him know I was on to him with a small shake of my head before turning back to our victim.

As the guard was running our badge numbers through the system, he smiled apologetically. "Um, I hope you don't mind if I call my boss?"

"By all means," Wufei answered, ready to be accommodating, so long as it didn't cost us extra time. We would want this agency to be cooperative with the authorities later, when their security protocols were under review.

He got on the other line with his superior, and we listened as he ran our intrusion past the tinny voice. His boss wasn't happy and started saying quite audibly that he would be there right away, but by then the guard had received confirmation of our credentials. He called someone out from the back room to take his place, had us sign in on the list, and then led us to Kapasi's office. I wasn't sure if he was glad not to be there when the boss came in, or if he would have been happier not having to keep us company, but hopefully he was reassured when we kept our wandering eyes to ourselves and caused him no trouble while he walked us to our destination.

Kapasi wasn't in, and the guard got nervous, as if expecting us to take that out on him. Wufei dealt calmly with the man, and convinced him to lead us to the lab area where it was possible the scientist was doing his research. After promising repeatedly that we were only interested in apprehending Kapasi and absolutely were not interested in carrying away any top secret experimental data with us, we arrived at the doors to the lab.

Signs indicated that the lab was in use. After asking the guard if anyone else had signed into work this afternoon that would be working in this section of the lab, and receiving a confirmation that there was no one, we entered the lab.

The building's structure must have contained some pretty hefty shielding. Once we opened the door, I could feel the buzz of powerful equipment within. It grated on my nerves, but wasn't strong enough to impair my operation. The electrical hum was accompanied by real audible humming of generators, and this sound masked our approach through the lab as we searched the corners, looking for our target.

We heard voices at the back of the lab, two of them, and Kapasi was supposed to be alone. Throwing looks at each other that communicated our intent of a surprise attack, Wufei and Duo moved forward carefully while I quietly ordered our guard to stay where he was and keep quiet. He looked like he was about to protest, but when I moved in a different direction from the other two to flank our target position, he couldn't follow all of us, so I guess he decided not to follow any of us.

I slipped past a bank of spectrometers and was in position before Wufei called out to the scientist. "Dr. Ephram Kapasi?"

There was a tense silence before the man answered. "Yes?"

Before Wufei had finished displaying his badge and announcing our intentions, the man's companion took a few slow steps back. "Stay where you are," Duo commanded.

The man fled.

"Hey, stop!" Duo shouted, taking off after him. Meeting Wufei's eyes for a split second to agree that he would take care of restraining the scientist, I ran off in pursuit as well. The unknown man led us into the deep interior of the lab space, where thick piping transported gases and coolant to the dormant reactor chamber that comprised a good part of the core of Soladyne's research.

My path inexplicably turned into a maintenance passage leading to the reactor's giant vats of transformer oil, and I was forced to reroute. The sound of footsteps reverberated oddly among all of the metal, but Zero helped me sort out the direction of their source. A gunshot rang out, and I could hear Kapasi's distorted voice shouting madly, demanding to know what we were doing, but I knew it wasn't us. Duo wouldn't have pulled a weapon first, especially in a place like this, not unless he was being threatened by someone else bearing a weapon, and if he had been, the gunshot would have been followed by a sharp cry of pain and the sounds of pursuit would have come to a halt.

With a little luck, my path let out right behind our quarry. I grabbed the man by the back of the shirt as I crossed the corridor and slammed him into the side of a large power distributor. I couldn't do much more to him than that as I was forced to control my own momentum to keep me from both tripping over a large sheath of cables and running chest-first into a large pipe.

Duo blew past me as I caught the piping and jumped clear of the cables, relieved that I had correctly estimated the conduit's ability to bear my weight as I swung. The man had fallen to the ground, and Duo grabbed onto his ankle to keep him from slithering away, but was unable to secure a hold on the man's other leg and had to fall back to avoid getting kicked. Lunging toward the gun he had dropped when I flung him against the power unit, he leveled it in our direction and fired again. Duo dove for cover, and from the sound I heard as it hit, I determined it had impacted the floor. Duo was safe, but our target got away while we caught our breath and waited to make sure he wouldn't fire again.

Once it was clear, we ran after him again. Duo turned to me as we continued our pursuit, shaking his head. "This is no damn fun," he sighed as well as he could while sprinting.

I snorted as he mimed aiming his gun and firing. He knew as well as I did that the bad guys were allowed to do whatever irresponsible things they wanted to, but the good guys couldn't go haphazardly firing their weapons inside national labs. Not that we would miss and hit some of this dangerous, expensive equipment, but the paperpushers didn't know that.

There was a fork in the road, and he was gone by the time we sighted it. Duo went left and I went right, hoping in the back of our minds that our paths would merge farther ahead. Surely the chase would end soon. Our target was hopefully running out of breath by now, and he didn't seem to know where he was going. The large reactor room may have seemed a good bet earlier, when there were three Preventers agents blocking his way out through the front door, but unless he got lucky and found some sort of maintenance shaft, he was going to run out of space to run eventually, no matter how huge these rooms were to put distance between the machinery within and the rest of the lab. The shielding was fairly thick, but it wasn't perfect.

I heard the clatter of feet pounding up metallic stairs, telling me that Duo had gotten lucky. As I heard sounds of a struggle, I found them on top of a platform with a view through some thick windows that probably looked into the reactor chamber. I spied a ladder leading up to the platform from the other end and headed towards it, hoping to surround our target and force him to surrender. On my way there, a loud buzz protested in error as Duo was shoved back against the control panels that were no doubt tied into the reactor.

The flashing red light made things feel ominous as I scaled the ladder. I was halfway up, unable to see much of the fight, when someone fell upon the control panel again, setting off a series of three beeps. I registered a rise in the ambient buzz of the lab, and five rungs later, my senses erupted in a tangled golden mess.

::Emergency shut down procedures initiated,:: Zero kindly informed me as it hastily safeguarded its critical pathways. Through the disorientation I suffered as a result, I managed to pick out the relevant information, understanding what Zero had realized just a moment before the reactor did a dry run, releasing the electromagnetic pulse that would have jump-started the plasma's heating reaction, had the chamber been filled.

I clung woozily to the ladder, nearly loosing my hold on it when Duo and his opponent slammed into the railing near me. I was still battling the haze at the edges of my vision when I recognized that which I would always recognize and shouted out the warning to Duo. "Gun!"

They shifted, blocking my view. The gun was fired, and reflexively I tried to dodge, thinking to fling myself out of the possible path of a bullet. Only a moment too late did I realize that that was a really bad idea when hanging on to a ladder, especially when the ladder was the only thing keeping me upright. I felt myself falling in slow motion. I heard Duo shout my name. And then I hit the floor and was out.

*****

"Come on, Yuy, wakey, wakey!"

The edge in his voice as Duo gently slapped my face brought me back to awareness. I moved my head, trying to get out of range, and the action brought me sparkles behind my eyelids and the unpleasant recognition of a dull, throbbing ache on the side of my head. ::Zero? How are you doing in there?::

My thought triggered his dormant thread and brought him back online. ::Initializing...::

I stayed to watch for a few milliseconds to make sure everything seemed to be proceeding without error before cracking my eyes open.

Duo's worried face greeted me. "Heero? You okay?"

I queried my internal clock, but it wouldn't be realigned to the proper time until I looked at my watch or Zero was finished with his start-up procedures. I couldn't have been out for more than a few minutes, though. I was still in the lab. I could see the observation and control platform above me. And Duo looked worried, but not panicked or scared. I smiled for him. "You're never letting me on another field mission again, are you?"

"Shit, Yuy." He hugged me tightly, trying not to jostle my sore head. "What the hell? I thought for sure you'd gotten shot!"

"I'm fine. I have a very thick skull, remember?" He released me with a glare, obviously wanting to shake me, if only he weren't interested in keeping me out of pain. I sidetracked him in self-defense. "Did you get him?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah." He waved his hand toward the platform, and this time I noticed that Wufei had arrived on the scene. He appeared to be trussing up our unconscious suspect for transport. "Bastard. Oh, wait, hey, Chang! He's okay!"

My memory of the gunshot came trotting out belatedly, and I swept my eyes over Duo's body. "Did he get you?"

"Hm? Nah, I'm good. What the hell happened, Heero?" He scrutinized my face carefully, looking for signs of concussion, I'm sure.

I'd had concussions before. This wasn't one of them. "Where's Kapasi?"

Duo growled, but Wufei respected the question enough to answer. "Our friend the security guard has him."

"And that guy's boss just got here," Duo added, a glint in his eye.

::Start up complete. Beginning internal diagnostics.::

I put my hand on top of Duo's and squeezed. This was hardly the boss' fault. I started to get up, and Duo was there to assist, both reluctant and eager to see me back on my feet. I gave him a reassuring half-hug, hiding a wince behind his head as I noticed that I must absorbed some of the impact with my shoulder. I'd no doubt have a bruise there that Duo would no doubt notice, but that could come at a later time. "Sorry."

"Don't give me 'sorry', you asshole," he answered irritably, though he in no way attempted to escape my embrace. "Tell me what happened."

I shrugged it off. "Lost my balance for a second there, I guess."

"You don't just 'lose your balance' and go falling off ladders, Heero. I mean, yeah, sure, not the first time you've gone tumbling from a huge height, but that's usually because you friggin' jumped."

True enough. "Well, it's over now." Zero was still running through his systems check, but nothing seemed amiss so far.

"Are you crazy?" Duo insisted. He seemed as protective of me now as he had been when he had first volunteered to help me with my recovery five years ago. The timing may have been inappropriate, but it warmed me nonetheless. "If you--"

There was a loud groan, and we looked over to Wufei, who was coming down the stairs. The suspect he had slung over his shoulder was regaining consciousness. Wufei quickstepped down the last few stairs and set his burden down on the ground again. "We can discuss this further when we get back."

Duo gave me a glare, warning me not to expect I could get away with this, but he followed Wufei's firm suggestion without protest.

The trip back to HQ was a long, quiet one. They weren't going to let me drive, and Duo wasn't going to sit anywhere but right next to me, so Wufei sat with the prisoners in the back while Duo drove. Refusal to show weakness in front of the enemy kept our mouths shut.

It took a while for us to get our guys processed and squared away. We planned on letting them stew for a while before interrogating them. It would help us to put together the right set of questions, as well. We surmised that we had managed to arrive in the middle of a business meeting. A thorough inquiry of the security guards by their boss informed us that the unexpected guest probably entered through one of the small side entrances. They were locked from the outside, but Kapasi could have let him in. We had taken the man's wallet and identification and were running his name through the system. Something was sure to come up.

When we finally got back to the conference room we had annexed as the new base of our expanded operations, Trowa was waiting there for us. He'd left us yesterday to investigate rumors of growing unrest out in Barcelona. Also at the table sat an unexpected guest.

Duo greeted him. "Hey, Quatre, what're you doing out in our neck of the woods? Finally get sick of all that government action?"

Quatre smiled and nodded a greeting to us all. "I'm done testifying. Thought I'd take a little breather before heading back, unwind a little."

"This is what you do to unwind, Winner?"

"Sure. I heard there were some people that had been brought in for questioning."

Maybe Duo was right about Quatre. I chose not to examine that statement too closely and turned to Trowa instead. "Find out anything interesting in Spain?"

He turned easily to business. "There's definitely a cell down there. There were five small civil protests around the government buildings. Three arrests. Someone gave me some information that I followed to the organizer behind the protests, but I'm pretty sure that there's a more radical group behind her, and that they're barely keeping the lid on things."

"The reports out of Brisbane were the same," Wufei mused. "Civil protests with a radical wing bubbling underneath."

"There was someone outside the Senate house today, too," Quatre put in. "Saying he was going to file a class action suit against the Earth Sphere government over that medical database that was hacked last month. Claimed that the government wasn't doing their job of protecting the people when they centralized so much information like that."

"It's true," I responded. "Well, I'm sure that the government is trying to do their job, but honestly? Not that I want more red tape, but sometimes it should be a little harder for me to access the information in certain databases. Once you get in through one point, you can get to a lot of different systems. Nothing's quite as isolated as it should be. I profiled a sample of the security flaws for Une about eighteen months ago, but I don't know what came of that after she passed it along."

"Maybe it's time you did a follow up," Wufei suggested. "Considering how long it will probably take for anything to get done about it, it's a good idea not to let that slide."

Duo snorted. "There's another problem with this bloated government. Takes so freakin' long to do anything."

"Whose side are we on again?" Trowa murmured.

He smirked. "Just giving you material to use when you go sniffing around the baddies, that's all."

"There's a resolution in the Senate right now to be voted on this Monday," Quatre added to his earlier report.

I nodded. "Relena mentioned that. It was just a resolution though, wasn't it?"

"But a very important one that would signal a change in fundamental government philosophy if it was adopted. It may not mean much if the resolution is approved; saying that they support the preservation of national boundaries is easy. It's the follow-through that would be impressive. On the other hand, it means a lot if the Senate votes the resolution down. No matter how close the vote is, and no matter how much the senators insist that they support the spirit of the resolution but had problems with this technical detail or that, it wouldn't be taken well by its supporters."

And some of its supporters had a history of violence. "Relena said that there was going to be a lot of lobbying going on this weekend."

"Honestly, I don't think it'll pass." He shrugged somewhat apologetically. "There may be enough representatives that support it unofficially, but officially, I don't think there are enough people willing to stake their re-elections, their alliances, and their budgets on it."

"The budget hearings," Trowa pondered aloud, tapping a pen lightly against the surface of the table. "Would that be why there is so little about the issue in the media right now?"

"That's what Relena thought," I answered. "Everything's being overshadowed by the budget hearings right now. Bad timing. And once the hearings are over, the budget debate starts, and after the budget is approved, the Senate goes into recess. There's no opportunity to reschedule the vote on the resolution, not until next year, and no one wants to wait that long."

Duo scratched his chin thoughtfully. "So word is on the street that it's not going to pass, huh? And word is also that there are a lot of mumbles and whispers that imply people are going to be real angry when it doesn't, yeah?" He tilted his head in my direction. "People like your rebel cell?"

"They were ready to go. They had the supplies together, the stronghold, the manpower. They just hadn't chosen a target yet." Other groups allegedly had. The protests had been relatively tame so far, but there were reports of activists civilly sabotaging certain government programs, too.

"Why haven't we done more about this yet?"

"Nothing really illegal has happened yet," Wufei pointed out. "This is a democracy. People are allowed to speak their minds. And most of the troubles have been on a local scale. It's technically outside of our jurisdiction."

There was a knock on the door, and judging from the distorted image in the privacy glass window, it was Sally. Duo leapt promptly out of his chair to let her in. "Hey, Sally, thanks for coming."

Sally marched up to me with a no-nonsense look on her face and planted herself right next to me. Already I was regretting that I had turned in my chair to keep a watch on her entrance. "What's this I hear about you passing out on the job, Yuy?"

I blinked at her, then glared mildly around her at my oh so solicitous boyfriend. "When did you call her?"

"When you weren't listening, obviously," Duo answered, concern the only thing keeping him from smirking. "I knew this was the only way to get you checked out."

He was right. I had no interest in hiking down to the infirmary and dealing with their annoying questions, and I had an unfortunate respect for Sally that would keep me from rudely turning her away. "I'm fine," I attempted.

"What's this I hear about you passing out on the job, Yuy?" This time, it was Quatre that asked.

"I fell off a ladder. It's perfectly reasonable for a person to lose consciousness for a short period of time after falling off a ladder."

"But it's not reasonable for you to be falling off the ladder at all!" Duo growled.

I shrugged, hiding a wince from my bruised shoulder. "It happens."

"Not to you, it doesn't!"

Sometimes he thought I was really special, and sometimes he thought I wasn't special at all, and it was a little odd that the two times didn't seem to meet anywhere in between. "There was gunfire."

"You've done a bajillion and one things infinitely more complicated than climbing a ladder when there was gunfire whizzing around."

And yet he had told me on more than one occasion in the past to stop doing such damn crazy and stupid things. "It could have hit me."

"What kind of idiot throws himself off a ladder to avoid getting hit?" He stopped, took a deep breath, let it out, and then started again, level but obviously restrained. "Okay, fine, let's pretend for a second that you jumped off the ladder. You still fell hard, and you were still out for a minute, so you still need to be checked out. And that's still just as stupid."

I ignored that last part and presented myself to Sally. "I'm fine."

She looked vaguely amused by our little argument. "Let me be the judge of that, Heero."

"It wasn't the gunfire," Wufei said as Sally poked and prodded at me. "After I secured the doctor, I followed the two of you. I saw you on that ladder, and I saw Duo fighting with the other man. A second later, you shouted, and then two more seconds after that, the gun went off. You looked unsteady before that happened."

"How high of a ladder are we talking here?" Quatre asked curiously.

"Wasn't that high," Duo muttered in response, looking satisfied that he had gotten his way, but still grumpy that he had no explanation. "Five meters, tops. Well, Yuy? Not gonna say anything in your self-defense?"

It was a fact that I fell off the ladder, and there was little self-defense to be offered against that. "I just got a little... light-headed for a moment. It was just bad timing, that's all. Between concern for you and the gun and the speed of things, I just got disoriented a little and I landed wrong."

In another run-in with bad timing, Sally's hand just happened to be hovering over my bruised shoulder, and she squeezed me disapprovingly. "You told me you didn't get light-headed anymore."

"And that was true." I shrugged off her hand with a mild grimace.

"So this is the first time?"

"Since I told you that, yes. Can we get back to work now? I seem to recall civil disorder on a multinational scale going on here, bent on dismantling our current method of governance."

Duo waved his hand dismissively. "Bah. That will still be there tomorrow."

"So will I."

"You could die of an aneurysm tomorrow."

Sometimes, Duo's morbid sense of humor was a little inconvenient. "I could be hit by the proverbial beer truck tomorrow, and Sally running me through a physical won't save me. We don't know what weapon could be sold to which people tomorrow, however, and that we are in a position to do something about. I'm fine, okay?" I would know if there was something wrong inside my own body. I had spent time with Zero studying human biology so he would know what to look out for.

Sally patted me on the shoulder, the unbruised one this time. "Why don't the rest of you boys continue working, and let me just borrow Heero for an hour or so? He and I should have a little chat, catch up on old times, that sort of thing."

As if I was going to fall for that. "You won't find anything, Sally."

She caught my eye and held my gaze for several seconds. "You know exactly what caused your little 'moment of light-headedness', don't you?"

I refused to confirm or deny. "Whatever it was, I'm sure it was a one-time thing. It's not going to happen again."

Admittedly, that was as good as a confession. Duo glared sternly at me. "'What' was a one-time thing, Yuy?"

I sighed minutely, just wanting this to be over with so we could get back to business. "It was the EM pulse that got me, okay? Low chance of reoccurrence. Can we move on?"

::You shouldn't have said that.::

::I'm not going to lie to them.::

::You revealed a point of weakness to them.::

::I see you in there, working on making it less of a weakness even as we speak.::

"The... EM pulse?" Duo echoed. "The one from the reactor? What does that have to do with anything? Why would that affect you?"

"Because the--"

::Don't do it.::

I didn't trail off because of Zero's admonitions. I trailed off because of another realization entirely, and suddenly my resources were being devoted to going, 'oh crap,' instead of answering him. The others stared expectantly at me, and for a moment, no words came. One singular idea did, though, and I jumped on it. "Can we have a short recess?"

Duo responded first. "What the hell, Yuy? You gonna leave us hanging here or what?"

"I... need to talk to you."

He looked nervous for a heartbeat before covering it up with a bit of bravado. "What, now? Alone?"

"Yes."

"You got something to say to me you can't say in front of the others?"

I swept my gaze over all of them before settling back on Duo. "...I'll tell them afterwards. You should just be the first to know."

"By what, like, a whole five minutes? Whoopee, Yuy. Just spit it out."

::Don't do it.::

::Oh, hush, you.:: Why was I only now coming to understand how much trouble I was going to be in? It just proved that, no matter how much of a processing boost Zero was, it didn't help at all when it came to human interaction. "I really think you'd like to hear this first, Duo."

He looked irritably around the room before shrugging. "Fine. This isn't going to earn you any brownie points, though."

I shooed everyone out of the room before sitting down next to Duo and trying to figure out where to start. Duo started it for me, with a little bit of fear in his voice now that the others were gone. "So, Yuy. You're not, like, sick or something, are you? Ugh, god, déjà vu."

Yes, he'd asked me that question before. "Same answer, too, Duo. No, I'm not sick or anything."

"Then what the hell, Yuy?" he demanded, turning his anxiety into anger. "You don't just fall off ladders."

This was going to take some talking. "You know how I have the habit of doing something and forgetting to mention it to you until way after the fact? Did I ever promise to stop doing that?" In my defense, though, I'd only really done it twice. Since the war had ended, anyway.

He regarded me warily before deciding to play along. "Well, you promised not to go disappearing again without mentioning it first..."

"Ah, good." Not the same at all. "I think I've done it again."

I could tell there were any number of things he was choking on at the moment, but he waited them out calmly before continuing. "Oh? Forgotten to mention something, have you?"

"Yes. And just like the other times, I swear I didn't do it on purpose." I struggled to find the words to be both accurate and sincere. "It's just... you know, sometimes something comes up, and it's your own cross to bear, right? It's something that is yours and yours alone to deal with, and that's the only reason why it never really comes up. It's not secrecy, it's just... personal."

His expression shifted from cautious to at least somewhat amused and resigned. "What did you do this time, Yuy?"

"I would have said something if it had ever really mattered before," I continued, warming to my subject. Now that I had found my way, I wanted to be very clear on this point before moving on to the main event.

A corner of his mouth tilted upward. "You don't think it matters?"

"Well, I don't think it matters... but I'm starting to think that someone other than me would probably think it matters." Which was probably a part of the reason why I had never mentioned it before. It was something I knew would generate a lot of unwarranted fuss.

Duo should have been used to me seeing the world from a very different perspective than everyone else. "But you're assuring me it doesn't matter?"

With my field record when it came to these sorts of things, I wasn't going to be assuring anyone of anything. "I'm hoping that you will eventually decide that it doesn't matter. I'm willing to accept a certain amount of thinking that it does, though. Just for a while. But after a while, I think it should be clear that it doesn't really change anything."

"Really."

"Yes."

"And you're assuring me that your health is not in danger?"

"My health is in no danger at all." If anything, I was even more healthy than I had been before. Zero had spruced up the place a little.

He chewed on that for a few seconds before moving on. "So how long have you not told me?"

"Oh... since we got together, I guess. I mean it when I say I've never considered it a big thing. It's just a curious fact of my existence, that's all. I deal with it, and no one else has to."

"That's 'all it is', and yet you have to talk to me alone about it?"

"I wouldn't be begging so shamelessly for your forgiveness if the others were here."

Finally, he had to laugh. I was pleased to note the lack of a hysterical edge. "Aw, man, Yuy. Why do you have to be so weird?"

"Because I'd be someone else if I weren't. Forgive me?"

He laughed again. "You haven't even told me what I'm supposed to be forgiving you for."

"I'm getting to that. I just wanted to make sure you heard my explanation first, before we get carried away with things."

His humor faded away with a sigh. "You still think we'll get carried away with things, though."

"I'm just taking some safety precautions."

He licked his lips, steeled himself visibly, then nodded. "Okay. Hit me."

"You'll keep everything I said in mind, right?" He nodded again. "Alright, then. Five years ago--"

"Uh-oh," he interrupted. "I don't like any story that begins with 'five years ago'." Undoubtedly, he remembered what happened five years ago.

That didn't deter me. "The 'EM therapy'..." I gestured the quotation marks into being with my fingers.

"Uh-oh. I don't like any story that begins with 'five years ago' and medical procedures surrounded by quotation marks."

I put my hand on top of his nervous one on the table. "It didn't quite work as they thought it would."

His eyes widened. "You mean they messed up?"

That implied some sort of terrible disfigurement or something, an image I was working hard to avoid. "They didn't do what they set out to do. They thought that an EM pulse or two would destroy the circuitry in the nanos, and that they would degrade over time. They didn't."

"Holy shit," he whispered. "Those things are still in you? Why didn't you say something?"

Squeezing his hand, I smiled. "Like I said. I didn't think it mattered to anyone other than me. The therapy did accomplish its most important goal -- I woke up. I came back. I didn't consider anything outside of that to be very significant. By the time I was fully functional again and able to think of more than that, I had already been living with them for a while, and clearly there did not seem to be any side effects worth mentioning, so... I didn't."

"So the EM put out by the reactor... fried the circuitry again..." I watched him follow the logic, and finally realize that the circuitry had to have been active in order to be affected by the electromagnetic field. "...and shit, Yuy. How fully functional are they?"

"Fully functional," I admitted softly. "They didn't start out that way. That was another reason why I didn't mention it in the beginning. I didn't know for sure how they had been affected by the pulses. But... they are what they are. Self-evolving nanomachines. They're fully functional now."

He stared at my forehead as if he could see the circuitry inside my brain. "Do they... 'do' anything? Or do they just float around doing..." His face went blank with shock as he followed the reasoning on to the next logical point. "Shit. Zero. What happened to Zero, Heero?"

The urgency in his question discouraged me a little, but we had come this far. Time to finish it. "Zero was reset, but not wiped. He started over from a clean slate and--"

He slid back in his chair in what I hoped was surprise, his hand slipping out from under mine. "Zero's still--- Wait, he?! Holy fuck, Heero, you've got the fuckin' Zero system in your head?!"

"He's not the same Zero he used to be! All of the bad data that went into making the system unstable was lost when Olin's computers were destroyed. Do you see? Zero's completely rebuilt his database, with only me as the user from start to finish."

His chair scrapped the floor harshly as he stood. "I don't care what the hell it's done! It's still the fuckin' Zero system, Heero! And it's running in your head! And it's been there for... shit, for five fucking years! And you didn't think it mattered?!"

I resisted the urge to stand as well and tried to keep things non-confrontational. Tried. "It doesn't! I'm in complete control of the system, Duo. It sits inside my head and it's been there all this time and you've never had a problem with it before."

"That's because you never told me before! You know, that's what everyone says. Everyone always thinks they're in control of the system, up until they snap and kill everyone in sight!"

"Have I killed anyone lately? I don't think so." Maybe that was snapped out a little more snarkily than I intended, but what was done was done.

Duo ran his hands through his bangs agitatedly as he paced. "Shit, Heero, this... this is crazy. You're crazy. This... I... augh, I gotta...!" That was my only warning before he strode swiftly to the door and yanked it open.

"Duo!" I called after him, hastily getting out of my chair to follow him, but he had already passed the startled group of our friends in the central area outside the conference room and was well on his way out into the hall. I stared helplessly at his back, wanting to run after him but knowing that he really needed a little space right now. In an act of desperation, I turned pleading eyes on Wufei, and he took off after his close friend. It probably had nothing to do with me asking and more to do with the fact that by asking, I was signaling that he wouldn't be getting in the way if he wanted to do something.

Feeling drained, I slumped into a nearby chair and thoroughly ignored the looks of the others for a good minute. The conference rooms had decently thick walls, but with that much shouting, I wouldn't have been surprised if something had leaked out.

Quatre finally dared to breach the silence, doing so with an utterly casual air. "So. What's this I hear about you passing out on the job, Yuy?"

I didn't sleep with any of them, so I didn't feel the need to cushion the blow nearly as much as I had with Duo. "I still have Zero on the brain."

"But how?" Sally asked, confirming my suspicion of what they had heard.

I ran a hand through my hair, as if putting the mess to rights could somehow restore order to my current situation. I probably had about as good a chance with one as I had with the other. "The machinery was all still in place. It just got rebooted, that's all."

"But... are you...?"

"I haven't killed anyone lately, have I?" I growled.

"That wasn't what I was trying to imply," she snapped back, though there was a hint of hesitance in her voice. No, obviously I hadn't killed anyone lately. The question was likely an interest in more insidious things.

"What's that like?" Quatre asked, again conversational. "Having Zero in your head all the time."

Certainly a valid question. "It's like... having a voice in my head." I shrugged.

He coughed gently. "No offense, Heero, but if it's just a voice in your head..."

"Yes, it's real, thank you very much. I wouldn't go pissing Duo off over something that wasn't real. Yes, I know I would if I didn't know it wasn't real, but I do."

::I wouldn't choose someone inadequate,:: Zero signaled indignantly.

::Thank you for your vote of confidence,:: I answered, though really, given his track record for the understanding of human behavior, that may have been just luck. He would easily have driven me mad if he hadn't been willing to play by my rules. "Admittedly... I thought I might be imagining it at first. Zero wasn't strong to begin with, and there were any number of people trying to tell me that I had just gone through a traumatic experience. Or I thought maybe what I 'heard' was just echoes from the fading system. But no, it stuck around and got stronger. And no, I didn't just get crazier." I turned to Sally. "I haven't been getting light-headed anymore. I haven't had any soft tissue problems. My heart hasn't skipped any beats. The nanos have repaired a bit of the damage over the years."

There was a moment of shock before she began assessing me professionally. I could see her running through my medical file in her head, considering the possibilities. "You've never let me do a check-up on you."

"I passed my entrance physical."

"Which you snuck by me by not notifying anyone of your application to Preventers."

"I didn't even let Une know I was applying at all." It had amused me at the time to start at the bottom like any other recruit. I knew it would change as soon as someone noticed me in the system, but until then, I could pretend it was just a job like any other job, and not my undeniable calling. It took four months for me to get that call to Une's office, and when she glared at me across her desk for thwarting her plans for me, I knew it was worth it. "I didn't avoid you on purpose."

"Then you're not going to avoid me on purpose now, are you?"

Ooh, tricky. "Go easy on me, doc," I answered, willing to compromise. "As you might imagine, I think I'll pass on the MRIs."

It took her a second to put two and two together. "You're susceptible to strong electromagnetic fields, then? Well, of course, you've already said as much."

I didn't require Zero's prompting to mitigate my 'weakness'. "It's not anything like the first time. The first time was combined with data loss from the damage done to the system at Olin base. We've taken steps since then to ensure system integrity, but that doesn't mean I want to go lounging in a strong EM field for fun. As I said, today was just a case of bad timing."

"Has Zero developed into full AI?" Trowa asked.

'Artificial'? Never. "Depends what you mean. He's never been 'just a computer' or 'just a neural network', yet we disagree regularly, so it's not like he's just a tool. You know how Zero works."

"No one knows how Zero works," Quatre cut in. "Not when it's been running continuously for five years. All we know is that, obviously, you're quite a different man than Zamora was, but he was plugged in for twenty-four hours, was it? And he went quite mad. And then he died."

I decided not to tell them that that hadn't been entirely an accident. "As you said, I'm no Zamora." Zero had every intention of helping me survive life. Could he fry me at any moment? Maybe. But any of the people I was working with could try to kill me at any time, too. I could fight them if I saw what was about to happen, as I could fight Zero within my own mind. I was not without my own resources. But it would not serve anyone's purpose to see me dead, so I didn't fear it.

Quatre hummed thoughtfully. "You once said Zamora burned out because he suffered from not having a directed goal. What does Zero do all day inside your head?"

"He bakes cookies all day. And they're quite yummy, too."

::That makes no sense at all.::

::I'm aware of that, thank you. I just...:: My eyes flickered in the direction of the door leading to the hall. I didn't want to be explaining this to them. I wanted to be explaining this to Duo. ::I just hope he comes back.::

But wishing wouldn't make it so. I shook my head impatiently and dealt with the blank and startled looks succinctly. "I'm no Zamora."

Perhaps sensing my frustration with the situation -- gee, was it the cookies that gave me away? -- Quatre also glanced at the door. "He didn't like what he heard, hm?"

I snorted, and left it at that.

"He'll be back, Heero. Wufei will calm him down and bring him back. He needs time to think, I'm sure."

He always needed time to think. It never seemed to get him anywhere, though. Biting down on the surge of bitterness, I smiled tightly. "You all need time, I'm sure."

Quatre looked at me with far too much perception and made decisions like the good leader he was. "Well, why don't you go down with Sally and let her check you out? I know you're fine, Heero, but just let us be sure, okay? I'm sure they'll be back before you are, and then we can get back to work. Sound like a plan?"

"Technically."

He smiled and stared me down. "Good. We'll see you in a bit then, yes?"

That was a clear dismissal. I was happy to get out of there, if not for that reason. I followed Sally mutely down the halls, fighting with myself to stop trying to look into every nook and cranny, trying to spot my wayward partner. Hmpf, he needed time? They needed time? Maybe I needed time, too. I'd thought for a second there that things had been going so well. I'd obviously been as blind to the signs as I had been to any other aspect of human behavior. Zero and I were a well-matched pair.

Sally interrupted my thoughts, keeping her voice low since we were still in transit. "Now, maybe I'm not a part of your super special users club, and maybe this answer is obvious to all of them, but I need to ask, Heero: why didn't you ever say anything?"

"Why would any of you care?"

"Heero!" she exclaimed softly. "How can you think that? How--"

I held my hand up for her to stop, and once she did, I rubbed at my temples and forced myself to focus. "I... didn't mean it that way. Sorry. It's been a long day."

She patted me gingerly on the shoulder and let me be.

I appreciated the gesture. And I was glad for the walk. I needed to clear my head, settle my emotions. ::You are not to be overly helpful right now, do you understand?:: I said firmly to the voice inside my head. ::I'm being stupidly human right now and I don't need you making things worse.::

::It is not within this system's parameters to make you more stupidly human.::

I suppressed a dark chuckle. ::I mean, I'm being irrational right now. I may think things that I don't really mean. So if I, say, start feeling the urge to blow something up, you are not to suggest a way for me to do so, or otherwise encourage me, unless specifically asked to. Is that clear?::

::Yes.:: But he thought I was being silly.

I was being silly. For all I knew, Duo was already back in the conference room with the others, waiting for me to come back so that everything could be alright again. It had about an infinitesimal chance of happening, but it was possible. And until I knew for sure that Duo wasn't going to be able to accept this news, then I had no reason to be mourning the loss of our relationship. I could fear it, but I would not mourn it. And if he was having trouble accepting it, then there were things that I could do to try to win him over. I emphasized that to myself several times, and asked Zero to remind me of it if I seemed to be straying too far from that path, and then with that in mind, I answered Sally. She deserved it.

"What I meant was... no matter what you all may think, this doesn't affect you. This is going on inside my head, not yours or anyone else's. I live with it, I deal with it, and I don't need any 'help' with it. The only way that Zero can impact your life is through my actions. Therefore, after the beginning, there was no reason to tell you anything. And no, I doubt the others find that answer obvious."

"Then why didn't anyone else ask you? Or were they all being typical guys, too afraid to be the first to ask?" she questioned wryly. Where would we be without the womenfolk, she seemed to be saying.

Where, indeed. "Duo certainly asked. That ice has already been broken."

"Did you tell him the same thing you told me?"

'Why would he care?' Thank goodness, no. That would have landed me in even more trouble than I was already in. "You didn't hear?"

She had the good grace to be open but apologetic about it. "We heard something about you not thinking it mattered?"

Ah, yes, that had been a rather loud part of the conversation. "Yeah, that's the gist of it."

Correctly interpreting my tone to mean that that was all she was getting out of me on that topic, she wisely switched to another. "So what can the system do?"

"Historically, or presently?"

"I'm familiar with the history of the system. At least, what we have on file, and what I've heard from the lot of you... but it doesn't mesh at all with what I know of you, if I'm to believe that it's been running all these years."

"That's because they aren't the same at all. And yet they are. It's just a computer: hardware, software, firmware. And like any computer, its application differs widely with the usage. A computer can be used for research, hacking, gaming, communicating, whatever, depending on the user and the data in its storage devices."

"So it's the same core system... but you're using it in an entirely different way?"

"Yes. Put me in a mobile suit, and maybe you'll see behavior more along the lines of what everyone seems to expect. But I'm far from a battlefield right now. And the system is nothing if not adaptable."

"I see." We finally reached her office and stepped inside for her to gather some materials before heading down to the infirmary. "That seems simple enough."

"You haven't used the system."

"So you don't think it's simple?"

Things were relatively simple to understand, but not in their interaction, each expression of our selves being influenced by a thousand and one tiny slices of our life's history, culminating in such incalculable complexity that even Zero had to appreciate the beauty of its deeply layered design, when he wasn't cursing its unpredictability. "I can see how one's experience with the system might color one's objectivity."

My careful answer hinted at things that had never been filed in any reports. "What kind of experience did Duo and the others have?"

"Trowa and Wufei had limited, voluntary exposure to the system. In both cases, they learned things about themselves that made them see things more clearly. Though Wufei is, as you might expect, more skeptical about what a mere machine can do for a man. Trowa keeps his own counsel. Duo, on the other hand... had a very negative experience with it. He was forced into using it, put through a meaningless training simulation, and he has a low compatibility with its data format. I don't know exactly what he saw while using the system, but he assures me it was bad."

"It couldn't have been worse than Quatre's experience with it, from what I hear. And yet Quatre didn't seem to have a problem with hearing that it was sitting in the same room as he was."

"In a sense, Quatre's experience with it was positive. Yes, he did terrible things while plugged in to the system, but... he actually did them. He was the one that went through with those things, and he understands that he can't blame that all on a computer program. Maybe the computer made it easier for him to do those things, but he was the one that did them in the end, and he's had to learn to deal with that and accept that about himself. Whereas with Duo, it was a simulation. As real as it could be, but still a simulation. It's easy to point to the system and blame whatever there is to blame on it. Quatre doesn't have the defense of, 'I know I would never do those things.' So if Quatre seems to be just fine sitting in the same room as it, I think that calm comes more from knowing the nature of the beast and not fearing it."

I'd forgotten that, really. Of course Duo and Zero had never gotten along. And now I had just told Duo that he'd been sleeping with Zero for the last three years. Which wasn't quite true, but was true enough to matter. I must have been lying to myself in the severest manner possible to have thought things could possibly turn out all right.

*****

My hand hesitated on the knob, but I allowed it to linger only a moment before pushing on. Everyone was there, which was a bit of a relief, but I got an instant reading of hostility from Duo, and a guarded wariness from Wufei, which was less than pleasant. I squashed whatever it was that was trying to crawl out of the pit of my stomach and hung my jacket off the back of my chair with undue precision before sitting down.

"Everything checked out alright?" Quatre asked.

"I told you I was fine," I answered coolly, even though Quatre had shown no particular concern when he had asked. He was just trying to help, but he would pay the price for it. Unwilling to hazard a glance at Duo, I redirected my emotions toward Quatre instead. "I can authorize Sally to make the report available to you, if it'll make you feel better."

The slight tilt of his head was both an acknowledgement and a faint reprimand. He knew he wasn't meant to be my target, but that didn't mean he had to take it. "I'm sure that won't be necessary. We're glad you're okay."

I lost the battle to keep my eyes off Duo, but when my gaze landed on him, he was still slouching in his seat, staring at the papers in front of him. Wufei, on the other hand, was looking my way, but I in turn refused to do anything other than ignore him. Foiled in my original goal, I studied the array of the room and got back to business. "So where are we right now?"

I suffered a brief silence, as if no one quite expected me to ask that, but what else was there to do? If this was the way that things were going to be, then I wasn't going to sit here and wallow and brood. Especially not when there were things to be done. And especially not in front of everybody. If someone wanted to say something about it, that was fine. Either way, something productive was going to happen.

Again, Quatre was the one that pushed things along, taking charge as if he'd been here the entire time. "I'm nearly up to speed on everything that's been going on so far. First off, I hear we have two prisoners in the hold. As soon as I get a full report on the situation, I'd love to meet them."

"You can't just 'meet' them, Winner," Wufei grumbled sharply. "You're not even a member of the team right now."

"Well, let's just rectify that, shall we? I believe there's some paperwork that I need to file, yes? Wufei, why don't we go take care of that now." He stood, leaving Wufei no choice in the matter. "Trowa? You can find some reason to excuse yourself in the next five minutes, or stay here and chaperone these two. Your choice." He patted Barton congenially on the shoulder as he swept by on the way out of the room, Wufei forced to follow.

Damn that little blond. What had he been doing, just keeping the room warm until my return? While Duo decided to direct his glare at the closed door, I locked stares with Trowa, unsure of what I wanted, but no less pissy for it. I'd gotten what I wanted: something. Now I wasn't sure if I wanted Trowa to stick around as a buffer zone or not while something happened. With a one-shouldered shrug, he let me know he'd had nothing to do with this scheme.

I grit my teeth and consciously redirected my ire. "I don't know why he'd even bother trying to act casual when he was just going to walk out of the room saying that."

Another shrug told me Trowa wasn't going to try and figure it out. He glanced at his watch. "It's a little early yet to be arranging for dinner. Why don't I just stay for a little while and make sure you kids don't tear each other's throats out?"

"Hn." A prickly feeling danced down my spine, and I turned to see Duo finally looking my way. I met that fire evenly, waiting for it to erupt.

Sure enough, it did, but in Trowa's direction. "How can you just sit there and chat so casually?"

"What would you prefer I do? Nothing's changed from this morning, after all."

"Nothing's--?" He glared at Trowa as if we were cahoots with each other.

Before Duo could really explode, I cut in. While Trowa could be quite the calming influence at times, he was clearly not what Duo needed. "Trowa, maybe you should leave for a little while, before your throat gets torn out?"

He raised an eyebrow at me, but dipped his head in acquiescence. "I'll be outside, then, ready to tackle anyone that leaves this room without Quatre's permission."

Duo and I watched each other steadily as Trowa gathered a few files and left the office for the room outside. Our battle of wills continued for a few seconds after he had gone, and finally I decided to start things off, jumping off of what Duo had presumably been about to say. "So what has changed from this morning?"

A muscle in his jaw twitched. "Okay. I'll concede to your stupid little point. Yeah, you're still the same bastard you were this morning. Everything that's in there now was in there then. But that doesn't change the fact that you've been lying to me for five fucking years."

"Would it piss you off if I pointed out that at no time have I ever said, Zero is dead, and he's most certainly not living inside my head?"

"Yes."

Good thing I didn't, then. "I explained to you already why I never said anything. I didn't think it was worth mentioning."

"Not. Worth. Mentioning?!" So much for whatever fragile calm Wufei had managed to pound into his head while I was out. "Okay, maybe in your tripped out little bubble, finding out that your boyfriend's got this whole other... thing living inside his head doesn't mean anything, but in my world, the world otherwise known as reality? Yeah, it matters!"

"Zero's not a 'thing', Duo. So long as you continue to demonize him--"

"So long as you insist on calling it a 'him', we're going to have a problem!"

"It's just a pronoun, Duo. It doesn't mean anything. Of course I realize that Zero isn't a living, masculine entity in any conventional sense, but he's got a personality, and it's definitely not feminine, and somewhere along the line, it just seemed wrong to think of him as an 'it'."

"A personality," he ground out.

"Yeah, he's an aggressive son of a bitch that likes to say 'I told you so.' And he has a disdain for irrational behavior and a drive for perfection. It's a personality."

"Well, hell, no wonder you like it so much. The two of you sound perfect for each other!"

I wasn't sure if that was supposed to be an insult or not, but judging by the way it had been hissed, I would assume it was. "Compatibility isn't determined by similarity."

He stared at me. "Let me rephrase: you sound like each other! Fucking hell, Yuy, is that even -you- talking?"

"You've known me to be a son of a bitch for ten years now, Duo. Don't even start trying to pin this on Zero. He doesn't deserve that." I didn't deserve that.

Duo's expression turned to one of disbelief. "Would you listen to yourself, Yuy? Get a grip!"

"How is my recognizing his 'personality' any worse than your continual insistence that he's the devil in disguise? We're both anthropomorphizing it!"

His hand thumped loudly on the table. "There's a huge difference between spawn of the devil and cuddly little puppy!"

"Cuddly little puppies may be sons of bitches, but I don't think they care about the differences between rational and irrational."

I don't want to know what would have happened if there hadn't been the length of a table between the two of us.

*****

It was a relief when Quatre came back with the others. It had taken us far too long to stop the madness, but we had, eventually, when it seemed there was nothing left to be said. Quatre smiled cheerfully at us, sitting sullenly in our corners and pretending to work. "So, did the two of you have a nice long talk?"

When we didn't answer, Trowa did. "Between Duo yelling something about perverted threesomes, and Heero shouting something about radioactive spiders, I think so."

His smile turned into a chiding frown. "Radioactive spiders, Heero?"

I guess the perverted threesome thing was easier to figure out when taken out of context. Duo's concerns were entirely unfounded, though. Zero quite happily stayed out of my love life, other than with his attempts to persuade me not to have one at all. "I was asking if things would be the same if I'd been bitten by a radioactive spider."

"Well, of course not, Heero. If you'd been bitten by a radioactive spider, you'd be able to spit webs out of your wrist."

"Actually," Trowa corrected him. "The webs were a chemical compound that came out of these mechanical shooters he invented and strapped to his wrists."

"Really? Huh."

I rolled my eyes in annoyance. Quatre was well aware of the point I had been trying to make, and it had everything to do with trying to figure out whether Duo's anger had more to do with the continued existence of the Zero system inside my head than with me failing to tell him about it. At the time, I'd also mentioned something about alien symbiotes to make myself more clear, but fortunately Trowa hadn't overheard that part.

"How much hardware -do- you have in you?" Wufei said suddenly.

Well, at least it was a question no one else had asked yet. "I make it through the metal detectors at the front doors every day, don't I? I don't have huge chunks of cybernetics inside me. It's a nano-scale array."

"Zero fixed some things?" Trowa brought up.

I'd been over this with Sally already. "The nanos can go places and affect the balance of this or that and do things such as encourage cell growth. But again, I don't have any metallic reinforcement or things of that sort in my body." Such small structures may have been held temporarily in place to assist in the process, but they hadn't been permanent.

Trowa studied me curiously. "By choice?"

"Yes, by choice." Zero could do things to me if he wanted to, eat me up from the inside out and turn me into a cyborg of some sort if there was a necessity for it, but fortunately, we were on the same page about that. Neither of us wanted to go there and lose the humanity that was so precious to the both of us. "So, Quatre, you're cleared now?"

He nodded and went along with my change of subject, perhaps seeing that there was no progress to be made here at the moment. "HQ is ponderous in many ways, but at least they're not bad with fast-tracking their special ops agents."

"Do you have an agenda for our prisoners?"

"Sure do."

*****

Quatre had Kapasi broken within the hour. The doctor's associate was a prospective buyer. There had been a rash of counterfeit black market goods lately, a natural result of booming business in the underworld, and Ershaghi had insisted on coming out to review the facilities for their authenticity himself before committing to a purchase.

We gained access to Kapasi's under-the-table records. He confirmed one previous sale and two interested parties other than Ershaghi. Like a good middleman, he had never inquired as to the intended purpose of the particles, but surely, he believed, they could not be used to produce weapons any time soon. The research was still theoretical, after all, and the conditions on Earth were not conducive to experimentation, and of course there was no one that would want to do such a terrible thing, was there?

He was tossed back into a holding cell, and Quatre went to work on Ershaghi, who proved to be a tougher nut to crack. It seemed he'd been in the business for quite some time, but even without his cooperation, we still had enough to put him away. We would just have to trace his ties the hard way.

While our second prisoner was being questioned, I went back to Kapasi's house with Trowa to gather the information we had been granted. We didn't want to risk someone cleaning out the evidence once they realized Kapasi had been compromised. It took less time to get there on a late Saturday evening than it did during the early afternoon. Much of the drive was passed in companionable silence. Some of it was not.

I had been cleared by Sally, but they still weren't letting me drive, so I was staring out the window being gloomy when Trowa spoke. "Why did you keep it?"

Ignoring him was a possibility, but the alternative was more time alone with my thoughts. At least, as alone as I ever got with my thoughts these days, but Zero apparently felt he had better things to do with his time right now than get caught up in this mess of human emotion. I didn't blame him. "What?"

"Zero. It sounds like, at no time did you ever think you should try and get 'cured'. Why is that?"

"Zero isn't a disease, Trowa," I answered tiredly. Though they had every right to their questions, I'd had enough of talking about this. Nevertheless, it was better to have their questions out in the open, rather than having them simmer unattended in the background. And hopefully, they'd run out of questions soon.

He barely spared me a sidelong glance. "All the same, at some point, you must have decided that it was better having Zero inside your head than not. Why?"

I shifted in my seat, cradling my head against the sling of my seat belt as the car hit a bump that made the window an unappealing surface to rest upon. "You know... I'm a little surprised that no one has suggested that yet. That I be 'cured', or that I 'get help'." The significant silence that greeted me communicated much, and I grimaced. "No one to my face, at least. Who-- Never mind. I don't want to know." Considering my options, I really, really did not want to know.

His silence stretched a bit further before he half-answered my unfinished question. "Maybe it's just obvious that you fully intend to keep Zero around."

And now finally someone wanted to know why. I had never once considered it. When I'd woken, I hadn't blinked twice at Zero still being there. It had felt like... the way things were supposed to be. Maybe a little of that was bleeding off of Zero, who had, even in the early stages of its development, always had a faintly smug satisfaction from accomplishing its primary objective.

But most of it was mine, I was sure. Even before it happened, I had had a strange affinity for the system. And Duo had found it almost as creepy then as he did now. But I kept going, despite the opinions of the others. It hadn't been entirely about saving the world from the effects of a Zero unleashed. It had been about saving Zero, too. I didn't want to see the system misused or abused. I didn't want Une associating the system with that misuse and then destroying it because of the excesses of a few fools. When Zero had text messaged his coordinates to me, I had dashed off to his rescue, with telling my teammates a mere afterthought, and one dismissed easily enough.

I thought back to that day, that afternoon, and tried to recapture that impulse. It had just felt right that Zero's fate would be decided by me and whomever my unknown nemesis was. Quatre had used the system just as much as I had during the war, and Zechs had adapted its variant to his own purposes, but I felt proprietary toward it, even more than I did toward Wing. Because it had been tailored to my specifications?

Because it was so misunderstood? I stifled a dark chuckle. No wonder Duo thought I was off my rocker.

"Personal reasons," I finally murmured in response to Trowa's question. "Just... personal reasons."

It was an answer I knew he would accept. He was good like that. But there were other lines of questioning to be pursued with his quiet grace. "Was it... lonely inside your head? Before?"

I tilted my head in his direction, the closest I would get to outright staring at him. I thought briefly about telling him something reassuring, but it was an honest question that deserved an honest answer. "Not really. There were usually too many things going on to have the time to feel lonely. And then when there weren't so many things going on... that's about when the world got really big all of a sudden. I guess... some of those things crept in and filled the void. But maybe, once in a while... a little."

"Now that Zero's there?"

"'Alone' and 'lonely' are two different things."

"Ah." Another kilometer passed in quiet contemplation before he spoke again. "You don't find it... invasive? Of your privacy?"

I couldn't help the faint snort that escaped me. "Not like Zero's going to go blabbing my secrets out to someone." I sobered after that. "But... you get used to it, I guess. Most of the time, he's just a buzz in the back of my head. And there are limits. We have ground rules. He doesn't accomplish anything by pissing me off, so he respects my boundaries." More or less.

"Is that... mutual?"

"Sort of." I had access to some of Zero's data, but just as there were silly human things going on inside my head that he wouldn't be able to understand, there were also things going on inside his processors that I wouldn't be able to understand. "Being an illogical human, I have a lot more boundaries than he does."

"Ah."

Zero generally wanted me to have that information available to me. Not counting the time we had fought against each other, when the system had first tried to gain a foothold in my mind back at Olin base, Zero hadn't withheld or hidden any data from me. Not that I knew of. On the heels of that thought, Zero assured me he hadn't, and he never lied to me. I couldn't make good decisions if I didn't have complete and correct knowledge about the situation. It was one of the reasons why Zero seemed sometimes so zealous about forcing its users into seeing the raw and painful truths hidden within their hearts. Which was one of the reasons why I preferred to do my soul-searching on my own terms, before Zero decided to help me along with it. I certainly had great motivation. His enthusiasm didn't always guarantee the proper results.

::I cannot force a human into understanding that which I do not.::

::I know. I'm not blaming you for that.:: Zero could provoke a person, set him up in an imaginary scenario that could strip away disillusions and complications -- Zero had unfortunately learned that stress was a good tool -- and then respond to the user's reactions, but he could not read a man's heart and hand over the answers. It was up to the user to learn from what he had seen, and man could be quite the recalcitrant beast sometimes. ::You do your best with what you have.::

And how little it is, Zero seemed to grumble, but maybe I really was out of my mind. I hadn't lied to Duo about Zero's 'personality', but I'd admit that it was possible I went a little too far with it sometimes, ascribing all too human traits to a collection of bits. Zero rarely objected unless he felt I was too far off-base. Maybe he knew how these little things helped keep me sane, like the way I insisted he 'talk' to me instead of just throw thought pulses at me. That was how I kept things distinct. But maybe the commentary was really composed of my own thoughts, borrowing Zero's voice, which in turn borrowed my own, which was a circle no human mind should have to contemplate. Maybe I had to think of Zero as a human-like entity because the idea of a mere computer sitting inside my head was just too creepy, too... inhuman.

"What did you see, Trowa?" I asked suddenly, one thought leading to another. "When you were with Zero."

He stayed quiet for a long time before he answered with a carefully mild tone. "That's a personal question."

I wasn't really interested in the details. "It's been so long now since my first time that... I barely remember it anymore." It wasn't just time that had dulled the details. I'd had five years of interfacing with the system in an entirely different way. "I remember it didn't go smoothly. I know how it probably went. But I don't remember anymore."

"Zero can't tell you?"

"The data from that time was lost." Left behind on Olin base and then destroyed, if it had even managed to survive the fall over Barton's headquarters at all. Most of the data from before was gone, which was why the Zero currently residing in my head was based on a whole different database of experiences entirely. Maybe it would have been better if I had renamed the system 'Joe' or something so there could be no confusion. 'Sparky' was a possibility. "We're always talking about two different systems, the rest of the world and I."

"Could Zero be sterilizing your memories?"

"There wouldn't be any benefit to that."

He considered that for a moment, then rephrased. "Can Zero sterilize your memories?"

"...Probably."

"...You don't fear a loss of self?"

"...There is no loss of self. There is just a new self." Memories surfaced from my brief chat with Zamora just before he died. Some unpleasant parallels were drawn. "I don't want to argue the details about how much self is self, but do consider this: Zero is just hardware and software in the end. It can't emulate full humanity. It's far too complex. And I'd like to think I've gained enough... 'color' in my life that no one can mistake me for a computer."

*****

It was late when we got back with the evidence from Kapasi's apartment. The others were gone for the night, leaving notes and updates in their place. I had Trowa go on home before me, saying that I wanted to set some stuff up so I would be ready to go in the morning, and while that was true, it was also true that I wasn't looking forward to going home.

In the end, it didn't matter. Duo wasn't there. I forced a feeling of calm onto myself and looked around our apartment. Only his overnight bag was gone. Feeling somewhat reassured, if numb, I sat blankly on the sofa, spending long minutes staring at the wall above the television. At length, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and watched the minutes tick by as I hesitated.

I couldn't call him. He wouldn't want to talk to me, and I had no right to ask where he was, make sure he was alright. Where would he be... Wufei's, probably. Hopefully. They were good friends. Yes, I could call Wufei. No, that would be like calling Duo. If they were in the middle of something, I didn't want to interrupt. Duo would know. Duo would get angry that I was checking up on him.

I needed to know that he was okay, that he was with someone that could help him through this, someone that would listen patiently to him as he vented and raged.

I needed to give him his space.

I text-messaged Wufei. Is he with you?

Thirteen minutes, thirty-eight seconds later, I got an answer. Yes.

I couldn't last that long without air, and yet it felt like I could only take a breath now after receiving a response. Wufei was a good person to be with. He wouldn't let Duo do anything stupid or hasty. Thank you, I messaged back, knowing that it would probably be ill-received, but needing to express my gratitude -- my relief -- anyway. Duo was in good hands.

Twenty-six minutes, forty-three seconds later, the empty apartment pushed me out the door, my own overnight bag in hand.

The office wasn't a very welcoming place at this time of night, but it seemed more friendly than the place I had left. Now was as good a time as any to start running the security checks again on the ESUN computer systems. I decided to go back to my own desk back in the TRSU to do the work. The space felt more personal there.

It was a Saturday night. Someone was on call, but not at the office, so I had the place to myself. I puttered around with busywork, taking my mug to the breakroom to rinse it out, watering my bamboo, checking my e-mail. Finally I just leaned back in my chair, the one it had taken me seven months to score from the section's office manager, and closed my eyes to try to relax just a little. A bit of peace and quiet after a long and stressful day was usually the way to go, but this day hadn't been anything resembling normal. ::Hey, Zero,:: I thought, compelled to seek out company.

::Ready for input.::

::Do you think tomorrow will be any better than today?::

Milliseconds ticked by as he pondered the matter, taking his time as he mulled over the bizarre possibilities brought forth by humanity's penchant for the irrational. ::You can only tell them once,:: he offered as an early conclusion, using that fact to prune off whole branches of his search tree.

I smiled humorlessly. ::Yes, there is that.:: Cold comfort, but comfort nevertheless. ::Of course, maybe it was only the shock that kept them from really coming down on me. Maybe tomorrow will be worse.:: I shook my head when Zero started taking my grim assessment into account. ::No, that's just me being irrational. Disregard that last thought. Actually, cancel the whole operation. I think I'd rather just be surprised tomorrow.::

Zero hummed disapprovingly at me. ::How can you prepare for the future if you refuse to examine it?::

::Humans are fickle creatures, Zero. All the processing in the world won't tell me how tomorrow will turn out. I can prepare for the worst and hope for the best, but that's all I can do. Wasting any more cycles trying to predict the future would just be... an inefficient use of resources.::

It took a skeptical moment or two, but he reluctantly agreed to my point.

Resolved to distract myself, I began digging up the report I had written for Une regarding the network security of ESUN systems, remembering with a bit of dismay as I did just the volume of data compiled. ::What's my sync ratio at?::

::Sixty to sixty-five percent. Use of the neural interface is not recommended.::

Damn. Around forty-five percent or less neural synchronization with the Zero system practically guaranteed bad hallucinations. Fifty-five percent or so would be a sane experience, but no guarantee of accurate results from the interaction. Sixty was cutting it close. Normally I was up at seventy, seventy-five if I was interfacing heavily with the system, with eighty being the suggested upper limit. Eighty-five if you were feeling lucky. There wasn't a large range of acceptable values to work within, but the balance between lack of coherence and loss of self was a delicate one, and a strong emotional state could throw things off.

It looked like I would be doing this the hard way.

*****

Sunday passed by far too slowly for me. I took a brief nap on the breakroom's sofa before heading back up to our conference room to get an early start on the day. The others trickled in, first Trowa, then Quatre, then Duo and Wufei. Last, no doubt, to avoid meeting me alone in the office. I had a record of being the first one in. Duo ignored me with quite the studious nonchalance, so I sufficed with sending a faintly grateful look in Wufei's direction. He acknowledged it only with a long, measuring gaze in return, leaving me to wonder what they had talked about. The analytical engine of my mind couldn't help but draw sides in the conflict, and I wondered whose side Wufei was on.

I put a stop to that before I could take that one dangerous step farther into the territory of enemy and non-enemy.

We didn't have an exact direction for our investigation that day, but we knew there had to be something. Our best starting place seemed to be with the lobbyists hard at work this weekend. Someone, somewhere had to connect the politicians to the terrorist arm of the movement. It seemed too improbable that the two existed in complete parallel, so we spent most of the day going over what we could get our hands on. Because we were investigating only suspicions and theories, not official charges, our access to incriminating evidence was limited. Still, thanks to the globalization of the system, and a policy developed by the early government geared toward transparency, we had more than enough information to process.

Lunch was ordered in. We had time for a break, but that wasn't our style. When I finished with mine, I stood to throw the remains away. Seeing that Duo was also about to do the same thing, I automatically held out my hand to take his trash and save him the trip, but he turned me down, brushing by me without a glance to take care of his own business.

"You just going to ignore me for the rest of the day, Duo?" I said, unable to stop myself. "Could you be any more juvenile?"

"Fuck off, Yuy," he answered pleasantly as he settled himself back into his seat.

That wasn't any better than ignoring me. "That won't change anything."

"Ooh, are we gonna be girls now and talk things out?"

If only. If that was what he wanted, I was ready to meet that challenge, even in front of all the others, who were watching us carefully, but otherwise minding their own business. "I don't have any problems with my masculinity. Do you?"

His expression twitched, and I wanted to believe it was because he would have laughed, had things between us not been the way they currently were. "I don't know what else you want to go over. Unless you got something else hiding in that silly little brain of yours that you've just forgotten to mention." He wiggled his fingers on one hand airily, mocking my little nothings.

I tried for a moment to actually come up with something completely irrelevant that I had 'forgotten to mention', but sadly, I came up with nothing in time for a comeback. "No, that was it."

"Then I think we're done." He quite pointedly shuffled some files around in an attempt to ignore me.

"No new surprises, Duo, but we're not nearly done with the last one." Staying on my feet seemed confrontational to me, so I planted myself noisily in my chair. "What the hell has gotten you so pissed off? And don't give me that 'I didn't tell you' thing. I already explained that."

He glared at me, as if annoyed that I had already gotten him to more or less agree that it was just an accepted shortcoming of mine. He wasn't the type to simply take that back. "What, you think that gets you off the hook? Like good intentions mean something? You want an A for effort?"

I'd told him I thought it'd be okay if he was angry at me for a little while, but I'd foolishly believed it would have blown over by now. "I'd like you to put some effort into this. Can you pretend you're not angry for five damn seconds and tell me what you're angry about?"

"You know," he started, jabbing a finger through the air at me. "That's one of those things I keep coming back to. Gotta keep asking myself, why didn't I ever see it? Was I just that stupid? Or are you just that good at lying? Huh? What's it gonna be, Yuy?"

He knew damn well that there wasn't a right answer to that one. "Neither!"

Before I could protest my innocence any further, he pressed on. "At least no one else knew it before I did. For a few minutes, anyway. There's that. I'm not the only one you fooled."

"I haven't been 'fooling' anyone, Duo." I needed to get off the defensive and move into offense, or he'd eat me alive. "If I'd just been 'pretending' to be me all this time, shouldn't I have become someone else now, now that you all know? It's not like I'm afraid I'll 'blow my cover' or something. There is no cover."

"And I should believe you... why?"

"I never lied about anything. If I'd wanted to lie about this, to hide this, there are a lot of things I'd be doing differently."

::Hiding in plain sight is a very effective strategy.::

::Shut up.::

It was one of those thoughts whose origin I wasn't sure of, but now was not the time to pursue the matter. I just counted myself lucky that the same thought didn't occur to Duo. Not that the alternative was much better. "How much of you is actually you, hm? All that stuff I thought made you perfect for Zero? Maybe that just -is- Zero. That true?"

Was that what he'd been thinking this whole time? "Don't be ridiculous, Duo. Zero may be sitting inside my head, but he doesn't run this show. This isn't some split personality where I go dormant and he comes out to play. Zero just... offers suggestions now and then."

I was becoming quite accustomed to his look of complete incredulity. "Okay, I finally think that, more creepy than living with Zero, is the fact that you seriously think of this whole thing like, like this stray computer system just followed you home one day and you decided to keep it as a pet!"

"Well, it's certainly more 'pet' than 'evil supercomputer that's eaten my soul'." His words, not mine.

"Oh, look, another part of you that I've never seen before. The completely out-of-your-mind part. That what you meant by 'all of you'?"

It took me a moment to recall my words to him the other night, back before all of this happened, and another moment to logically connect the two. "Of course not."

"Oh, so there -is- other stuff in you that I don't know about, eh?"

"Yes," I snapped, saying plainly to him what I'd been trying to get him to recognize for years, and now it was probably the worst possible time to say it. "But nothing you haven't had access to for years. Don't blame me if you've been too stubborn to acknowledge it."

"So now we're blaming this on me, are we? Is it all Duo's fault that he didn't know any better? Was I asking for it or something?"

"And now you're turning this into a blame game. How typical. You just completely avoided what I just said."

"Well, excuse me for being too damn pissed off about your two-faced ways to be distracted right now."

And there he just sidestepped the issue again. He was just so damn smooth about it that he fooled even himself, and even in the middle of all this, it just killed me to see it. "I'm the same asshole you've known for the last five years, Duo, and if you suddenly decide that you don't like that, then fine, but don't go thinking I've changed."

His expression darkened, and he stood, a little too calmly, a little too deliberately. "My perception of you has changed, then, since apparently, I haven't known a damn thing for the last five."

I watched him leave the room with words clogged up in my throat. I wanted to punch him in the gut for being such an idiot, and hold on to him tightly and reassure him of who I was until my voice gave out, all at the same time.

"Well," Quatre announced brightly. "I think that's a great idea. Let's take five and rest off that after-lunch food coma for a bit, hmm?"

I thumped my head against the table. It didn't help. I'd expected Wufei to go after Duo, but he had stayed where he was. Looking up, I saw him watching me, and feeling self-conscious, I straightened and tried to put some weary dignity back into my posture. "Wufei..." Something needed to be said to him, but I wasn't sure what. There were so many ways to go wrong with it. I tried to go with my gut, and ended up with something adequate, though not quite what I wanted to convey. "I... apologize for getting you caught up in the middle of this."

"You need not apologize to me." I couldn't tell if he meant that I should be apologizing to Duo, or that he was just being a good friend. During my lapse, he paused as well. It seemed to me that he weighed his words carefully, and then decided there were none to match his meaning.

We sat in awkward silence, two people with things to say, but nothing to say to each other.

*****

I didn't even bother going home that night. Whether or not Duo was there, I didn't want to be there. We clearly weren't yet at a stage where we could talk about this like rational people. I didn't know when, or if, that time would come. I was familiar with many of Duo's issues, things that swam beneath the surface of his consciousness and manifested in innocent and sometimes frustrating ways. I didn't have a line by line catalogue of them, but I had the gist of it, enough to clue me in on some mildly foreboding things. Whatever the real problem he had with me and Zero, it had lobbed a rather hefty rock into the middle of his pond, and flailing our arms around wildly as we had been doing wouldn't help.

And to think, just a few days ago, I had thought I wanted to break the stalemate he and I had reached a year ago. Maybe two? I hadn't wanted to break the balance, but... I felt I had been naEe and foolish, a few days ago.

In the meantime, there were still plenty of systems security checks to run. The day before had been spent confirming the reports I had turned in to Une earlier. It didn't seem much had changed in response to them over the last eighteen months. A couple of organizations had fixed some of the easiest security flaws to correct, but unfortunately, the ones that were easy to fix were the ones that weren't the most serious. I had hardly expected everything to be resolved by now since many of the problems were fundamental and would require significant man-hours and downtime to completely re-implement, but it would have been reassuring to see some sort of action in the right direction.

The whole thing made me gain a bit of sympathy for the nationalist cause. Not only the part about breaking things down to a more manageable scale, but the part about the resolution being such a key measure in their minds. Maybe the half-hearted and possibly empty gestures that they would make would ultimately yield no progress for their cause, but it would at least prove that the government had paid them some attention, acknowledged them even if they didn't agree.

I spent the rest of the night prodding for more holes in the world's nets, between bouts of brooding and contemplation, and a brief, unrestful nap on the breakroom sofa. The following day was Monday, and I made sure I was out of the office before anyone else came in in the morning.

Rather than being the first back into our conference room, this time I stalled, burning off some of my frustration in the gym. There was something almost comforting about losing myself to the mindless repetitions of the workout, but it left me with no particular satisfaction. Freeing myself from the bad thoughts, however temporarily, also meant a suspension of any good thoughts. Few though they had been as of late. But since the negative seemed to be gaining ground most of the time, maybe I came out ahead after all.

We continued our work from the previous day without any explosions of temper, though I was sure I wasn't imagining the tension in the room. I tried to convince myself it was a good thing, that when Duo was truly furious, he burned with an icy-cold sort of rage, the sort that crept up on a man and then struck without warning and without mercy. Maybe he just hadn't reached that point yet, but while that point of no return was still off in the distance, there was a chance.

There was anticipation in the air as well, which perhaps took the edge off of our little concerns. The vote in the Senate was conducted at eleven-thirty. Quatre decided to pay the Senate building a little visit to survey firsthand the results of the session. He took Duo with him, and with a trace of shame, I was relieved. Quatre was far too savvy to take sides in our disagreement, but no matter what was said or not said, surely it could not make the situation any worse.

They reported back at thirteen-thirty. As predicted, the resolution had failed. There were a good many senators that had gone off to lunch without any qualms, but the more observant noticed the whispers in the halls.

At sixteen-thirty, Relena showed up in our office, her face grim. "We have a bit of a problem, gentlemen," she announced, handing a sheet of paper to Wufei, who happened to be sitting closest to the door. "I just got an anonymous e-mail from someone claiming to be a member -- or former member, perhaps -- of the radical wing in the nationalist party, informing me that members of this person's organization seem to be ready to start violent action against the world government for their refusal to concede to a nation's right to self-preservation."

It was what we had feared, so our reaction was not overly alarmed. "Was that a warning, or a threat?" I asked.

"A warning. This person -- a woman, I thought, judging from some of the phrases," she added, gesturing at the copy of the e-mail that Wufei was handing off to Trowa, who sat beside him. "She said they're not quite there yet, but it won't take much to push them over the edge. She asked me to stop it, if I could."

"Didn't you vote against the resolution?" Quatre asked her.

She hesitated briefly. I pointed at an empty chair next to her, and she took a moment to drag it closer before sitting down in it. "Yes, I voted against the resolution. I feel a little guilty now, of course." She laughed a little nervously.

"Don't be silly," Quatre reassured her. "The vote was two to one against. Your vote wouldn't have a difference."

"I know that. But that doesn't mean that I wasn't a part of the problem. I understand their point, and I even want to support it in many ways, but I don't think that this resolution is the way to do it. It seemed more a result of impatience than anything else, and something so vague would have been dangerous if it had passed, both for the world government, and for their cause. They would have been stuck with whatever the Senate decided worked within the boundaries of the resolution, and since it was so open, there's a good chance it would have been nothing helpful, but they wouldn't have been able to protest. And as for the government, while I do agree that strong reforms are becoming increasingly necessary, I don't think it would be wise to suddenly reverse the policy-making philosophy of the last ten years. Those changes came into effect gradually, and they need to come back out just as gradually, or else the system will collapse. Proposing one sweeping resolution to cover everything is simply not the way to go about it."

"Why would this person contact you?" Duo asked pointedly. "Wouldn't you be the enemy?"

Relena frowned slightly. She didn't like seeing things in terms of allies and enemies. "I've spoken my views. I'm not unsympathetic to their cause. I do think that there are a lot of things that can be done to preserve their identities on the local level."

"Legislating it would be global, wouldn't it?" I interrupted. "Not tailored to the individual regions, which makes their attempt to pass this resolution rather ironic, don't you think?"

Her frown faded in favor of a wry smile. "I've thought so myself. In any case, this anonymous person represented him or herself as a strong believer in their cause, but not a person willing to go so far as to commit actual acts of large-scale terrorism. I'm not sure what they were doing in that organization to begin with, then, but maybe they thought it would never go this far. I'm a pacifist; maybe it seemed obvious that I would try my hardest to put a stop to this threat. It's also well-known that I have connections here. And what made me think this was a woman was the fact that this person said that she admired me as a woman on the world stage. Men don't say that sort of thing."

"You buy all that?" Duo said skeptically. "Like you said, you're the kind of person that would do something about this. And it's known that you have connections. A little buttering up, and it's a done deal."

Quatre shook his head slowly. "I don't see any traps here. There may be a bit of shadiness here and there, but it hardly matters: either way, we need to take this warning seriously. Were they specific about the threat?"

Trowa passed the e-mail on to him. "Not really. It hasn't become a 'threat' yet, after all. But she does say they're gathering more and more people with 'special' skills. With the wars, there are probably a lot of those people lying around. Wouldn't be too hard to find a few with something against the government. There are a lot of ex-soldiers that aren't getting their benefits because their organization doesn't exist anymore."

"The world government is..." After her strong start, Relena trailed off uncertainly. She finished with an apologetic smile. "...trying to do something about that."

We would kindly not point out that it wasn't doing a very good job of it. "Probably more than a person willing to use a gun, then," I mused aloud. Sadly, that wasn't a very 'special' skill these days. "This problem seems a bit too wide-spread for an assassin or a strike team to be effective. Information theft, and consequently extortion, doesn't qualify as violent, though it'd probably be effective."

"Explosives," Wufei declared. "Bomb-maker. It's splashy, a favorite of terrorists everywhere. Makes everyone pay attention, not just a few politicians. And maybe some people that know their way around the system, to help get the bombs where they need to be."

"Hmmm." Quatre finished scanning the message and put it down. "Sounds about right. It'd probably have to be something fairly outrageous to make a former believer change her tune. No time frame given. To make an effective statement, they'll move quickly after they're provoked. They'll want to demonstrate that they're organized, powerful, and a force to be reckoned with. It won't look good if it seems like they were late to the party. Location would be determined by what set them off."

"We should try and get our hands on this anonymous informant," Duo proposed.

"She was anonymous," Relena pointed out.

I snorted. "There's no such thing as an anonymous e-mail." I nudged my laptop in her direction. "Log in to your account and show me the original copy of the e-mail."

Relena gave me a dry look. "You told me to always download my mail instead of leaving it on the server where anyone could get their hands on it."

I blinked at her. "You actually listened to me?"

"Of course," she answered primly.

"If only everyone else would," I muttered.

"I value your opinion quite highly in matters of security. Don't you have remote access to my office computer? I remember you set that up to patch my machine once."

I returned her earlier look. "I removed it once I was done. You think I leave that sort of thing lying around where anyone could get their hands on it?"

Duo made a derisive noise. "Outsmarted yourself, didn't ya?"

I threw him a withering glare, which he returned challengingly. We stared at each other a bit longer than was polite before I turned back to Relena. "We'll need to stop by your office, then." I shut my laptop and stood. "I'll report back as soon as I find something."

"Do that," Quatre responded authoritatively. "We'll start digging on our end. Relena, thank you for bringing this to our attention."

"What else could I do?" Her shrug was entirely rhetorical as she got to her feet. "Apparently, I'm the perfect person to buy into this sort of thing."

We took our leave of the others and started walking out of the building. While we were waiting for the elevator -- I noted with approval that her footwear seemed sensible enough for stairs, though it seemed impolite to force her into my preferred path of travel within the building -- she turned to me with an odd look on her face. "Perhaps this is an inappropriate time to be asking this, Heero, but... things between you and Duo seemed a bit... strained?"

My somewhat irritable silence was answer enough.

She touched my arm lightly. "What happened?"

"We... " I wanted to tell her, but suddenly things seemed so complicated that I didn't know where to start. "Duo... There was something I never mentioned to him. But... it came up, and I did, and now he's... now things are strained."

"He's not happy with what he found out?"

The elevator dinged, the doors opened, and we stepped into the empty car. "Do you remember when I came back, five years ago?"

"Of course."

I debated for a moment whether I should tell her or not, but then realized that I wanted -- almost needed -- to know what she thought about the matter. "And that time I spent in the infirmary?"

She nodded solemnly, familiar with the reasons behind my stay there. She had come and visited a few times, once in the infirmary, and then later at the corporate suite Quatre had lent us during my recovery. I'd been staying at the barracks before that, and that place hadn't seemed appropriate for me as I slowly got my brain back in working order.

A faint echo of nostalgia swept through me as I remembered that time. Despite the fact that I had been so out of it for a while, it had been a good time. Duo had decided to stay with me, though he had a place on Wufei's couch, when he hadn't been sharing a mattress with me in the barracks. My convalescence had passed with a gentle sense of relaxation and contemplation.

I quickly dismissed the thought that perhaps Duo didn't remember those days the same way I did, and pressed on with my story before I changed my mind. "The 'treatments' that the doctors did... they didn't quite work."

"You mean...?"

"The nanos are still in me, along with a version of the Zero system."

She gave me that searching look that everyone seemed to use on me, as if they thought they could see the circuitry if only they looked hard enough. Or perhaps they sought a sign of madness, or something inhuman. Relena, at times my most ardent supporter... would she turn away from me now?

Her eyes narrowed. "He's mad at you for that?"

I almost sighed in relief, premature though it probably was. "He thinks I'm not the person he thought I was."

"Have you been hiding it?"

"Not really." There was nothing to hide, if no one had ever suspected a thing.

"Then that's absurd. If it's been in there pretty much since you got back, then it's been there the entire time he was getting to know you again. The entire time he was falling in love with you."

It was comforting to hear someone echo my thoughts for once, but it still wasn't very reassuring. She didn't have any true understanding of what the Zero system was, not even the half-understanding that the others had. Minus Quatre, perhaps. "He worries about how strong the system's influence is on me."

"Well, that would make him worried, not angry," she pointed out quite rightly.

"He's not worried about my health." That would have been easy enough to deal with. If only things could be so simple, so... easy to understand. "He's worried... he's worried about how much of the me he knows is... I don't know, contaminated? by it."

We reached the lobby floor and exited. "Is that something he should be worried about? If you've never mentioned it..."

I shook my head firmly. "No, it's not. Not in my mind, anyway. But he seems to be... well... he had a bad experience with the system, see..." I paused uncomfortably, wondering for how much longer I would be making excuses for his behavior. "And given the choice, if he'd known, he wouldn't have chosen to..." Have such a reviled entity as an extra roommate? That was where I had expected that sentence to go. I hadn't expected where it ended it up, though, and whispering the terrible epiphany didn't make it any less real. "...to fall in love with that."

She had to stop and sign out at the front desk, returning her visitor's badge with a polite smile before she took my arm as if I had offered it and drew me out of the building. "Don't be absurd, Heero," she told me softly. In my mind, I imagined condolences. "Maybe he wouldn't have 'chosen' it, but one doesn't choose whom one falls in love with, and he fell in love with you anyway. The fact that you have some microscopic machinery inside of you doesn't change who you are."

Steeling myself with a deep breath, I patted her hand as if I wasn't the one struck numb, choosing shamelessly to soak in her support even knowing she didn't have all the details. "I know. We'll just wait until he knows it, too, and then everything will be alright."

Everything would be alright.

I tried to turn that into a mantra instead of a plea, and turned my thoughts inward for a moment. ::Hush, you. I don't want to hear it.::

*****

Whatever else the radicals had on their side, they also had at least one skilled hacker. Relena's e-mail betrayed a long list of obfuscations, preserving the anonymity of the sender. For now. Given some time and complete compliance from organizations and servers around the world, it was possible that I could reconstruct enough of something to give us some clues.

We reported the warning to Une, who in turn reported it to the world government, who naturally demanded to know why the Preventers hadn't detected the threat to their safety any earlier. I admired her restraint in not demanding to know why the Senate hadn't dealt with the civil unrest any earlier, but I suppose Treize would have been disappointed in her if she had broken so easily. Une stayed long enough to drop a formal writ of authority on our taskforce before stalking off to deal with the ruffled senators. As our glorious leader, it was her thankless task to not tell them they were morons, while defending our budget allocations and agent distribution.

Sometimes, it really was no surprise that there were rebel elements out there. If Mariemaia could somehow get a patent on her 'endless waltz' theory, she'd be one rich little girl. No, not so little anymore. It'd be ten years since her grandfather's uprising failed. I'd heard she was interested in getting into politics. She had my vote.

But until the day we had more intelligent senators, our team was left to identify persons and areas of risk, and coordinate increased security. It seemed a more efficient use of my resources to focus for a while first on defense, letting others chase the leads as I tried to safeguard some of our more important centers of control. If the radicals had one hacker on their team, they could have more. Various departments of the government were suddenly remembering that security report they had received some time ago, and typically, it was only the thread of liability that caused them to pay any attention to it now. I hardly had the time to go through all of them and redesign their entire data systems. The best I could start on was a massive bandage to slap on top of the most obvious targets.

The vague threats weren't yet imminent enough to warrant round-the-clock work on our part. When we adjourned to rest for the night, I didn't even think of going home. Instead, I went back to my desk in the TRSU to keep working on my patches. The sooner they were deployed, the sooner they could be field-tested.

But it was a Monday night, and I had forgotten that someone would be on call in the department. I was just lucky -- and unlucky -- that it was Trix. I had helped her reverse the arrangement in her cube so that she faced outward instead of in. She spied my entrance and immediately pulled off her headphones. The music continued to play, tinny and surreal. "Hey, Heero, long time no see!"

"Hey," I responded mutedly. It was difficult to deal with her energy sometimes, especially with so much else going on. "I'm just here to work."

"Yeah, I heard about that whole radical terrorist threat thing. Crazy, isn't it? But there haven't been any real threats yet, have there?" Her eyes widened dramatically. "Or is the government totally covering it up and I just fell for their lame-ass story? Man, that sucks when you can't even trust your own bosses!"

"What makes you think there's a cover story?" I asked mildly. The government didn't officially acknowledge unsubstantiated, anonymous sources, but they took action anyway, pretending that the worldwide protest had caused them to think carefully about the issue, leading them to re-evaluate their global positioning and structure -- not to mention their security. In a strange sort of way, it was true. But that was the story told to anyone who inquired about their activity. Within Preventers HQ, teams were quietly mobilized, and it was inevitable that word get around.

Trix indeed had access to inside information that had led her in the right direction. "Not only are you working late tonight, but you were here working this weekend, too, and you wouldn't be doing that if there wasn't something big and scary happening in the world right now, right? Not when you could be home with your snugglebunny."

Women. There were times I was glad I was gay. But then, I had never been provably 'gay', so much as drawn, and then attracted, to Duo... I steered my thoughts down a different path. "How did you know I was here this weekend?"

"The stuff on your desk moved," she shrugged, but she was quick to clarify when I raised my eyebrow at her. "I borrowed your stapler today. Yeah, yeah, I know, but I swear, I put it right back where I found it! God, don't glare at me like that. What, you just grumpy you haven't been getting any, lately? Sheesh. Hey, this 'weekend'? Like, this whole weekend, and not just yesterday? See? There's totally a government cover-up happening here!"

I stared at her for a while longer before sighing. "I'm just going to be at my desk working. Pretend I'm not there."

"Well, is there, or is there not?"

"If there was a government cover-up, and I was a part of it, why would I tell you about it?"

"Because you love me?" She plied me with a perky grin for a second before it turned into a pout. "Yeah, maybe you love that loser more, but come on, good friendship's gotta count for something, right?"

I couldn't help the pained expression that crossed my face. "Trix, could you just... lay off tonight? Okay? Just tonight, I don't want to deal with that."

To her credit, she knew that I was referring to her endless sniping at Duo. Unfortunately, she took in the rest of me and jumped to some other ridiculously accurate conclusions as well. "Omigod, something happened, didn't it? Are you two...? I'm so sorry!"

Argh. Yep, right around now, I was really not too pleased with a woman's intuition. It was easier working with men sometimes. They were generally oblivious to most things. But then you got Duos, who were oblivious to far too many things... I shook my head. "I'm just going to be at my desk working. Pretend I'm not there."

I got halfway back to my desk before she called my name softly. It was an unusual mode of address for her. I stopped and tilted my head over my shoulder.

"Hey... if there isn't a crazy government cover-up, and there's this whole other reason you're not going home at night... my sofa's kinda short for sleeping on, but it's great for curling up on. You know?"

I closed my eyes and concentrated on not showing how much that offer meant to me right now, even if I would never take her up on it. When I got it together again, I just dipped my head in silent acknowledgement of her words and resumed my journey to my desk. I stopped again after a few steps, though. "Hey, Trix?"

"Yeah?"

"You're on call tonight, right?" I turned around and gave her a tired smile. "I have a job for you."

*****

I left my desk before Trix was done with her shift in the morning. I wasn't comfortable sleeping with someone else in the office. Unless something marvelous happened during the day, maybe I would see about getting a room in the barracks. We were on an important, high-profile case, after all. It wasn't an out-of-the-ordinary request. I would be able to make it through today alright, but I would need sleep if I didn't want my performance to suffer tomorrow.

The conference room was becoming the home away from home away from home. Depending on one's definition of 'home', of course. I took a quick shower in the facilities downstairs, then let myself doze off for an hour or so at the table, but it was questionable how restful the little nap was. There were too many things on my mind, plus the unpredictability of someone else deciding to get an early start on the day.

Like my teammates. Or like Zero, who thought it would be a neat idea to keep on coding as much as he could without interfering with my efforts to get a little REM in before the workday commenced. It was fortunate that he recognized a human's need for sleep, even if he did liken it to a machine overheating if it wasn't allowed to cool off and rest periodically.

When the others came in, I was busy moving all of Zero's work out of my head and onto the computer, where it could actually be of some use, all the while fielding complaints -- sorry, pointed comments -- about how handy a neural interface would be in this situation. Yes, it was my weak emotional state that put me out of sync with the system. Yes, it was my human need for relationships with others that prohibited me from just using the interface and the hell with what my friends and allies thought about it right now. But there was also a large dose of human sentimentality that had led me to following and then keeping Zero in the first place -- no matter what he thought about the irresistible improvements to my operating efficiency -- so we would all just have to live with the situation.

I did my job, listening with half an ear while the others did their job. Quatre had to say my name twice before I registered it and looked up. "Yes?"

"I asked for your status," he repeated mildly.

"Ah." I glanced reflexively down at my monitor. "I've got patches version one for colonial life support and weapons systems deployed. Waiting for feedback before I can fine-tune them properly. Working on communications now."

"Good to hear." He nodded amiably before moving on. "How much sleep have you been getting lately?"

"I beg your pardon?" I wanted the words back as soon as I had spoken them. Our devious little leader was deliberately trying to catch me off-guard.

"I'm getting the distinct impression that you're concentrating too hard again."

'Too' hard was a matter of opinion. "We have a lot to get done, Quatre."

He nodded again as if agreeing with me. "And no good reason to wear ourselves out at the very beginning."

I flashed back to the last time they'd had to lecture me about working too hard. Then, it was Duo that had taken the task, convincing me... I shook my head irritably. "This is time sensitive," I answered, gesturing at my computer. "I'll rest after I finish covering the hotspots."

"See that you do. Sometime before we end up having to drag you away from your work. We gain nothing by burning ourselves out."

"If the guy wants to work," Duo cut in with a disdainful drawl. "Let him work. Not like we have to be all worried about his health anymore, what with those nanos of his fixing him right up, good as new. Better even than the original, I bet."

I knew I shouldn't say anything, but I did, anyway. "I consider the original Heero Yuy to be the man killed by an assassin some thirty years ago. Which 'original' are you talking about?"

He probably would have passed on my point, same as he always did, but Quatre broke in before he could prove me right. "We can only succeed with the proper allocation of our resources."

I don't know what Duo was complaining about. Sometimes Quatre sounded more like Zero than I did. "This -is- the proper allocation of my resources."

A shift in Duo's expression told me that I must have said something that didn't agree with him again, and very much so. "Happy as a clam in your little tech job, aren't you? Of course. Zero would be perfect for that." He threw up his hands in a bitterly dramatic gesture. "Well, you heard the guy, Quatre. He wants to slave away twenty-four seven like a friggin' robot; don't see why you're stopping him. Seems to come naturally to him, anyway."

Even I had my limits. "I wouldn't be working like this if--!"

If our home -- the place formerly known as home? -- wasn't so damned empty.

If I had anything else to do to keep my mind off of you.

If you would just accept me for who I am for once.

I had to get out of there before something very bad happened. I was out of my chair and out of the office almost before I finished that thought, as quickly as I dignifiedly could. Maybe Zero had something to do with it, had pity on me and prodded me along. He always did have a good reaction time.

I had always had a good reaction time.

How long before I fell prey to the same thing Duo was a victim of? How long before I became unable to tell the difference between Zero and myself? How long before I stopped caring?

I heard footsteps coming around the corner in front of me. I didn't know how I looked, but it couldn't have been good. My eyes located a side corridor with a door to a supply closet and I slipped inside before someone could bear witness to my breakdown. Once I was hidden safely away, however, I didn't have any reason to hang on to my composure. I slumped against a heavy metal shelf, sank to the floor, and just tried not to do anything too embarrassing.

::I can stop those.::

Stop what? Oh. Tears, shoving their way past my defenses to ooze slowly but inexorably out of my lacrymal glands. Yes, Zero could stop those easily enough. "Don't you dare," I whispered aloud, wanting to hear the defiance spoken aloud and given substance. "Don't you dare take that away from me."

I thumped my head against the wall and let them fall. Damn, I needed some sleep. Yeah, that was it. I was just tired. That was all. Just... tired. What was it Duo had a habit of saying? Somewhere, a camel had fallen, and couldn't get back up? Something important must have snapped for me to be here now. I hadn't even bothered turning on the light. A tenuous feeling of déjà vu rose in me, stemming from my stay at Olin Base, in that small room, with only Zero to keep me company as things happened that were entirely beyond my control. I hadn't liked it then. I didn't like it now.

There was a shuffle of footsteps outside the door, and then a light knock. "Heero?" Quatre said softly. "Are you in there?"

I ignored him, hoping that he had just taken a wild guess as to my location.

Alas, Quatre Winner was not the wild-guess type. "I'm coming in." I had two seconds to wipe hastily at my face and regret not sitting with my back to the door before he opened it. Zero automatically adjusted my visual feed for the sudden change in light, and then again when Quatre slipped inside and flipped the switch for the sickly halogen bulb overhead.

Flipping through my tiny list of choices, I found nothing but more helplessness, knowing that whatever he wanted, he would get out of me. I decided I could at least make him work for it and continued ignoring him.

He chose a spot on the floor and sat down casually, one leg bent, one leg stretched out in front of him to rest in close proximity to my feet. Enough room to leave me my personal space, but close enough for confirmation of presence. How typically right he got it. "I told you you needed a break," he mentioned off-handedly, with neither humor nor sternness.

I was reminded again of how Duo had sent me packing back to my room on base for a break five years ago. The way he accepted the fact that I hadn't turned off my computer, was in fact just relocating and not resting. The way he had curled up behind me to help.

There were times I had comforted him as well, with kisses gone long obsolete and an utter ignorance of the paradigm shift. We hadn't been on the same page from the start.

"It may take a while," Quatre said. "But he'll get over it."

"Really." I wasn't so sure. I wasn't sure of it at all.

"He got over it five years ago, when you came back. He was pissy then, but he got over it."

I stayed quiet for a while, thinking that I was ignoring him again, but finally I realized that I was just scared to say anything. I knew what the response was going to be, and I didn't want to hear it aloud. But maybe it was time to face it, admit it, ask for a second opinion. It took a few more seconds, but eventually, I forced the whisper out of my throat. "No, he didn't."

"You two were happy just a few weeks ago."

"Happiness is such a fleeting, fruitless little spark." My philosophical tone almost outweighed the bitter one. Zero knew it. Happiness was so momentary, so short-lived. It came and went in brief, intense bursts, leaving a man with only memories of a better time. It was no wonder Zero didn't particularly understand the human pursuit of it.

"I don't understand why you're just letting this go, Heero. It's unlike you. I know you love him. I know you want him to stay with you. And I've never known you not to fight for what you want. I don't understand why you just sit there and watch him walk away. I don't understand why you aren't chasing after him and locking him in a supply closet to listen to what you have to say. You have so many things to say, Heero, but I see you never saying them. What's holding you back?"

"They wouldn't work."

"Pessimism doesn't get in the way of people like you and me."

No, low chances of probability rarely got in our way. I could calculate the odds in this situation even without Zero's help. The odds weren't in my favor on this one. "You know... I think I give up. I do." Damn, that hurt to say.

He was silent for a couple of seconds before venturing forth carefully. "On what?"

"No one wants to be 'that guy', right? One of 'those people'. And yet here I am. Waiting for a man to change. I'd have no respect for me, if I weren't me. I'd tell myself to stop waiting, that people don't change just because you want them to. That it's time to bow out, while I've still got some dignity on my side. No one wants to be that idiot that just keeps hanging on when it's clearly time to let go."

"It's only been a few days, Heero."

"It's been five years, Quatre. You know why it wouldn't work? Chasing after him and trying to reconcile this problem? Because this 'problem' is just a symptom. It's just one problem in a giant sea of problems, and I've been trying to help him get past those other problems for the last five years, and without much success, so I'm sorry if I seem 'pessimistic' to you, Quatre, but I'm fairly certain that telling him a hundred more times that Zero isn't out to eat my soul isn't going to change anything. The more I push him on it, the worse it gets. The more ways he can find to blame everything on Zero and ignore the real issues."

"I'm sorry, I don't know what these other issues are, Heero."

"In that conversation we just had, where we just said, what, two things to each other? He..." I had a moment of doubt, thinking maybe I just imagined these things. Maybe I read too much into such off-handed barbs. But the odds came into play again. So many barbs were no coincidence. There was a pattern here, too widespread to be ignored. With a sigh, I stared straight ahead and talked to the wall of printer toner. "You know, he's never been happy with my choice of careers. He thinks I'm wasting my potential in tech support when I should be out in the field, doing big, splashy things. He can't get that... that maybe that's just what I want to do. And now, I see him adding two and two, and coming up with three. Suddenly he thinks he's got it all figured out, that it's Zero, that there's this computer inside my head, and that must be why I decided to work with computers. There's this computer inside my head, and that's why I'm not going home at night. It's easier for him to believe that, than it is for him to think that maybe I just don't want to be there if he's not."

"He wouldn't be so angry if he didn't love you so much, Heero."

"That doesn't mean anything. Love doesn't conquer all, you know." We wouldn't be here if it did. All the same, I felt like I had failed him, that somehow, I just couldn't be what he wanted, needed. And no matter how stupid it was, it was still painful.

"Silly pilot. You're in the middle of all these supplies. You might as well take advantage of them." He reached out, popped the lid on a nearby tissue box, and held it out to me.

I stared at it, not quite knowing what it was for.

::You're leaking again.::

Ah. Dammit. I tugged a tissue out reluctantly and wiped at my cheeks, rubbed at my nose.

He set the box back down beside him. A bad sign, keeping it ready instead of putting it away. "Why is it easier for him to believe that?"

I sighed, and tried not to let it sound as heart-heavy as it was. "...He doesn't know me, Quatre. Not all of me. There are parts to me that he just... ignores, or denies, or... rewrites. Those five years I spent on my own are a big one. I just... I don't know why he thinks that I was just... undercover at a school for a few years or something. And suddenly Zero comes along and he's... I don't know. Vindicated or something. 'Hey, look, I was right, Heero's been faking it all these years.' I don't know why that makes him feel better. Don't tell me he loves me so much. I don't know what he loves, but it's not me. Maybe it's time I faced up to that."

"Maybe you need to talk to him, Heero."

"You can't just tell a guy that everything he believes is wrong, Quatre. How far do you really think I would get with that? Especially now? Especially now that he thinks he already knows that. He thinks that I've been the giant lie when really it's..." The enormity of everything got stuck in my throat and I couldn't finish the sentence. The tissue suddenly found itself useful again. It should have been so embarrassing, and yet in front of Quatre, it was not. Maybe because it was easy to blame it on him and his skill with deconstructing people using just a few words and a tissue box.

Maybe that was what got us here. The easy way out.

"I want the best for him, Quatre. I really do. This isn't just about Zero, or about me. I've seen shadows of this all over the place, and I've tried to help him get rid of them. It hasn't worked obviously, so... maybe it's time to cut my losses. Either he changes or he doesn't. Nothing I do is going to affect that, apparently, so there's no point in waiting around here, waiting for something that might never happen. That kind of person's pathetic, right? If I have any self-respect at all, I'll move on. If he figures himself out and we're both still interested, maybe then we could try something again. Maybe... maybe he can find someone else to help him. Maybe... I'm a part of the problem now. I don't want to be a part of his problems." I pitched my soggy tissue into a recycling bin and snagged a fresh one, finally conceding to the need to blow my nose. "Sometimes, I hate you, Quatre."

He smiled sadly. "You have so many things to say, Heero. You can't blame me if you pour them all out, once given the opportunity."

"I shouldn't... I probably shouldn't. Not to you. It's between him and me, right? You shouldn't have to be dragged into this mess."

"That didn't work on Wufei. It won't work on me."

"I just don't want anyone having to take sides because of this." Quatre had played the neutral third party rather well, though, saying practically nothing for or against. "I don't want everyone having to be tense because we're in the same room together. It's not right of us."

"Don't worry about things that are out of your control, Heero."

"I hate things that are out of my control."

"But they're within our control. They're controlled by people you trust. Trust us and our decisions, Heero."

*****

I made sure I was back in working order before leaving the closet. Quatre, of course, looked as impeccable as always. When we emerged from the side corridor into the main hall, we were stopped by a trio of agents heading our way. They had obviously expected to find us in the office, but got over it quickly enough.

"Agent Yuy," the man in the lead said. "Your presence is requested by Internal Affairs."

My eyes flicked to the man's nametag. Sherwood. I recognized him from the time I had spent in the department, but I had never worked with him before. Today would be no exception. "I'm already assigned to a high-level case."

Sherwood didn't blink an eye. I suppose he was used to dealing with uncooperative people. "You are not being asked to work on a case, Agent Yuy. You're wanted for questioning."

Behind me, Quatre shifted, but let me deal with the man myself. I stuck with the path of caution. "Questioning? Regarding what matter?"

"Regarding a case you worked on," Sherwood intoned, as if in accordance to some well-practiced formula.

Did the madness never end? "This can't wait? I'm sure you've heard of the terrorist threat currently hanging over the world government?"

"This won't take long." That, too, sounded like it was a part of the formula.

I'd heard it before, and knew it meant nothing. I also knew that an agent didn't get assigned to Internal Affairs by being easy to dissuade. I turned to Quatre and saw that same knowledge in his eyes. With an implied shrug, he let loose that perfectly neutral smile he had mastered. "I'm sure these gentlemen are aware of the situation right now. It would be foolish of them to detain you for long. Why don't you go on ahead with them? We'll manage without you for a little while. But you will hurry back, won't you?"

With my back to the others, I threw my own ironic tilt of the lips at him and shrugged. I'd do the best I could. I turned back to the trio of agents and reminded myself to be patient. I couldn't find anything particularly nice to say, so I just gestured at them to lead the way. If not for the two that fell into line behind me, I would have looked over my shoulder and given Quatre a... I don't know what kind of look. The terrorists weren't the only ones on my mind.

I wasn't taken to IA's department office, but at least I wasn't thrown into the interrogation rooms to be questioned like a common criminal. Instead, I was brought to a section of the building that didn't see much traffic. That was typically where they slotted the business that they didn't want out in the open among the riffraff, whether confidential or just high-profile.

My 'interview' room was designed not to look like one, but I knew there were probably surveillance devices somewhere, observing the proceedings. I sat on one side of the table, and Agent Sherwood sat on the other. Both of his cronies took positions around the perimeter, making me feel distinctly outnumbered.

Impatient at the interruption, I started things off as soon as I was settled. "What's this about?"

Sherwood took his time before answering, laying several thick file briefs on the table between us and aligning them neatly with the surface's edge. "We had some questions about a case you worked on."

"Which case?" It obviously wasn't so simple, given our location.

"A case you worked on five years ago. Director Une called you in on a special consult for this case, prior to your full-time employment by the agency. Do you remember this case?"

Of course I remembered the case. "What about it?" I asked, nodding impatiently to hide my faint unease at their asking about this at this time. When had IA gotten involved in this?

"The case involved the theft of some top-level Preventers technology. A sophisticated weapons system from the war. Can you tell us about what happened to it?"

I bit my tongue on telling them that Zero had never belonged to the Preventers. They had just taken care of it for a little while. I also stomped down on my annoyance at everyone's continual insistence that Zero was nothing more than a weapons system. I couldn't expect them to know any better, though. That was all they had known, and they had never expressed any interest in knowing any more. That they were asking vacuous questions was a bad sign.

I decided to go along with their games until I could divine their purpose. "After the system's theft, it came into the custody of Meridian Biotechnologies. The CEO of that company was interested in developing it for use in advanced scientific research, but before he could realize that goal, it was stolen by one of his scientists. Our team tracked the scientist down to Olin Base. He had made modifications to the system that were unstable, resulting in his eventual death during our confrontation."

I paused, not quite certain where to go from there, but Sherwood picked up the story at that point. "He died before revealing the hiding place of the system. You later returned to the base, to find that the system had been there all along. You reported that the system had been ill-programmed by the scientist, causing it to go berserk, hold you hostage, and attempt to integrate itself into your body. Several days later, you were rescued by your teammates. Is this an accurate representation of the facts in this case, Agent Yuy?"

"It is." I answered without hesitation. Hesitation was a weakness that they could exploit.

"Can you tell me what happened to the system after that?"

What did they know? And where did they hear it from? The existence of the system was presumably still a high-level fact. Certainly none of us would have spoken of it to outsiders, and Duo and I had kept our arguments to the conference room, where no one would overhear. But just a conversation in the hall as we passed by the wrong person, or maybe something from my visit to Sally's office, could have let the news out. Again, I decided to play it safe. "I believe I was in an unconscious state when my teammates brought me out. To wake me, the doctors here on base decided to apply an improvised electromagnetic pulse therapy to disable the nanocircuitry in my body."

"But it didn't work, did it?" Sherwood asked casually, as if prompting me for information already in the reports.

"I woke up, didn't I?" It was beyond me to make that sound as innocent as it should have.

"In fact, the system is still active and running in your body, is it not?"

Choosing to neither confirm nor deny, I skipped to the end of the bullshit. "What is this about?"

Sherwood obviously chose to take that as a sign of complicity. "Agent Yuy, after your treatment by the doctors, you reported the therapy was a success, implying that the system had been eradicated."

"I answered the doctor's questions openly and honestly," I responded levelly. It wasn't my fault they hadn't known to ask very pointed questions. They always wanted to know if I felt better one day than I had the last, or if I was suffering any ill side-effects of the treatments.

Sherwood wasn't going to buy any of that. "You deliberately left out relevant information in your debriefing, Agent Yuy. This has resulted in your unauthorized possession of Preventers property for the last five years."

And what, did they want it back now or something? It wouldn't be of any use to them, anyway. Or maybe there was some sort of overdue fee to be docked from my paycheck? I blinked at them a bit incredulously before shaking my head. "That's nice. I have to get back to protecting the world government now, if you don't mind."

"We're not done yet, Agent Yuy," he answered firmly, one of his minions inching closer to the room's only door.

I automatically did a threat assessment on them before settling back down in my seat. I could take them. No need for my hackles to be so riled up. It just wouldn't be worth the trouble, that was all. All the same, I made sure I had enough room between me and the table to maneuver freely. "What's your point?"

"Perjury, for starters." He carefully removed the second folder from his stack and flipped it open to display a list I didn't bother reading. "These are all of the cases you've worked on during your time with the Preventers." He shifted the sheets around to display a second set of data. "This is a listing of all of the affidavits you've signed, all the sworn testimony you've given, everything. All of this comes into question now."

Really feeling for those terrorists, right about now. I tried to be grimly amused as I ground my words out. "I have never lied under oath."

Agent Sherwood did not seem to be particularly receptive to my denial. "We need to be able to count on our agents to report accurately and honestly to us. We can't have people with badges simply going around, doing as they please. You've worked often enough with IAB to know that. The government can't work that way."

"It also can't work if some terrorists bomb the hell out of the capital."

"You have teammates capable of dealing with the situation. The director may have placed a great faith in your 'elite' team, but don't let that go to your head. You're just an agent, like any other agent, subject to the rules."

"Then put me on probation or something and let me go back to doing my damn job." I was getting close to just walking out of there, the hell with the consequences. This was absurd. "I have Zero, but I work for you, so you effectively have Zero working for you. I don't see what the problem is."

"That's the problem, Agent Yuy. You don't see what the problem is. That's the kind of person that's the most dangerous." He said it with a gleam in his eye, giving me a glimpse of what sort of passion he had for his job.

"Do you even know what the Zero system is?" I asked disdainfully. Maybe a little bit of a sneer snuck in there. "If you did, you wouldn't be sitting there so calmly, questioning me."

"Was that a threat, Agent Yuy?"

I hadn't intended for it to be. The words had just come out that way. I'd been trying to point out that they had no right to go making assumptions about things they didn't know anything about. If they had a clue -- if anyone in this whole damn building had a clue -- maybe they wouldn't be so quick to condemn me for being something I wasn't. Maybe they'd see the benefits instead of the risks. Suddenly I was wanting to say the angry sorts of things to them that I couldn't and wouldn't to Duo. The sad things had already been spilled to Quatre, but I knew that being mad at someone, anyone, wouldn't balance things out. I tried to throttle it down, but only managed to soften it into a rough simmer. "Do you see me as a threat, Agent Sherwood?"

He met my stare bravely, as only someone completely ignorant of the consequences could. "The Zero system's effects are well documented," he answered, patting his stack of file folders.

"What you have is a document of all the ways Zero can go wrong." The system wasn't faulty. It just wasn't very error tolerant, and how could it be? How could it know what was 'reasonable' and what was not by human standards?

"It seems to go wrong more often than not," Sherwood pointed out, claiming knowledge where he had none. He wasn't one of us, or even one of Zero's unfortunate victims. All he knew about it came from a file, and possibly a briefing from someone as equally uninformed. None of those reports had been written by anyone with any experience with the system, good or bad. "And when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong."

Zero's contempt combined with my own. Those people hadn't known what they were doing when it came to using the system. Nor were they the people for whom the system had been designed. "This isn't a game of chance for you to be playing the odds, Agent Sherwood." No, this was my life, and I was the one that dictated its course.

"No, of course we aren't just 'playing the odds'." He flipped his files closed, putting an end to my tiny opportunity to defend myself. It was clear he hadn't walked into this room with an open mind. "You're being removed from the terrorist task force, to be placed under observation. Our doctors will check you out to determine the effects the system has had on you."

"Your doctors have already checked me out," I growled, standing up. One of Sherwood's sidekicks shifted on his feet, but I made a note of him and then ignored him. "I am in good health, mentally and physically, and your own doctors have made that determination every damn year I've worked here."

"They didn't know what to look for."

"Oh? And what would you be looking for now? Signs of dementia? Instability? Psychotic breaks? The same sort of thing that the base psychiatrists look for all the time in their agents?" Especially us. They'd always kept a closer eye on us. Figured us to be more, not less, susceptible to such things. They understood what it was to be a Gundam pilot as poorly as they understood what it was to be plugged into the Zero system. We didn't get to be pilots by being fragile.

"They'll be doing a complete work-up, being quite thorough. It's for your own safety, Agent Yuy. No one has ever looked into the side effects of long-term exposure to the Zero system."

I stared at him again. He actually believed that. Maybe not as much as he believed that I could be a threat to others, but he did. He truly did. When I got out of this, I was never working with IAB again. For their own safety. "Have there ever been any complaints against me?" I tried, making one more stab at logic. "Do I have some sort of record with you? If not, then your investigation and caution are completely unwarranted."

"Maybe no one else knew what to look for, either." He spoke with the tranquility that came with self-righteousness. "We'll be conducting interviews as a part of our investigation, of course. If you don't trust the opinions of the doctors, then maybe you'll have more faith in the things your friends and co-workers will have to say about you. They're the ones that should know you best, after all." He shuffled through his papers a little for show. I'm sure he was already well-acquainted with all of the information contained within. "I'd be especially interested in the opinions of your teammates. They're both your friends and your co-workers, and they've had experience with the system themselves."

"They're a little busy right now. Actually, I should be, too." I turned to leave. Pulled from the case or not, I wasn't about to sit idly on my hands while the world went to hell. Stupid as the investigation was, they could do it on their own time, and I could deal with the results of it later.

"I also understand that you're in a relationship with one of your teammates, Agent Maxwell."

That stopped me in my tracks. I spun around and planted my hands on the table. "Leave him alone."

The tension in the room rose several notches, but Sherwood seemed calm in spite of it. Of course, he had two flunkies to save him. Or at least call the medics for him. "He should have the greatest insight into your state of mind."

"He doesn't know anything," I snapped, being both bitter and desperate.

"I find that difficult to believe. You've been together since he joined the agency three years ago. He should know you best of all. We'll also have to see what he knows about the Zero system. He may be found an accomplice to your possession of--"

"Leave him alone," I repeated. Yes, now I was getting close to threatening him. I decided to leave before I could really do something that would give them solid proof of my alleged madness. If their purpose had been to provoke me into proving their point, then they were coming dangerously close to success.

One of the other agents took up a defensive stance in front of the door. I pushed him out of the way. Obviously expecting the worst of me after this inquisition into my sanity, and maybe even before it, the other agent took a more aggressive approach and pulled his gun on me.

It wasn't very smart to pull a gun on an angry, defensive Gundam pilot.

I reacted without a second thought, knocking the gun aside before he had it at the ready. I struck him in the gut, wrenched the gun from his lax grip, and then elbowed him aside. I had the briefest moment of hesitation as I wrestled myself down from turning the gun on Sherwood, who was finally getting up from his seat.

In the space of that heartbeat, the other agent acted. A sharp burst of pain erupted from the point of contact on my lower back and I stumbled. Stun gun, I had time to identify, an errant thought reminding me of the non-lethal weaponry people in the interrogation and enforcement sector often carried in case their charges got out of hand. The current scrambled my higher thoughts, but I didn't need to think much about whipping around drunkenly and striking at him.

My other hand still held the gun. It was automatic that I begin to raise it in my self-defense. Maybe I didn't even do it deliberately. Maybe I was just swinging my arms to keep my balance. But then someone got me again with the stunner, and I was out.

*****

I run through the halls of HQ with only one thought on my mind. I have to warn the others.

No, that doesn't seem right. They aren't in any danger. The IAB is only after me.

Except for Duo. They think he knows something. I hadn't helped with my insistence that they leave him alone. Yes, I have to warn Duo, have to get him out before they can come for him. Have to get him out before they can hurt him by telling him he had to have known. Have to get him out before he says things that will hurt my case.

No, he wouldn't. He may be angry, but he has strong feelings about betrayal. How he reacted to me shows that quite clearly. He wouldn't betray me out of spite. Would he?

I find him in our conference room. The rest of the team isn't there, but Sherwood is. Duo gestures me in casually. "Hey, Heero. Come on in. We were just talking about you."

I come clumsily to halt in front of him and latch my fingers to his uniform shirt, but I turn to Sherwood with my appeals. "You're wrong, he doesn't know anything. Just leave him alone."

Duo's fingers land lightly upon mine, and I turn back to face him. He smiles, the kind of smile that sends a chill down my spine. My fingers spasm into losing their grip on his shirt, but his hands tighten, holding me in place. "You're right. I didn't know anything. But I know better now. And I can still help this fine gentleman with all the benefits of hindsight." He looks over my shoulder at the agent behind me. "You're right. The signs have been there all along. I was just too stupid to see them before."

Sherwood pulls out a notebook. I want to snatch it out of his grasp, but Duo squeezes my hands painfully, keeping me in place.

"I mean, I've always known he wasn't who he said he was. I just never imagined that... that 'this' was what was hiding there all this time. But it makes total sense now. Your ridiculous attention to detail. Your phenomenon memory, inhuman speed. Your affinity for your silly computers. Heh, your lack of creativity in bed. You're such a robot about some things, Heero."

I pull hard and escape him. "I am not a robot!"

He raises an incredulous eyebrow at me. "Oh, please, Yuy. Cybernetic brain? And, by the way, it's only a computer's logic that could think no one would mind you having a cybernetic brain. Well, okay, robot, cyborg, whatever. You're still not quite human."

I push him away from me as if I can push away his accusations. Could a mere robot hurt so damn much?

Sherwood snaps his notebook shut, closing the case on me again. "Combined with his proven violent tendencies, we have more than enough evidence against him. We'll put him back in the vault where he belongs. You won't have to worry about him anymore."

Locked up tight, where the self-serving interests of a man like Brisbois are my only hope of being liberated? Only to be used again? Just a tool, a weapon again? I don't think so. I lash out at the agent, but pain shoots through my body before my fist connects. I turn before falling, and see Duo holding the stun gun this time.

I wake again in a cell. The lights are dim, and the ceiling that I stare at flickers uncertainly between a Preventers holding cell and the one I once studied on Olin Base. My throat is dry. I cough, remembering the nanobots, dust motes in disguise, that invaded my body and decided to take up residence there. ::Zero?:: I prod gently.

Once I asked that question nervously, fearing a response. Now I crave one, wanting to know that I haven't been abandoned. I have had only one steadfast companion over the last few days. If he leaves me now, there is no one else.

Like calls to like. Was Zero like a human, or was I like a computer? Did we exist in some twisted limbo?

A golden haze wraps me up in a warm blanket and reassures me that, limbo or not, I am not alone. It will take care of me. Comforted, I open my eyes and stare curiously at the backs of my hands. Such simple, versatile things. I feel an itch there, and I look deeper, beyond the skin, beyond the muscles, as if I can see the nanos going about their business inside.

And suddenly I can. Zero sharpens my visual feed to compensate for my human limitations, and the dim room appears as if in full light. But that is not enough. A prickling sensation burns in my eyes, and then it turns into a sharp, stabbing pain. I reflexively clutch at my face, and when I remove my hands, I see in infrared, night vision, ways in which human eyes do not see. The twitchiness in my hands increase, and I stare at them, seeing the currents of activity within, and then it bursts into the outside world, circuitry piercing my skin from the inside to overlay my muscles and bones. The framework grows, transforming my hands into a complex mess of wires and gears, spreading toward my elbow.

My last completely inappropriate thought before waking is of Dr. J.

I came to with harsh gasp. I was in a cell again, but the images kept fading in and out. The cell of my visions, the room in Olin, the interview room, the supply closet, the cell on the Moon Base. I squeezed my eyes shut, blanking out at least one of the rooms.

When the slideshow finally came to a halt, I opened my eyes cautiously and, satisfied that the walls would stay where they belonged, studied them a little more carefully. They seemed familiar, but my mind was sluggish in providing me with a reference. This wasn't one of the regular holding cells. Good or bad? I didn't know. I remembered bits and pieces of being brought here. It hadn't been too far from the interview room. Preventers HQ had the facilities to house a variety of inmates, though it wasn't a prison. There were those just wanted temporarily for questioning. Those that were there for witness protection. Those in transit to another facility. And those that were kept outside of the mainstream justice system. The important criminals that they thought might be useful to them. Or the ones they didn't want to admit to.

I wondered what category I fell into. But it didn't matter.

There was a scent in the air that didn't belong. I turned my head and found a bowl of soup on a tray not too far from my low bed. Just the thought of food unsettled my already nauseous stomach. It was a bad sign, anyway. They meant to keep me here for a while.

Had I already been locked up in a vault? Zero had been in storage for five years before they had decided to take it out and poke at it. What were they going to do with me? There was no way they could find that I wasn't a threat to anyone, not after I had attacked them. Never mind that it was in my own self-defense.

And why was I still so woozy? I took several deep breaths to calm the spinning of the room, and felt what was wrong. Was there a low level EM field in here?

I reached a hand out to the wall, needing something solid to ground myself to, but jerked my hand back quickly. Reinforced steel inside those walls. Greater security. Greater conductivity. I tried to roll away from the currents running through the wall, and landed sloppily on the floor.

I shut my eyes again. ::Zero. Shutdown.::

It took a full second for the reply to come back. ::Unable to comply.::

The diagnostic was garbled, but I got enough out of it to figure out that the system was unable to get itself into proper shutdown order. It had stopped most active processing, but with some of its threads out of sync, it wouldn't be wise to complete the sequence. Instead, a backup process was working to resolve the problem.

Someone had obviously heard about my misadventure with the damn EM pulse that had started this whole thing.

The door to the cell slid open, admitting Agent Sherwood. It shut firmly behind him before he settled down a safe distance away from me. "Good evening, Agent Yuy."

I ignored him in favor of pulling myself upright with some dignity.

"We have some questions about the Zero system we'd like you to answer." He seemed unperturbed by my answering silence and went on. "How do you use the system?"

Once upright, I stared at the wall across from me and said nothing.

"You said that you've been using the Zero system on our behalf. What did you mean? In what ways has it been useful to you?"

As interrogators went, he was nothing. Maybe he was trying to be nice and win me to their cause, whatever that cause was. They wanted to know how it all worked, all of a sudden? It seemed like they were starting to wonder how they could use it for themselves. Did they think they could adapt it for other agents? Telling them that that was impossible would get me nowhere with them, so I held my tongue.

"We want to help you, Agent Yuy. Help us help you."

Yeah. Right.

He waited for another minute before standing up and straightening his clothing out. I noted his movements out of the corner of my eye, preparing myself to take advantage of any opportunity he might give me to escape while the door was open, but something cranked up the intensity of the EM field around me, and he left while I was busy battling the unexpected dizziness.

Having nothing better to do, I crawled back onto the bed and waited it out.

So it was evening, was it? Quatre knew where I had gone. Would he think anything of my absence? Would Duo just be happy I wasn't there? I flashed back to that tiny room at Olin again, where I had wondered the same thing. How long would it take for the others to notice something was amiss? I was prone to running off without leaving word, wasn't I?

Quatre tells the others that IAB has spirited me away. They nod understandingly and continue with their work. Duo pauses for a vindicated smile before he, too, falls in with the herd. Later, they are told that I have been removed from the squad. I had a nervous breakdown. I was being investigated. They nod again, and before they can give it a second thought, the global unrest increases. The threat level rises to 'imminent', and their hands are busy protecting the people. They do their job just fine without me because we are all well-trained individuals, not dependent on others.

The crisis passes, and they pause to wonder about their missing teammate. A few inquiries tell them that I have been relieved of my duties. I never go home. They think I've left. Chased off. Given up. Shamed. A few token searches, and they'll never find me, even though I'm right under their noses. Right where they've never been able to find me.

Sherwood had said something about interviewing the others. I had no doubt that he would hold to that. I couldn't help the shiver that came with remembering the demented dreams I'd had of Duo's reaction to the questioning. None of them had been very favorable to me. On the other hand, I was beginning to understand what the others might have seen during their experiences with Zero. If it was anything like the twists on reality that I was seeing, it wasn't too difficult to figure out why they thought badly of Zero.

::What's my sync ratio?::

::Fifty to sixty percent.::

Poor, in other words.

Zamora rants at me from the other side of the glass. He spins me tales of Zero's efficacy, meaningless utopias, and the perfection of mankind. The others try to stop him. I just listen to him with a comprehension I wish I didn't have. He is a madman, gesturing at the empty air as he works through some delusion in the belief that he is taking the next step in bringing the ideal man-machine hybrid into existence.

And then he dies, his low compatibility with the system no longer tolerated.

Zero is the one that makes that decision. We believe Zamora to be mad, but he only speaks of things of which we are ignorant. He dies, his purpose served, with no one listening to his cries.

Was that to be my fate? A Cassandra to be sacrificed on the altar of another's sense of right and wrong? Zamora, who was right in that he had been working on no mere phantoms, that he had been using his expertise to create the nanomachinery that would bring true integration within reach. Zamora, who was wrong in thinking that he was in control, that he had been the chosen one.

And me. The chosen one? Integrated, and now trying to bring word of this great thing to others? Was I as caught by Zero's traps as he had been?

My thoughts triggered a response from Zero. He tried to comfort me, reassure me that we were one, that there were no ulterior motives. It was the rest of the world that was cursed to doubt the prophet in their midst.

His attempts backfired, and I fell into a spiral of ugly miscalculations, the errors building up until I saw visions of a complete loss of self. The robot I denied so vehemently became a fevered reality. The insanity applied to me by others came to pass, with messy results.

I woke up again, having leveled cities in my dreams. I self-destructed countless times. I fled to isolation and remained there miserably for the rest of my days. I followed Quatre's path and rebuilt my Gundam. I joined the terrorists interested in destroying the government. I had my revenge on this wretched system. On Sherwood. On Duo.

I was cold, inside and out, but I was coherent. Time to be questioned again? I glanced blearily at my watch. Oh-four-thirty. Standard interrogation technique, to be denied regularity of schedule. Useless against a Gundam pilot, who was used to jumping out of bed and into a battle on a moment's notice. There was a urinal in the corner. I forced myself to use it while I still had the ability to do so, and wondered wryly to myself whether or not it was a step up from the bucket I'd had at Olin.

I'd had ration bars and bottled water, too. Now, I had some bread and another bowl of soup. No spoon. It was a little warmer than room temperature, proving that they had planned on my waking. Apparently, it took a while for me to come to. It wasn't a normal feeding time, but then, I had skipped the last 'meal' they had presented to me. They intended to keep me. Maybe they thought that food would make me more compliant. Was it drugged? There was hardly any point. I was already unresponsive most of the time. Would it loosen my tongue? The chances were good that it would only loosen my sense of reality even further.

Did I intend to eat this offering? I'd given in at Olin, figuring that my chances of surviving and escaping would be higher if I kept my strength up. It was the same here. I glared at the notion of 'giving in', no matter the good reasons to, but I picked up the bread anyway. If I continued to balk at eating, it would be easy enough for them to feed me through a needle while I was out. The indignity would be too much to bear.

As expected, Sherwood came back again. I felt no pity for the man for having to be here at this hour if I had to be here, too. At least he'd had the opportunity to change his tie.

He tried to talk to me again. I ignored him again, using the food as my prop, and he left in another swirl of EM interference. I dropped myself back onto the bed before I could lose what little I had eaten.

Were they studying the effects of the field on me? Was I considered so dangerous that they didn't want to chance my escape? They let up on the field when they needed me conscious enough for questioning, but not so much that it didn't keep me too dizzy to take advantage of it. Did they think they could break me in this way? Or was this just their idea of stasis? Boxing me up and putting me away when they didn't need me. Maybe it was just their idea of fun?

How likely did they think it was that they could gain my cooperation? Maybe that would just be the icing on the cake. They had it in their little minds that I was a danger to people. It was clear that they'd thought so before coming after me. It wasn't unusual for agents to be armed while they were in the building, but with three against one, they'd obviously been prepared for resistance. That agent had gone in, prepared to pull his gun on me.

I spent my next session of unconsciousness dreaming of captivity and escape, and the next time Sherwood visited me, I talked to him. I didn't say much. To my surprise, I was much more coherent inside my head than I was in expressing myself aloud. I played up my weakness, needing to lengthen the amount of time he stayed. While he was here, the EM field was lowered, and Zero and I could work toward stabilizing the system and debugging the shutdown sequence. It was slow, tenuous work at best, but better than being consumed by the illusions of an unsynchronized system.

I wondered if my visions were any better or worse than those the others had suffered. While I now understood what horrible things they spoke of, they had mentioned disjoint images and nonsense. But what made it all the more frightening for me was the way it made too much sense. Things started innocently enough. Usually it was a memory. And then a stray thought fell into the matrix, interpreted through the wrong filters, and then the 'memory' changed into something that had never happened. It felt real enough, made the sort of sense that dreams did, perfect at the time, but flawed in hindsight. It was getting difficult to recognize where the dividing line was. More often than not, I could only tell by the fear. I only feared things that had yet to happen.

The others laid the fault of the terrible hallucinations at Zero's feet. I couldn't do the same. I understood what was causing them. Typically it was the user that was out of sync with the system, and not the other way around, but the effects were the same. It was still just a miscalculation here, a misinterpretation there. Two people, speaking two different languages, and getting their wires crossed in the middle. Something I was rather familiar with. The images were so powerfully negative right now because of me. I was a prisoner. I was trapped, alone, and with plenty of things to fear and be angry at. On a good day, I would have been able to re-channel my emotions toward the positive end of the spectrum, and maybe see some nice things. But this wasn't a good day.

Unless things changed, it'd be a bad week, too.

It didn't really matter. Time was getting fuzzy. Duo had loved me and left me so many times that it was getting passe. I could be grateful for that at least, in some small way. If it happened in real life, I'd be ready for it. I probably wouldn't believe it at first, but afterward, I could just shrug and say been there, done that, done it worse.

I lost track of how many times Sherwood came and went. Not too many. I hadn't had that many opportunities to put the system back together. The visits were spread out, though. They were in no rush. Now that I was in their custody, they could take their time with things, question people more helpful and cooperative than I.

But not anymore. I spent my last meeting with Sherwood the same way I had passed the previous, responding to, if not answering, his questions. He turned to go, the EM field ramped up, and then the door opened, but this time I weathered the noise screaming down my synapses and smashed my dinner tray over the top of his head.

Three guards from outside came rushing in. I punched one of them hard while they were still emerging from the doorway, but then the second one got me, grabbing me from behind. I shifted my balance, stomped down on his foot, and wormed of his grasp. The third tried to wrestle me down, but I won that tussle, finding a stun gun hanging from his belt as I did, to my complete delight. I snatched it and turned it gleefully on my attacker.

The first guard was coming up behind me, ruining my fun. I kicked him, and he didn't get back up again. The second guard had his own stun gun out, but I evaded his clumsy lunges and knocked him out with a chop to the back of the head. That left only Sherwood in my way, and he got the taser. In fact, he might have gotten more of it than was healthy, if my timesense hadn't kicked in and told me to get the hell out of there while the getting was good.

I ran, letting pure instinct guide me out of the building. It was late, which explained the lack of population in the halls. There was another fight at the entrance to the holding area, but they hadn't been expecting it. I overpowered the men easily, but didn't quite remember the details of it. I was already on auto-pilot by then. I was functional, but my high-level processes were still reeling.

I got out of there somehow. It was just a blur, driven by my need to escape and find a safe haven somewhere. I'm not sure how I made my way through the city, but I ended up somewhere my gut told me was secure. I landed on something soft, and then I passed out.

*****

Something tickles my nose. I twitch my head to the side, but the tickle follows, and I open my eyes. Duo grins at me from close range, the tail end of his braid in hand. "Hey."

"Hey," I answer softly, smiling. I lift a hand to rub at my eyes. "Time?"

"Yeah. Sorry to wake you, even if you did tell me to."

I shake my head. "Wasn't sleepy."

"Yeah?" His expression turns playful. "Then why were you sleeping?"

That wasn't my intention. I just zone out sometimes, lost to my thoughts as Zero and I work to get my brain back up to speed. Left to my own devices, I'd stare out into space, but it makes him uncomfortable. It reminds him of how they found me in that room at Olin, upright and breathing, but obviously not quite there. As a courtesy, then, I at least lie down so he knows I'm taking a planned trip elsewhere. I'm still with him. But lying down makes it easy to fall asleep.

Answering takes too much effort, so I just shrug. He ruffles my bangs, and then his hand trails down to cradle my cheek as he studies me with concern. "Are you sure you're okay? It's been a week, and your brain's still mush. Not that you're not adorable when you're mushy, but..."

"Not adorable," I pout, pushing myself upright with his aid.

He kisses me on the forehead. "Cute, then. Whatever. Look. I'm all about the whole 'not showing weakness in front of others' thing, and the 'doctors suck' thing, but really, Heero. You gather all your strength to make yourself presentable to the docs, and then we get you back here and you pretty much pass out again."

"Getting better," I protest. I pass out for shorter periods of time, don't I? Things got much better after those stubborn doctors stopped zapping me with their EM 'therapy'. Of course I need to show them my strength. Otherwise they'll decide I need another 'treatment', and everything's going to go to hell again. Just a little more time to defrag my brain, and I'll be good as new.

He takes my hand, watches his thumb rub over it. "I'm just... worried, that's all."

I flip my hand over and squeeze. "I'm okay."

I woke up, not remembering how I got here. Disoriented, I blink my eyes open until they focus on the upholstery mere centimeters from my face. It looked like a sofa. A vaguely familiar one. Not the one in our apartment. Not the one at work.

It took a minute, but it finally came to me. The company suite Quatre had lent us after I finally convinced the doctors to let me go. Duo had helped me with that. I'd still had to go in every day and check in with them, but we'd managed to persuade them that I would do better out of the sterile environment of the infirmary. Duo had promised solemnly to watch over me during my recovery. He'd taken his job seriously.

How had I ended up here? My mind must have taken that logical leap. I was recovering from a period of enforced de-sync again. This place had been safe the last time that had happened.

I started to stretch slowly, finally thinking about flipping over and getting a better look at the apartment when I realized that someone was in the room with me. I whipped around, and the room kept spinning long after I had stopped moving, but luckily, my guest wasn't hostile. At least, I didn't think he was. It was still hard to think through the haze in my head. Everyone seemed like an enemy right now. But if he had wanted to hurt me, he would have done it while I had been unaware of my surroundings.

He waited patiently for me to gather my thoughts on the sofa across the coffee table from mine. I stalled, asking a meaningless question to buy me some time. "How did you find me?" My voice came out raspy and harsh.

He smiled. "I wish I could say that I'm just that good, but in truth, I was just alerted when the suite was opened without it being scheduled. I'm staying in one of the other suites while I'm in town, of course. The security for all of them is tied together."

I forced myself into an upright position, pondering his boyishly innocent expression. I was sure that part of that was true, just as sure as I was that Quatre really was just that good. "What are you doing here?"

His smile faded. "You were gone an awful long time, Heero."

"How long?" I asked, needing to know before he told me anything more. Knowing what day it was would help me orient myself.

"It's Friday."

That long? Or that not-long? My mind kept flip-flopping on its perception of time, unable to decide between judging my period of incarceration to be a short eternity, or being worried at how much time had slipped away from me. I glanced out the window. The sun had gone down recently.

He watched me critically as I reset my internal clock, and then continued when he deemed me ready. "I knew that IAB had more than a few questions in mind, but I hadn't expected you to disappear like that. I made some inquiries. They told me you were put on administrative leave, pending investigation of your unauthorized possession of the Zero system. And then they started questioning us." He paused for another smile, though this one had a bit of a chill to it. "You should thank them, Heero. They gave Duo someone else to be mad at for a while."

"I tried," I whispered. "I tried to stop them. I..." I shook my head. My efforts had probably just made things worse, but what was done was done. "Aren't you... Shouldn't you be..."

He brushed my concerns aside with a wave of his hand. "Don't worry. The world hasn't fallen apart yet. In any case, you have some good friends, Heero. RJ came to see us."

"RJ?" I repeated dumbly, taking a second to connect the name to a person. He was the researcher down in R&D who would have led the Zero project, if Brisbois hadn't stolen it before that could happen. He had continued with his interest in neural applications, despite his lack of a specimen to study. I'd kept in touch with him, helping him out occasionally, or being helped out in turn, though he probably didn't know it.

Quatre leaned back casually in his seat. "Apparently, IAB thought he could be informative. We thought they were just holding you -- of course, we wanted to get you out, as soon as we could find you -- but we didn't think you were in any danger until he came to us. They'd asked him some strange things, about EM effects, how Zero works, how neural interfaces work. They asked him about you, your history and your 'therapy'. He thought things sounded fishy, and thought you should know. I gather the two of you have spoken a lot about such things over the years? He tried to contact you, but you weren't answering your e-mails or your phone. He asked around, heard you were on leave, but also that you were working with us. So he dropped by looking for you. Told us some interesting things."

"You didn't find me." I wasn't sure if that was an accusation or not.

"You broke out," he answered pointedly. "And unfortunately, the world hasn't fallen apart yet, but it will soon. We had to hope you could take care of yourself for a while, because goodness knows this world can't handle its own affairs very well."

A lot of questions came up, but the one that made it to the top of the list dealt with self-preservation. "Why are you here?"

"I have no intentions of telling anyone where you are. Even the others don't know yet. You're safe here." My expression must have showed some doubt because his eyes narrowed intently. "I know you aren't feeling very trusting right now, Heero, but believe me, we're on your side. We want to protect you."

He was right. I wasn't feeling very trusting right now. "Sherwood said the same thing."

"Sherwood was an idiot."

Images cascaded haphazardly through my mind, leaving tantalizing pieces of the whole picture, but not quite enough to put things together. "I... fought some people. What happened to them?"

"Don't worry. No one's dead."

"Not even Sherwood?"

"Not even Sherwood," he repeated, a wry tilt to his lips. He heard what I did, that cross between fear and hope. I'd later blame it on my unstable state of mind at the time. "Which helps you, of course. It's always hard explaining away corpses. We'll get this straightened out, Heero."

I still didn't believe him, but I would continue talking to him with that same sense of inevitability I often felt around Quatre. If he wanted something out of me, he'd get it anyway. Given his mystical powers, I sure hoped he was on my side. "Was Duo on my side?" I asked, unable to stop myself.

"Of course he was. Do you really think he'd be on their side?"

I covered my face briefly with my hand. "I saw it so many times..." I shook my head to banish the images, but I could see he understood my meaning.

"I'm sure you saw a lot of things, Heero," he said, his voice serene and intense. "Don't let them get to you. Duo's... He's had a few days to put things in perspective. And you know that, no matter how angry he is, he'll protect you. You're one of us."

I probably showed doubt again. I could separate the dreams from the reality, now that I had a clearer mind to work with, but that didn't mean that sense of alienation had faded yet. Ignoring Quatre for a moment, I devoted some time to trying to allay my own fears. I decided that I may or may not have been one of them, but if there was one thing I was sure of, it was that Duo wouldn't side with the IAB. Especially when they were sure to ask questions that hit a little close to home. Especially not when they were asking questions during a world crisis. "Yet? The world hasn't fallen apart yet?'"

He shifted slightly in his seat, somehow becoming slightly less conversational. "A man was shot and killed by authorities on Wednesday during a protest that turned violent. He's become a martyr to the cause now."

I winced, seeing the futures spin wildly out of control. Now that I was in a clean environment, Zero was back to normal, but I couldn't recover as quickly as the computer could. I needed a few seconds to rein in the possibilities before I was ready to continue. "The radicals have taken the next step, then?"

"Not officially. We suspect they'll want everything in place for their coming-out party before they send out the invites. It's easier for them to work before tipping their hand. But they're out there alright, working the crowd, spreading the word."

"And the government?"

"About as you might expect. Too little, too late, and all self-righteous when it comes to dealing with terrorists." He sat straight up in his seat and smoothed some wrinkles in his shirt. "I need to be getting back. There's an APB out on you right now, as a 'rogue' agent, no doubt armed and dangerous, with a bit of the implication that you may have something from your job that you'd be willing to sell to the radicals. Please feel free to stay here as long as you'd like. You needn't worry about the lights. We have people in and out of our suites all the time. I'll register this place as used so you won't have to worry about anyone else dropping by. We keep our suites well-stocked and ready for guests at all time, so there are non-perishable foods in the kitchen. Not very delicious, I'm sure, but they'll keep you going. Please do avail yourself of our complete toiletry sets. I don't think I've ever seen you with that much growth on your face, and it really doesn't suit you."

I stared at him. "I... don't remember this place being so well-stocked."

"Well, we've acquired a hotel chain since then. It's really the amenities that make the difference. There should be a small washer-dryer hookup in one of these closets. We don't have any spare clothes on hand for you, but there should be a fluffy bathrobe somewhere in here that you can use, so you'll survive."

I was pretty sure he was just making fun of me by this point, but I still appreciated it. "Quatre..."

He paused in the act of getting up and pinned me with an open, expectant look. He probably knew what I was going to say even before I did, but he was still going to make me say it. Bastard.

"I..." I stared at my knees, feeling suddenly that I had traded one prison for another. But at least this one came with fluffy bathrobes. Which hardly mattered to me at the moment. There was only one thing that kept floating to the top of my mind. "Does he... Could you..."

He settled back down on the edge of his seat cushion, leaning forward intently until I looked up and he pinned me with his eyes. "Like I said, Heero, you ought to thank them. Duo was quite angry with you -- even for disappearing again -- but then they brought him in for questioning, and he got angry at them. And then he listened to what they were saying, and thought some of it sounded mighty familiar... Like I said, Heero. He's still quite angry at you. You're just not the only one anymore."

It almost made sense to me, but I studied him instead, not quite willing to believe. In all the times that I had seen it happen, things had never once turned out in my favor. Maybe he really had gained some perspective on things. But I had made him angry. I started this. I was responsible for Sherwood making him angry. And whatever he had heard from Sherwood, it had probably hurt to realize, and I was responsible for that, too. Things still weren't working out well for me. "What broke him?" I asked softly, resigned to knowing the extent of my crimes.

Quatre adopted another of those barely-civil smiles. "Do you promise not to kill anyone?"

A flash of protective anger washed through me, here and gone again in the blink of an eye. "No."

"Do you promise to at least think it through first?"

"I always think things through."

Good enough for him. "Your friend RJ told us some interesting things. Thankfully, not all right away, or Duo would have hurt someone, first time he was in for questioning. They've decided they're interested in Zero, you know. And they've also figured out that they aren't getting Zero out of you any time soon. So in exploring the possibilities with your scientist friend, they may have asked a question or two hinting at carving your brain up for the sake of science."

::And they wonder why we would be so willing to kill them all without remorse.::

::Down, Zero.:: I didn't like the way Quatre was looking at me, as if he knew what dark thoughts were running through my mind. Not just knew, but knew. There was a reason he hadn't needed Zero in those final battles at the end of the war, I realized abruptly. He hadn't needed Zero at all.

He smiled again as he stood. "Enjoy your vacation, Heero."

I watched as he left the suite, listening for the beep that announced the locks sliding home. As soon as it went off, I went to the door and recoded the keypad. It wouldn't stop him from getting in again if he wanted to, but it could at least stall him for a bit. Once that was done, I dropped the blinds, prowled the apartment a few times to make myself feel better, and noticed a case sitting next to Quatre's seat that probably didn't belong there. Warily, I opened it to find a laptop within. I knew better than to think Quatre had left it behind accidentally.

I grunted irritably and let it be for now. The suite was secure enough for me to finally think about standing down. With very few choices at my disposal, I did as Quatre had commanded and made use of the suite's facilities. There really was a fluffy bathrobe in one of the closets. I tossed my clothes into the washer-dryer and took a shower.

Quatre was probably taking liberties with his paraphrasing of the situation. I repeated that to myself several times to convince myself of that. But Duo had probably taken liberties with his interpretation as well. He seemed to have a habit of doing that, especially as his temper drifted toward the more volatile end of the spectrum. I thought about their insinuations, and I thought about Duo, and instead of feeling hope, I just winced. For him, for me, for this big stupid mess we'd gotten ourselves into.

Feeling more in tune with myself, but no more rested, I took a quick inventory of the apartment, dined on an breakfast-to-go cereal bar and a bottle of water, and then collapsed into the bed and fell asleep before I could miss my own.

*****

"You sure you don't mind me dropping in on you like this?"

"I said you could come by any time, didn't I?"

There's the briefest of moments when the expression of a shy little boy crosses his face, but it's quickly replaced by a nervousness hidden with the dissembling of a person long used to hiding. "And you don't mind me taking up space in your bed?"

"Have I ever? I even have a whole full-sized one this time."

"Welcome change from a bunk, yeah, but..."

"What, are you volunteering to sleep on the sofa? I'm not." It's a fine piece of furniture to sit on, but not so much for the sleeping. Honestly, I don't spend much time on it.

He eyes it critically. "Yeah, it would be a bit of a snug fit. But hey...." He snags my arm and pulls me down onto the cushion with him. Our hips bump against each other. It's not a particularly spacious two-seater, especially with his jacket slung over the arm on one side, one of my lab books on the other, but it fits well in my small apartment. "Makes a good date sofa, a good loooooveseat. Yuy, you sly dog, you."

"I bought it from a senior that was graduating," I inform him as his arm settles over my shoulder. I regard the appendage with a bit of bemusement, but let it be. "Good way to pick up cheap things you don't really have to think about."

He assimilates that piece of sideways advice before he grins. "At least you don't have to think about whether or not the guy ever had sex on the sofa. Unless he was really short."

My nose wrinkles in distaste. "I hadn't ever thought that, thank you very much."

"Hey, you gotta think about these things, where things come from."

Clever of him, to throw my words back at me, though in an entirely different context. "Alright, well, I've thought about it. Can I stop now?"

His smirk goes mischievous. "You know the best way to stop thinking that stuff is to christen the sofa for yourself, yeah?" He kisses my cheek, but before he is gone, I have my face turned to meet his. Our lips brush hesitantly, our first of the night, of several months, but we fall back into the groove with little effort.

He leans into me and I start to give way, but then I remember to think, and with a soft sigh, I hold my ground, push back until he is willing to follow my lead, and then I let the kisses trail off. "Why are you here, Duo?" I ask softly against the corner of his mouth.

Refusing to yield immediately, he tries to pretend I didn't say anything, but the nuzzling comes to a resigned halt soon enough. He tries to back off a little, but I follow, wanting nothing between us but our warmth. His eyes flicker back and forth with a repressed anxiety, but he blinks it away and prepares to speak.

"Don't be flippant, Duo," I forestall him gently. "I know I said you should come out here some time. Yes, of course I meant it. But you didn't come out here, just because I invited you." I shut my eyes and let my forehead rest against his, keeping him in place with an arm draped over his shoulder. "You don't need to tell me, if you have an answer to that. I wasn't even planning on asking you. But whyever you came here... I hope it wasn't just for this."

His hands glide thoughtfully down my arms, over my back. In the end, he sighs. "We don't even know what this is, Heero." He pulls away just a little, just enough to look me in the eyes. "I like you, Heero. In a package deal kind of way. I said that before, yeah? But, hell, Heero, you're... you're a big complex package. I don't know half the things in that package. Think you could let me explore your package?" He unveils a hopeful grin at me.

We kiss until we nearly fall off the sofa, then decide it's time for bed. I have an exam in the morning.

*****

He glances up a little guiltily when I get back from class, closing the textbook in his lap and getting off the sofa to put it away on my small bookshelf. "Hey, sorry..."

"You can read it if you like." I catch a peek of the cover before it slides back into its place. Something from one of my philosophy classes. "I said you can poke around whatever you want."

His hand skims the spines. "You have a lot of books."

"I have more in the closet."

"No way?" He looks to me as if in permission, and when I wiggle my fingers in the direction of the door, he heads over to take a peek inside. I proceed with pulling off my shoes and dropping off my bag. When I note the silence from the closet, I go to stand by his side. "You still have it?" he asks softly, without prompting.

"Hm?" I crane my neck to look around the doorframe at what he's talking about, but he pulls out the item in question instead. My Preventers jacket. "Of course."

He fingers the bump in the collar. "I don't know what I was thinking..."

I got the full story out of him during my recovery, when I finally had the time to remember what I had seen from Zero's visual feed at Olin. The signal from the requisitioned car had led them to the base. The tracer in the jacket Duo had given me had led them to my position within the base. He'd stuck the bug in there in a fit of pique, or maybe humor. He hadn't wanted me to disappear without a trace again. When he finally confessed and offered to remove it, I told him to leave it where it was. "So you can always find me," I remind him with a smile, laying my fingers atop his.

His expression goes soft with the memory before he shakes his head with a small laugh and puts the jacket back on the rack.

"Well, you can find my closet, anyway," I say to lighten the mood a little, knowing he isn't feeling receptive to such things at the moment. "I don't wear it much, for obvious reasons."

He shuts the closet door and we head back toward the sofa. "It'd make an impression."

I detour to the kitchen for a glass of juice. "I have a cover story, by the way."

"Oh?"

"Mm-hm. I was a member of the Sanq National Guard, though I don't spread it around much."

"Hmm. Yeah, I guess that sort of explains a lot of things, doesn't it? Not bad."

"If I ever slip up about knowing someone I probably shouldn't, luckily everybody who was anybody probably passed through Sanq at some time. And by the way, Ian thinks Noin is 'totally hot'." Duo chortles, stopping short of a guffaw by strength of will. I continue. "Fortunately, Relena isn't his type. She's only 'kinda cute'."

"Which is good," he squeezes out between laughs. "Otherwise you'd have to castrate him, and I don't think all the cover in the world is going to explain that away."

The morning was quickly approaching noon by the time I woke up again, but it had been real sleep this time, haunted only by memories, not visions. Memories I could deal with.

They lingered for a bit, causing me to pause for reflection before rolling out of bed. Had that been about where things had gone sideways? I had a cover story prepared to explain my political stance, and whatever combat-oriented quirks I might have had that I couldn't suppress, but only in case someone had ever asked. It hadn't been a total lie, anyway. I had spent time in Sanq while Noin had been organizing her defenses. I'd fought on Sanq's behalf. I met enough people while I was there to put down valid references. I'd gotten part of my scholarship money based on that story, knowing that Relena wouldn't mind. Given the opportunity, I was sure she'd choose to fully fund my education, but that wasn't what I had wanted.

But the cover had been a mask to protect my past, not distort my present. I'd gone there for the learning, both academic and social. College hadn't just been a way to pass the time while I sorted myself out.

Maybe that was why Duo hadn't managed more than a few semesters. He'd always seen his time in school as a pit stop on his way to somewhere else. He'd always been so impatient to get to that 'somewhere else', too, measuring himself against some unknown standard and deciding he had fallen behind the curve. He rushed it. I let him, thinking that maybe I was wrong. We all had our own paces, after all. Hadn't I said that often enough?

And then later, when I'd had the time to reconsider, maybe it was too late. I'd thought we could still work on it, but by then, he'd decided he was done with the 'transition' phase. Done with this self-exploration thing and ready to tackle the real world.

I sighed and forced myself out of bed. It was too early in the morning to be hurting so much.

*****

Quatre's laptop sat on the coffee table, staring innocently at me as I glared at it. I had turned it on to find it updated with the latest news. I put off reading it until I could decide for myself whether or not I wanted to read it. The government had decided that I was more useful to them as a lab rat than as an agent. Why would I want to help save them?

I stewed in my bitterness for a good twenty minutes, knowing that part of it stemmed from knowing that I was going to give in. Relena was a member of the government. She had some good allies. They weren't all jackasses.

And the 'revolutionaries'. Of course I had some sympathy for them, having been one myself and knowing many others. But they didn't seem to have a plan. I didn't respect people that didn't have a plan. Operation Daybreak was a coup on a similarly global scale, but they'd had a government ready to replace that of the old Federation. The radicals-turned-terrorists wanted to dismantle the global government, and then leave it at that. After ten years of remodeling their infrastructure to fit into the international design, how many local governments would be prepared to fend for themselves?

Fine, I'd contribute to the cause. And after this was over, I'd sic Relena and Quatre on the government. That would show them.

I checked the newsfeeds to see what the public knew first. Reports rolled in from all over the world, some countries for, some countries against. Plenty of people trying to play both sides.

From there, I moved on to our project notes. The files were protected. I stuck my finger on the built-in scanner, then stared at the blinking cursor for a bit when prompted for the second part of the security bypass. I didn't recall Quatre hinting at anything, so it would be something I could guess. I guessed 'ZERO', and it worked. "Ha, ha, Quatre," I muttered as the project workspace loaded. "Very funny."

We had a lot of information gathered, but not a lot of conclusions. Every politician and activist with known ties to the nationalist cause was being investigated, their attendance at events tracked, their trail of contacts followed. There was an ever-widening network of sympathizers and organizers, but no clear leadership had yet been revealed. We were currently operating on the theory that there was none. There was no one person's charisma that was motivating this movement. The nationalist spirit had solidified within each individual country, and over time they had joined forces with the groups in other countries to protest with a louder voice, but it was almost contrary to their vision to have a global force moving events along.

Of course, so far, all we had had to go on were protests, events, demonstrations. Things that were powered by sheer numbers. Now we were looking forward to precision attacks. Somewhere, the game had changed, and we still hadn't located its nexus.

Once again, I left that task mostly to the others. There was only so much that I could do from here. I didn't have access to the information that they did, and it wasn't wise of me to surface long enough to get it, either. Especially not so soon after my escape. While I stayed within the confines of the apartment, I was under Quatre's aegis. I had little doubt that he had and would continue to secure my safe haven. If I wanted that to last, I'd have to uphold my end of the bargain and not do anything too stupid.

Failing anything else, I continued the work that had been interrupted. My systems patches were still incomplete. I hadn't had the time to check on their status and tune their performance before I had been taken away. And there were still key systems I hadn't gotten to at all.

It was with a certain amount of relief that I dove back into the comforting realm of code and algorithms. They were simple, when compared to human hearts and minds. The results were predictable, and when something went wrong, it was easy enough to figure out the reason. It wasn't so easy to debug a relationship.

::What's my sync ratio?::

::Sixty-eight to seventy percent.::

Well, at least there was one person in this world that understood me right now.

I tried not to be depressed that I took comfort from that, and got back to work.

*****

Thirty-six hours later, I had the batch ready to ship. Things went more slowly when I couldn't see the system that would receive the data. We remembered things from the reports I had done before, and from the follow-up last week, but it hadn't been detailed enough to make implementation from memory easy. I'd had to waste time making my work general enough to account for the things I didn't know. It wouldn't be as tight as it would have been if I'd been able to tailor it to the system specs, but it'd be better than nothing.

Not having access to the systems also meant not being able to deploy my patches. Last week, it'd been a simple matter of connecting and uploading. I had the level of clearance to do that sort of thing, and obviously I didn't now. I was still a wanted man, though I did wonder how they thought I was spending my time in hiding. Did they really believe their story of my collaboration with the enemy? Or did they fear it with a shameful hindsight? It wasn't a wise idea to piss off a Gundam pilot. I could do things to them, even in hiding.

But there were advantages to my situation. I wasn't acting as an official member of a government agency, so I could finally break a few rules to get the job done and not be reprimanded for it. I would patch up the holes in their security nets, but not before I took advantage of them to hack my way in so I could upload my fixes. The irony amused me at a time when little else did. I knew and Quatre knew that a person in hiding maintained communications silence, but that didn't erase that human longing to know that there was someone out there thinking of me. All I could do was keep an eye on the newsfeeds and guess how their day had gone.

Tensions were rising still higher. Small scale violence was not uncommon. No more deaths yet, though. A coup attempt had been made against the government of one of the countries that supported the world union. It had failed, giving rise to military force to keep the peace, which prompted more anti-government sentiment. The local government asked for international assistance. The world nation replied that they had their hands a little full at the moment; surely the locals could take care of the little uprising by themselves? No doubt they didn't want to rile the natives even more. The country's leadership in turn began to see how the global system could fail them at crucial times, and we were one step closer to losing another ally.

The PR war was their problem. I'd stick to my own job and just make it harder for the malcontents to break things.

My first target was the government employee database. A person could gain access to personnel records, and then use that information in some harmful way. Home addresses and contact information were available. Performance reviews, psych evals, disciplinary actions, even the identities of undercover agents, could also be found, if a person got really ambitious.

Zero and I jumped a few junctions and made our way through the holes in the net. Before installing our patch, we searched the system to check on whether or not someone had already gotten ambitious. The seal on the confidential information seemed tight, but someone had been skimming the regular files, leaving themselves a backdoor through which they could invade again at a later time. We made a note of the records they had touched, then wrote up a bot to sweep up after we were gone. The patch was uploaded and also set to deploy on a delay. If someone got lucky and detected my tampering, I didn't want them connecting me to the file and thinking it was malicious.

On our way out, we saw the backdoor go active. Coincidence? Or had someone left a marker to make sure that no one was trespassing on their claim? Someone crept into the system and poked around, but they wouldn't find me or the work that I had done. I watched them check their own traps, seeing an interesting spread of information within their nets. Deciding to take a calculated risk, I sent a ping in the socket's direction to let them know I was there, ostensibly as a professional courtesy between hackers.

The connection snapped shut, disappointing me, but as I made a quick check to see that everything was as I left it before seeing what I could glean from a backtrace of the intruder, a terse packet came from the same port, naming a server and point of entry. Intrigued, I cleaned up after myself, re-secured my line, then took up the invitation.

I made no greeting when I arrived at the open forum, choosing instead to wait for contact. I waited thirty-three seconds before a message came my way. "Way old-school. Don't see much of that around anymore."

Old-school? I supposed it was, if only because the net these days was filled with amateurs that had no respect for tradition or order, far outnumbering the hacker elite. The wiser folks were in it for the challenge of finding loopholes and exploits. It was the immature that liked to go around wreaking havoc without regard for the consequences. They didn't have enough respect in them to observe the niceties that kept the net civil, like notifying another of their presence. It was a tip of the hat as we passed each other by, and at the same time, an agreement to stay out of each other's way. I hadn't spent much time in the hacker subculture, dabbling only enough in the beginning to see what it was all about and establish a little 'street cred', but I believed in the principles of the elite.

"Kids these days," I answered, pondering the possibilities. I wondered if this person was sympathizing with me, or insulting me. I did a quick scan of the currently active users, but most of the names meant nothing to me. Trix had been more involved in the scene than I had; that was why I had asked her to look around and see if there was any interesting news making the rounds in the underworld. But maybe I could check things out for myself while I was here.

"Yeah... Always going around, messing stuff up for everyone else."

"I didn't touch your stuff," I reassured him. Whether or not he was fishing for information, I decided to pretend he was. Why else would he invite me here? It was a valid interpretation of his comment, and could hopefully serve as a good lead-in for my own investigation into his activities. With my 'old-school' affiliations, I had a good chance of being believed.

"Cool... That stuff's so easy, though. The way these days are, it's like not even a challenge."

Not if I could have my way with it. But what was the purpose behind his words? There was no reason to be conversational with me. I'd already told him the most important bit of information, that I'd left his stuff alone. Maybe he was just posturing? Wanted to let me know that he was better than that? Or did he still want me to give something away? I went with a neutral answer. "Can't everything be a challenge."

"What about MinFa?"

Not hoping to find much, I did a quick net search on the term, waiting for the results while responding as if I knew what my contact was talking about. "What about it?"

"It's gonna be a blast."

"You're into it?" I switched focus, and after wading through a lot of random acronyms and associations, I found a vague reference on a bulletin board about some sort of hacker games someone was organizing. Looked like a proving ground of some sort. At this particular point in current events, that couldn't bode well. Games were only 'fun' when they weren't just games, and the world didn't need any more chaos than it already had.

"It's where it's at. You in?"

"I'm too old for these games." It wasn't intended seriously, but the words did make me recall my age. Twenty-six years old. Eleven years older than I thought I'd ever be. Not feeling it as much as I'd thought I would, thanks to Zero, but still. I really was getting old. It was still a rather novel concept.

"Nah, you should try it out. It's gonna be wicked cool. Especially if you're in to this government stuff."

"Is that where it's at?"

"That's the word on the street, anyway. Check it out. It'll be great." The connection was silent for a few seconds, and then he disconnected.

That was a stranger interaction than I had expected. If trawling the government systems was such a boring exercise, then what had he been doing there? And was he just making conversation, or had his purpose in contacting me been to try selling this 'MinFa' to someone he thought might be a sympathetic soul? I didn't bother trying to trace his signal. I knew I wouldn't find anything.

I was preparing to leave the forum and do some more research on this strange event when someone messaged me. "Greeeeeeeeee~n!!!!!"

I stared at the shout-out for a second before glancing at the username. Wysinwyg. Trix. Shit. I had asked her to check up on things for me, but that had been days ago. I hadn't expected a full report. Just a little gossip, maybe. She shouldn't still have been dropping in on hacker gatherings.

When I took too long to decide whether or not to respond to her, she took the initiative. "Or you better be Green and not just stealing his handle, or I'm gonna kick your ass!!!"

The threat brought an involuntary smile to my lips. I'd said once that I seemed to attract people that wanted to watch out for me. I'd far too often found that to be true. I really hadn't expected anyone to recognize the handle I hadn't used for so long. I hadn't even thought about it. It'd just seemed appropriate. I'd chosen it in a fit of angst one night, feeling sorely out of place and wondering if maybe I could find my niche in the underground community Trix had recommended. Stewing in yet another fog of melancholy, now had seemed to be a good time to dust the name off.

She was on to me, and trying to shoo her away would probably cause more trouble than it was worth. No one but her knew this was my old handle, and there was nothing about it that would imply my identity. Trix had rebuked me quite a few times for not having an appropriately intimidating name if I was going to go beating records down, but it came from what was secretly one of my favorite songs, and had reflected what I was feeling too accurately to want to let it go. I would be safe. Even if someone did manage to connect the dots, they wouldn't be able to trace my signal. "It's been ten years, Wys," I answered eventually. "If someone wants it, they can have it."

"Not when you're still up on the leaderboards. That's a no-no. Didn't I teach you anything?"

"No, not really." Most of the rules were just common courtesy. The rest were easy to determine from observation.

"Hmpf." There was a short pause, then I saw the walls slapping up around us, closing us off into a private, secured session. "That really you, Green?"

"Depends who's asking." I wasn't sure how much she knew. Word of my rogue status had surely made it to her ears, but I didn't think she would report me. That wasn't her style. Nor was she that patriotic. And it was Tech Support's job to do the electronic eavesdropping. They couldn't get the jump on us. She probably wasn't even on their watchlist.

"Then is it true?"

"Depends on what 'it' is."

"Are you working with them now?"

No matter who 'they' were, the answer was probably 'no'. "You probably shouldn't be talking to me. Go to sleep."

"As if. Where the hell have you been?"

I was tempted to spin her all sorts of flippant excuses -- 'telecommuting' came to mind -- but there was no reason to prolong this conversation. "I'm serious, Wys. Disconnect, go to sleep, and then go to work tomorrow like you never saw me here."

"Screw you. You wouldn't. That isn't like you. You wouldn't turn your back on all that stuff you believe in. And your snugglebunny, too."

Severing the connection was easy, but I was pretty sure she would kick up all sorts of dust trying to find me again, now that she had a clue. "The snugglebunny and I aren't talking right now. Go away."

"I have your report."

She managed to make me reconsider. She could have information that I needed, all ready to go for me. "Tell me what you found."

"Hey, why should I tell you anything? You could be working for terrorists, for all I know."

"I'm not working for anyone right now, Wys."

"Then why do you need to know what I found out?"

She had a point, more or less. "Because I'm an idiot. What did you find?" When she didn't respond, I elaborated. "Look, there's just been a bit of a disagreement between them and me, okay?"

"Disagreement!!!?? They have people looking for you, you know."

"Which is why you shouldn't be talking to me."

"But you're right, and they're not, right?"

Well, of course I thought I was right. But that wouldn't prove anything. "I haven't switched sides. There are just some people with some agendas."

Her answer was long in coming. "Word on the street is that there's some group out there working together doing I don't know what yet. But it's something illegal and secret and they're having a lot of fun doing it."

I breathed a sigh of relief that she was going to cooperate with me. "But not enough to talk about it?"

"They're too good to talk to the little people. There was a little of the usual hacker crap, anarchy, down with the oppressors, hackers of the world unite, and all that, but it's hard to tell how much of that is just the normal shit they're always screaming."

"What is MinFa?"

"Another big hush-hush thing. The kids eat that stuff up. Some sort of pissing contest. The prize is rumored to be getting in on the big illegal secret thingie. Supposed to be like the ultimate hack or something stupid like that. Why have you already heard of it?"

She didn't really tell me too much more than I already knew, but it was good to get confirmation. "I was just minding my own business when someone decided to come up to me and talk about it." If the guy was really a promoter of some sort, then that could imply that they weren't just out there for fun. They didn't want to miss anyone they thought could be useful to them. I didn't like the sound of that. "When's it going down?"

"In the next week sometime or so, I think. It takes a bit of hoop-jumping to get in on this. What are you even doing here, anyway?"

"Just minding my own business. Thanks for your help, but it's probably time for you to get going."

"You just going to disappear again?"

"It's necessary."

"What if I find something out? How will I be able to tell you?"

I didn't want there to be any more contact between the two of us, but she had a greater mobility and closer connections than I did. "Send it to my alumni account. I've never used it before, but I did activate it. It'll forward somewhere safe."

"Shit, Green, I always knew you were all supercoolguy or something, but this?"

This was just par for the course for me. "Sorry. If something big happens, don't hesitate to go to one of the others. You've met them all before. I trust them. They'll take care of it."

"They know where you are?"

I didn't want it going on record that anyone knew anything about my current situation. "It goes without saying, keep this to yourself, right?"

"Hey, I may be greener than you when it comes to this stuff, but I've watched enough movies to know what I'm doing."

"You better be kidding." If life worked as the movies did, I'd never have found a safe place to roost for a while. There'd be special forces dropping in with helicopters right about now, blowing holes in the apartment without the slightest concern for civilian casualties, and then afterwards, it wouldn't even be in the media. But thinking about the silliness in the movies made me think about the great fun Duo and I usually had mocking them, and obviously that didn't cheer me up in the slightest.

"I better see you around, Green. Stay safe."

What was I, green? "We'll see. Thanks again." I cut the connection after that and flopped back onto the sofa with a sigh. It was nice to know I had friends I could count on, but it just made it worse that I couldn't count on the people I thought of as my brothers.

::She is a security risk.::

And I could count on Zero. ::If they're watching anybody, they'll be watching the others. She's probably not even a blip on their radar.::

::Your optimism is unwarranted.::

::At worst, we relocate. That's all.:: I blinked, and saw the image of Sherwood going after her in my mind's eye. ::They're not OZ. If they take her in for questioning, she won't know anything. They won't hurt her. She was just doing her job.::

::Your optimism is unwarranted.:: This time, I was treated with images of our holding cell.

He did have a valid point. But I had a better one. ::Granted, that did happen. But I'm a much more severe security risk than she will ever be. Your predictions are based on a single datapoint, an extreme one. That's not normally their MO.::

Zero ran the calculations again, this time with a larger range of data, and I went back to my calculations. So there were people on the lookout for people that might be interested in joining the cause, were there? Hm. Well, I was working with a time limit. It would be more efficient to have them come to me, rather than going to them myself.

If Sherwood wanted a rogue agent, I'd gladly give him one.

I danced my way into the database that kept track of city blueprints. It was all too easy to find the floor plans for buildings in the city. It was alright if a person wanted to see what their neighbors were up to, but not really alright when people were looking for access to places they weren't supposed to be.

The Zoning Commission was right there near the top of the list of people that rarely listened to me. They had a pretty good system in place for the data they stored of local buildings, but for everything outside of the BZC's original jurisdiction, it was just... a mess. They could never decide how they wanted to file their data, and all the frail little add-ons to their system showed it. Maybe it was about time I personally pointed out to them some of the vulnerabilities I'd reported so many months ago.

But business before pleasure. I swept through the system looking for the kind of doors and worms that had been present in the personnel files, and tried to feel only satisfied and not also vindicated when I found a few. I dutifully took note of their hooks and composition for later analysis, and then I trashed the place.

I lingered for a few minutes to watch the results of my handiwork ripple through their system. I knew they had solid backups of all the data, even if it was still more unorganized than the actual database was. And if there was an emergency, they would still be able to access their local data. That little network operated outside of this one. So I was really able to enjoy the system's downfall with a fairly clear conscience. I was just doing my job, after all. There was more than one way to keep the bad guys away from the data. This way was actually more foolproof.

Three minutes, twelve seconds later, I got my first message. "D00d, what did you do that for?!"

Ah, so I'd stepped on a few toes, had I? Excellent. "It offended me," I answered quite truthfully.

"I was using that, you little fucker!"

I snorted. "Put a sign up next time."

Another message filled with toxic invective came my way, but before I had the chance to piss him off any more, another one came from a different user. "Nice work," it said.

A level-headed soul. This one I could work with. "Wasn't hard. The thing deserved it."

I got an invitation to another server. When I entered the channel, there was already a message waiting for me. "Too easy, huh?"

That seemed to be the main thrust of their advertising campaign. It was a pretty surefire way to get the attention of some of the upper tier hackers out there. I wondered how organized they were. Were they like the rest of our government-toppling conspiracy, a loose gathering of people with similar goals? This was the second time I was being contacted. I assumed there wasn't a higher power cataloguing the recruits. "Wasn't the point."

"You got a beef with the gov?"

"Who doesn't?" Though it seemed they had more of a bone to pick with me lately.

"I hear ya. Bunch of idiot bureaucrats weighing down the system."

"The bureaucrats are the system."

"Break the system?"

A clever turn on a hacker catchphrase. "That's what we do, isn't it?"

"You playing the game?"

"There seem to be a lot of games going around these days."

"THE game. There's only one real one."

But he wasn't specifying by name. Discretion, when the first hacker I'd met tonight had been so casual? A test, perhaps. More evidence of their haphazard campaign? I could exercise caution as well. "Thought about it. Not convinced yet. You?"

"I'm in. What's the hold up?"

"It's just a game."

"Not if you play it right. You make it through, and I hear there's some good shit on the other side."

"Breaking the system?" He threw a devilish smiley at me, but otherwise sent nothing. That was confirmation enough. I took a calculated risk and made a good guess. "Not much time left, is there?"

"You should just get your creds in. Give it a shot. Maybe you don't like it. You can leave. But if you like what you just did, I think you'll like it."

"What are you, a salesman?"

"Nah, I just have faith. It's about time we shook this place up." Another horned happy face showed up in my window. It didn't bode well at all. "You don't make the deadline, I'll vouch for your creds. You did good stuff. You can still get in to the main event."

"When is that again?"

"Haven't said. Makes things more interesting that way." He dropped a packet of data on my side of the line. "I'll keep a lookout for you." And then he disconnected.

I cut my end of the line, isolated the packet, and opened it. A server, a login, a contact point, a time. Directions on where to register, it seemed, plus the deadline?

I yawned, noticing how late it was getting. I hadn't planned on shorting myself of sleep, but the underworld was nocturnal. Trashing the BZC's database during the day wouldn't have netted me the information that I had gotten. There were still thirty-two hours until the time marked in the packet. I could use the sleep.

And when I did go to bed, Zero treated me with images of what we could do if I really decided to go rogue. He definitely had creativity when it came to that sort of thing.

*****

There was an icon flashing in the bottom corner of my screen, alerting me to a project update. This was rather curious, considering I wasn't currently connected to our project workspace. I hadn't once connected since turning the laptop on for the first time. Logging into the Preventers system would have been a ridiculously foolish mistake.

I'd gotten the laptop from Quatre, and he was a devious little thing. He would have access to the secured routers in his corporate suites. He would know what avenues to use to send a message to this computer. I didn't have the tools set up to do a trace on the signal, but I thought it fairly safe to assume that the alert was from him. Zero agreed with me.

Still, that was no reason to be careless. I tiptoed quietly into the Preventers system without setting off any warnings. I had set up the security on the network, but I was too much the product of all I had been to have not left myself a back way in. I downloaded the project update, cleaned up after myself, and got out of there before I got carried away. Once safely isolated again, I scanned the files, deemed them safe, and opened them.

With all the other things going on, I'd nearly forgotten about the black market dealings that had drawn us together into a 'task force' to begin with, but with the violence escalating, someone had gotten the smart idea to recover the RX-32s Trowa had found in Morocco. During the course of that investigation, they'd poked around quite a bit, and apprehended someone that Quatre had quite predictably cracked with little difficulty. Before the man clammed up, he let out some fancy rhetoric involving fire and destruction and chaos, implying enough to clue us on in an imminent bomb threat against the capital city.

That wasn't good at all. We were dealing with people that had a history of violence in their respective countries. They knew how to concoct homemade, untraceable explosives, and they knew how to deploy them effectively. Molotovs had already been used by rioters in two different states over the last few days. The project notes also indicated the construction of the Ribi variant as part of the rioters' arsenal, but luckily they hadn't been used. Taking the next step to premeditated arson wasn't that hard to imagine.

The team hadn't nailed down time or place yet, but we had a general idea. Before the week was out, most likely. The radicals said they wanted to deconstruct the current government and return power to the national level, so they would probably target government facilities. It'd be here, in the capital, the center of the centralization. Possibly the Senate building, possibly department buildings essential to the government infrastructure. Though some nations were angry at their representatives for not managing to push the decentralization legislation through the senate, their party line didn't seem to support them targeting individuals. It had become the cumbersome nature of the global government itself that prevented the senators from seeing the path to a better tomorrow. Of course, that wouldn't stop them from considering the coincidental deaths of any government employees to be acceptable. We may have been 'victims' of the world nation's indoctrination program, but we were also representatives of the beast that was attempting to devour all individuality in the world, or something to that effect.

I was feeling far less sympathy for the nationalist cause than I once did. Clearly the agitators had been agitating for quite a while before they had decided to take united action.

Obviously, we needed to stop this before it happened. We needed to find the people responsible, or we needed to figure out where exactly the violence was going to take place. Countries from around the world had joined the cause, and the cast of characters in this drama would probably be international, but they would probably be purchasing at least some of their ingredients locally. While most bomb-making materials could be transported safely prior to mixture, it was somewhat suspect to be dragging a large bag of fertilizer onto an airplane. Vendors would be questioned to identify recent suspicious purchases. Suppliers would be asked about their inventory. International routes would also be investigated, looking for signs of known terrorists from bomb-happy nations. Once found, those people would be interrogated thoroughly, though I doubted they would give anything up. They would probably be detained, but there were plenty of people that could take their places.

And what was I going to do? Irritated though I may have been, I was going to do my damn job. I familiarized myself with the dossiers of all the suspects included in the project notes, and when that wasn't enough, I tapped into the Preventers database again for more. With all of that information in mind, I broke past the security on the local transit authority's files and started analyzing their logs. Other people would probably be looking through the same data, but I wasn't about to sit around waiting for someone else to figure it all out. While I was there, I sniffed out a few of the worst holes in their network and added them to my list of things to mend one day. When this was over, maybe Duo would get his wish and I'd be taken out of Tech Support, if only to be re-writing proper, scalable systems for the whole stupid world. Which would actually be even more of a desk job and even more distasteful to him. Oh well.

Assuming I still had a job when this was all over. But then, when had that stopped me? This had been my job, long before the government ever decided to give me a paycheck for it.

Flipping through the files made me twitchy. It reminded me that I had left a neural interface device in my desk at work. It would be useless to anyone but me, and in fact it would probably be unrecognizable as such to almost anybody but me, and surely no one had any idea that such a thing would be lurking in my desk, but it went against the grain to leave something that could be used against me where the enemy could get their hands on it. I made another note to myself to remove it from HQ at the earliest possible convenience.

I went back five days through the passenger manifests, but didn't find any names that I recognized from the Preventers case file. I moved on to re-examining the dossiers, hoping that an MO would pop out that would lend itself to the terrorists' intent. While I did that, Zero conducted his own post-processing exercises, and seventy-three minutes of eye-burning fun later, he notified me of a discrepancy in the transit authority logs. The number of people on one list matched the stated total number of passengers, but the ticket sales didn't add up. Someone was missing from the list.

I went back to the original data in the log, inspecting it in its raw form this time and found that indeed, someone had altered the files. Careful inspection and elimination of the possibilities led me to believe that the perpetrator must have had internal access to the transit authority's systems. I crept back into our project's files, updated them with the information that I uncovered, and made sure Quatre would get a flashy icon of his own.

Before I could log out to begin backtracking our mystery passenger's itinerary, I got another alert in the corner of my screen, but this time, it was Trix again. The part of me that believed that my situation called for radio silence frowned, but thinking that she might have more information for me, I opened the message.

It was pretty simple. "WTH?" I decided to refrain from excess chatter and just wait for her to continue. It took twenty-one seconds, but she did. "You know what I just spent all day doing?"

"What have you found out?" I prompted dutifully to let her know I was here, after another forty-seven seconds had passed without another note.

"Nothing. Because I just spent all day assigned to looking into the hackjob done on the BZC's access systems."

Oh. "So?"

"I know you always hated that thing."

"So?"

"It was good. The job, I mean."

She seemed to be implying things, but I wasn't about to confirm it. I wasn't stupid enough to leave calling cards around. "Did it have anything to do with the terrorists?"

"Inconclusive. Kind of random, kind of not."

'You just here to bitch?" I had other work to get back to.

"Just what are you up to, Green?"

"Plausible deniability, Wys. Gotta go." I broke the connection and shook my head. I'd gotten very useful information out of the job, so I wasn't about to lament the day's waste of resources devoted to tracking a false lead. Later that night, I'd jump through the necessary hoops to get myself into the 'games'. But for now, I got back to my investigation.

*****

Another update flashed in the corner of my monitor the next day. Our means of communication were inefficient and crude, but effective. Project update notifications were a standard feature of the workspace, probably intended for work involving interoffice cooperation. In the cases where the entire team spoke to each other on a regular basis, the updates were rather unnecessary, but deciding to turn them on once in a while wouldn't raise any eyebrows.

I accessed the updated files and reviewed them. After a thorough, but not very polite, investigation of the transit authority's office, they'd found someone who had access to the proper files during the timeframe given. A little more digging revealed his hometown to be a current hotbed of dissension. He didn't have any immediately discernable ties to the radical movement, nor did he have the know-how to alter the files himself, but after a little one-on-one time with Quatre, he gave up the name of a friend that did. The hunt for the friend was still on, but based on the man's hometown, and other collaborating data coming from going back to the source of the train whose logs had been altered, we had a pretty good idea of just who had snuck into the city. APBs were out on him now.

Time to employ some more of my unmonitored freedom and get creative with the global network. We lived in an increasingly digital age. The bad guys could use that to their advantage to perpetrate ever more advanced crimes, but the good guys could use it to chase the bad guys in ever more advanced ways. The technocrats would come out on top in the end. It was good to be one of them.

Sorensen, our radical guest, was probably staying in town somewhere. I left that to the official investigators to look into. His bank accounts would be monitored for local activity -- also information that the Preventers could gain access to. I decided to skip a few steps and take a bite out of his phone records. They would probably be tapped by official channels eventually, but no one would mind if I took a peek at them first. He wasn't going to be carrying out any acts of terrorism alone. He would need to get in contact with other people.

A dozen major probability calculations, four illegal trespasses, and one short nap later, our search web showed convergence upon one network address in the city. If I could validate that one data point, we could keep on chugging through the possibilities with a higher degree of accuracy. Checking in quickly with the project notes, I found that some solid progress had been made since the update from the previous day, but in a different direction from my own research.

I weighed the risks, found them negligible, and left the apartment. It was the middle of the day now, and I blinked in the sunlight, wishing for my sunglasses, but all I had on me was clothing that fortunately didn't look too much like a uniform without my jacket. I typically opted for the regulation t-shirt and slacks, both of which were plain. My jacket had been hanging off the back of my chair when IAB had come for me. Which, if Duo still cared, had probably pissed him off. I'd left the tracker in there so he could always find me, after all, but that presupposed that I would have the jacket with me all the times.

My wallet had been confiscated, which was a bit of an annoyance. Winner Corp's executive suites were the land of plenty in most ways, but not all. Pulling some cash out of Duo's account was probably a little dirty, given the current state of our relationship, but these were extenuating circumstances. I didn't know where I stood with the authorities. Surely this imminent threat against the government was consuming their attention, but if they thought that I was collaborating with the radicals, then I was a part of their problem. It was safest to assume that my financials were being watched as closely as the ID'ed terrorist, and I didn't feel like doing anything any more fancy to acquire resources.

I stopped by a drugstore, picked up a pair of cheap shades for the dual purpose of blocking the sun and making me just that little bit less recognizable, then headed toward the cafEthat was my target. We had found a small cluster of network traffic originating from the cafEs router. It was possibly connected to our guy through the proverbial six degrees of separation, but the odds seemed good for it.

The cafEwasn't at the height of its service for the day, but there were still enough people there that I didn't stick out. I decided I could use a coffee instead of my usual steamed milk, and used my time waiting to look around casually. I didn't spot anyone out of place, whether a radical or a member of the local authorities looking for a stray radical matching my description. There were a half dozen computers in the cafE Two were being used. I'd be able to get the information I needed out of any of them, but it would be easiest if I could use the same computer from which the data had originated. I selected the one in the back corner as the one most likely used by anyone doing anything suspicious, bought some time on it, and settled in with my coffee.

These poor computers, set up with so many restrictions, to be abused by ignorant users. I planned on letting my station stretch its wings a bit with a good workout. I quickly bypassed the limitations and gained real access to my computer's resources. Without the normal tools at my disposal for this kind of analysis, I would have to work in the raw, but that was alright. It would make it more difficult for anyone else to trace my work, certainly.

Carefully keeping my typing to a sedate, non-attention-grabbing pace, I worked my way into the computer's logs. Most user history was erased at the end of the session for privacy's sake, but short of a full reformatting, pieces of that data always stuck around, which gave us in the TRSU something to do. Following the traffic patterns that had led me here, I dug out fragments of messages sent from the computer. It took a little time to sort it out. To my surprise and disgust, our man Sorensen typed messages like a teenaged girl.

Despite that, however, I found some data that could possibly be useful. I picked out the name of one of the ingredients that could be used in a homemade explosive. That could help if they got the dogs out to start sniffing for threats. I also picked up a time for a rendezvous that had happened last night, and what sounded like a reference to a place that I didn't understand. Committing the information to memory, I put everything back in order, tossed my empty coffee cup, and slipped out of the cafE I followed an indirect route back to the apartment out of habit, but it was almost a little disappointing that the closest call I'd had that day was being assaulted by a girl trying to entice me into taking a leaflet for some show in the city. I saw a little more of a police presence patrolling the streets in their cars, but it was nothing that a simple glance in the other direction couldn't counter.

It was reassuring, but it was maddening, too. I'd managed to walk the streets in peace time and not have a problem with it, knowing that their freedom was what we had been fighting for, but as I had during the wars, I found myself left with a sour taste in my mouth now. I knew the government was controlling the media about the bomb threat against the city, but the world news still covered the global unrest, the riots, the protests, the anger. Did the people walking the streets today not pay attention to anything going on outside their little bubbles? Or did they just think it didn't have anything to do with them? I hardly expected everyone to be cowering in fear, but some sort of awareness would be nice. One of our terrorists could plant a bomb right underneath their noses, and would they even notice?

I returned to the suite unmolested, making me wish I'd tempted fate and ducked into a market quickly for some real food. As soon as I got in, I passed the information on again, sending just an e-mail this time, emphasizing that I was an anonymous informant so that the legitimacy of my illegal endeavours couldn't be questioned later, if the lawyers or IAB got bored enough to look into the details. I appended a note to our project files to assure the team of the message's authenticity. Afterwards, I returned to the other lines I'd cast, and the next day around noon, I received the fruit of my labors.

The phone rang, startling me enough for my hand to go automatically to my hip. The sharp sound was jarring in an apartment that had previously been silent save for the typing on a soft keyboard, and an occasional break to shake loose the joints in my hands.

Deciding that the call must be important, I picked up as soon as I got my wits back together. Quatre spoke to me almost before I finished saying 'hello.' "It's going to be today."

I spent a heartbeat's time processing the calm declaration before snapping back into business mode. "Location?"

"Unknown. Time unknown. We estimate early evening. After most people have gone home for the day."

It seemed out of character for our terrorists to be interested in killing civil servants, so suddenly our window had been narrowed to the next six or seven hours. I didn't know what kind of magic the team had worked to find this information out, but I trusted it. "Timed explosive?"

"Yes. Our teams are on the lookout now."

The longer the delay between planting the explosive and detonating it, the more unreliable things got, but bomb-planting was a crime of opportunity. It might be ideal for a timed explosive device to be set later in the day to minimize the risk of a random factor stumbling into their plan, but maybe things hadn't worked out that way. We couldn't assume anything at this point. "Evacuations?"

"Orderly. Drills, time off for good behavior, the usual."

"Likely targets?"

"Almost anywhere." Of the government buildings, it was implied. "With that silly transparency notion of theirs, the government decided that visitors and tourists should be allowed onto the grounds of damn near any administrative building in the city."

It figured. The terrorists didn't even have to do anything. If they waited long enough, this government would collapse under its own weight all by itself. "Orders?"

"Find it." He didn't say anything else before hanging up on me. He didn't need to. I had my marching orders, and no doubt he had already started his march.

I checked the project file for updates, but there weren't any. I hadn't expected any. None of us was so diligent about our paperwork that we would have stopped in the middle of this crisis to fill some out. I didn't have much new data to go on, then. I looked out the window. The place had a pretty decent view of the city. I could already see that traffic was being diverted from some areas. The others weren't so dependent on me that informing me of the new time frame would have been on the top of their minds, either. Clearly, it was time to leave my safe haven and take more direct action.

Quatre's flat was pretty well stocked, but not with a car. Luckily, a lot of the public transportation routes led to the political center of the city. I spent my time on a bus reviewing the relevant data before I was dropped off on a few streets away from my ultimate target. Foot traffic hadn't been halted yet. With so many officers and agents on the street, I took care not to attract anyone's attention as I stealthed my way inside their perimeter and to the place I had predicted would contain the mobile command unit. Finding it successfully, I got past a police officer and an agent on the strength of my regulation half-uniform alone, though it had probably helped that I looked like I belonged there. Once inside the command center, I figured I could hit anybody that protested to my presence before I could convince them to let me do my job.

I didn't have to. None of the others were there, but I had expected them to be out in the field, where they preferred to be. The man and the woman that looked like they were in charge barely looked up at me from their printouts as I strode past them and planted myself at one of the terminals. "Tech Support," I announced quietly.

They took me at my word and let me be. Other agents from my department would probably be showing up later to help coordinate the search, but they didn't worry me. I quickly took up a headset and attached it to my ear while looking over the setup. Finding the information that I needed, I tapped into Quatre's channel. "Yellow One. I'm in position at the CC."

"Acknowledged. Get to work."

I got to work. With up to the minute information and access to security reports, there had to be something that I could do to help narrow down the search. After a brief survey, I settled on the surveillance vids. Since the threat went orange, round-the-clock cameras had been glued to the major access points to popular government spots. I started scanning them for faces that showed up repeatedly. Such an examination was notoriously unreliable, but it seemed like the best chance we had. Maybe Zero and I could find something that others could not.

During the process of recoding the comparison parameters for an acceptable range of false positives, two people sat down at the other terminals, one right beside me. "Yuy," someone hissed. Trix. "What are you doing here?"

"Working," I answered, not stopping. A hierarchical search was narrowing the field pretty well.

"I thought you were, uh, 'telecommuting'."

"And now I'm not. Cut the chatter and get to work, Agent."

"Yes, sir, Mr. Super Secret Special Agent, sir," she muttered as she donned her headset. It wasn't long before she was sucked into the coordination effort, leaving me in peace.

Relative peace. The lines were alive with check-ins and updates as city employees were shuffled out of the way and their buildings cleared. Manpower was spread thin. Government locations were set all over the city, and a perimeter had to be maintained around each, preferably without panicking the people. Tension mounted as the hours crumbled into the past, but I felt strongly that we wouldn't find the bomb or the bombers on good chance alone.

I had acquired a suspect pool to work with from my image processing. Between other tasks, I made Trix help me run names and faces through the databases. She complained, asking me why I enjoyed field work, but she did as she was asked. Incorporating the news I heard over the line, I slowly whittled away at the list until we came down to a half-dozen possibilities. Good enough. I passed the information along to Quatre to distribute as he saw fit.

Twenty minutes later, and the cars of one of the suspects had been IDed at one of the sites the search parties hadn't gotten to yet. It was still quiet in that part of the city, and Barton, closest to the site, made sure it stayed that way. Finding the suspect was no good if we didn't also find his bomb. I kept working at the problem in case he wasn't it, listening in as security at the Hall of Records scoured the building for the man. They found him taking pictures of a statue in one of the gardens. He claimed innocence, but a dog was brought in, sniffed him, and found him guilty. The dog's nose followed the scent of explosive residue back to the rear of another statue, and they found what they were looking for.

Quatre contacted me over the line. "They got it."

"Have they disarmed it?"

"Not yet. But they're working on it. They don't foresee any difficulties. Good job."

Amidst the celebratory shouts I could hear in the command center and outside, something seemed off. Maybe it was just anti-climatic, a feeling I thought I'd gotten used to years ago. Did I just miss being more actively involved in the search? Was I just waiting for the bomb to be disarmed and removed, the city put back to rights? Maybe it was that my situation hadn't changed yet. Hopefully we could get things cleared up and I could be home soon. Well, not hiding out, anyway. It would probably take a little bit more time before home felt like home again.

With a flash of Zero-induced intuition, I knew what it was that was really bothering me. I pressed the button to open the channel to Quatre again. "It's not the only one."

Beside me, my quietly uttered words caught Trix's attention and she let what she had been saying to me fade away. A few seconds passed before Quatre answered. "Are you sure?"

"Well..." Zero prodded me in the right direction. "It seems likely."

"I'd agree. Let's be on the safe side, anyway. Winner out."

I heard his voice re-issuing commands, staying calm and reasonable as he ordered caution and a continuation of the search. There were still a few suspects on the list that I had passed off to him, but by now, most of the people in the area had been emptied out. Quite a few of them were still corralled somewhere else for processing, someone checking out their credentials before freeing them to go. But I had the feeling that the other bombs had already been planted.

"Well, pooh," Trix said, dragging her headset back on. "And I here I was all ready to play, too."

I glanced over to her, going over what she had been saying to me while I had been distracted. Then I glanced down and saw the paper she had set down on the counter between us. "That your MinFa info?"

"Yep." She smoothed out one of the wrinkles in the paper. "I wanted to see what that whole thing was all about, too."

She'd gotten her creds in before the deadline and was registered for the games. The time for the event had been distributed that morning, but I hadn't yet checked before getting distracted. "Soon, isn't it?" I murmured to myself, logging into the mail account I had provided with my registration. I opened the message I had gotten that morning. "Same time. Different server."

"Yeah, don't want to overload ourselves, you know."

No, they'd probably be using the flood of participants to overload someone else. But its timing was very suspect. I could see a grand pattern of bombs in the city and on the network simultaneously. It would paralyze everything. I picked up my comm again and called Quatre. "Order the government systems to shut down and disconnect from the network."

He was quick to catch on, as usual. "Another timed attack?"

"Yes." I had an idea and started pulling what DNS information I could get my hands on from the mobile command center. "I suspect the enemy of organizing amateur hackers into a raiding party. Target unknown."

"I'll take care of it."

"You have things covered here?"

"Yes. Do what you have to."

"Yuy out."

I pulled the headset off and turned to Trix. "I need to borrow your car."

She stared at the hand I held out expectantly. "What?"

"I need to go somewhere." In a hurry. Public transportation wasn't going to cut it this time, and I'd noticed the bulge of her keys in her pockets earlier. It wasn't uncommon for the command center to move out as soon as possible, and for the support crew to get there when they could.

"No way! You know I don't let other people touch my Daisy!"

I'd thought maybe she had taken a company car here, but it probably would have taken too long to get one requisitioned. I Looked at her steadily. "Worldwide security? Or Daisy? Which is it going to be, Trix?"

She stood up. "I'm driving."

"You're staying here."

"Screw you, Heero." She started heading out the door, leaving me to follow. "Dave and that other guy's got it covered. I'm not letting you run off by yourself."

I didn't want to waste the time trying to stop her, so I let her take the lead all the way to her car. Once we got there, I held out my hand again. "I'm driving. You can sit in the passenger seat."

She glared at me ineffectively. "It's my car."

"I may need to break a few traffic laws. I'm driving."

She looked doubtfully at me, but agreed anyway. But not without unlocking the passenger side first and climbing in before handing me the keys to make sure I wouldn't speed away without her. Not a bad move, really. As I worked my way daringly out of the snarl that was police and Preventers activity, she pouted. "If you hurt her, I'll hurt you."

"Trust me, Trix. I have deeply personal reasons for not waiting to harm your Daisy. You couldn't have chosen a better name for your car."

::Mary?::

::Ah, yes, there is that.::

::Duo?::

I smirked internally. ::No, I know Duo can take whatever I have to dish out.:: Unless it was news that I had a computer living inside my head.

"You're weird, Yuy."

"I know." Funny how that answer occurred to me before I thought to point out that she was the one that had named her car.

In the end, I only sped a bit and snuck in at the very tail end of some yellow lights on my way to the ZenNet building.

Trix looked at the almost solid wall of the building dubiously. "Are you sure this is where we need to be?"

"Yes." Reasonably sure, anyway. ZenNet was the major network carrier for the city. Any signal coming in would inevitably be routed through these switches on the way to their final destinations.

I pushed the button for the child-safety locks on the doors of her car, then exited to determine the best point of entry. It took her a few seconds to realize what I had done before I heard her muffled curses. The building housed all of the local routers for this sector of the ZenNet network service. There would be a lot of hardware packed into the seven stories. Ventilation would be pretty hefty. Service engineers only needed to come here to investigate a problem, perform routine maintenance, or install systems upgrades. It was unlikely that anyone would be working here at this time to let us in. The building didn't have a front door, anyway. There was only a gated underground parking garage. Their business hinged on this place running without interruption; it wasn't meant to be inviting.

Trix showed up next to me, glaring for all she was worth. She must have climbed over the center console and gotten out via the driver's side. I'd hoped to be gone before she could figure it out, but I hadn't yet determined a destination. I didn't have the means to get up to the roof at this time, and it would take far too long to slink in through the ventilation system anyway. Windows were scarce, and thin slits in the wall when they were present. There was no chance of winning our way through the thick gate of the parking garage. I jogged around the side of the building, found an alley with some dumpsters. There was a gate in front of the alley, but nothing that couldn't be climbed over.

I got to the other side with ease, leaving Trix sputtering and trying to use the short wall next to the gate for leverage to get over while I inspected the length of the alley. Almost hidden behind the dumpsters was a door. Locked, of course. Where was a set of lockpicks when you needed them?

Trix may have worked Tech Support, but she had completed basic training, too. Thought it'd been kind of cool at the time. She joined me while I was staring at the door and punched me on the arm. "You're a bitch, Heero, you know that?"

"Yeah." I'd been getting that a lot lately.

She opened her mouth to complain more, but I hushed her when I heard the cranking of gears. The gate to the parking garage? I trotted quickly to the mouth of the alley and peered carefully through the grate of the fence. A car waited for the gate to open completely, but the men inside the car didn't looking like building engineers. I waited for it to pull inside before I cupped my hands and motioned with my head for Trix to get back over the fence. I wasn't enough of an asshole to leave her trapped on this side. There wasn't a conveniently short retaining wall next to it to help her out. She hesitated for a second, but my look must have been enough to drive her over the fence. She gasped when I gave her a boost, but she got over.

I pulled myself up and over as soon as she was clear, and ran low for the gate, keeping close to the wall out of habit. To her credit, she followed my example, and stayed right behind me as I slipped into the parking garage as the gate was closing. I immediately pulled her into the shadows, still hearing the sound of a car's engine as it pulled into a dimly lit parking space. "You should have stayed on the other side," I murmured to her.

She clutched at my arm. "Well, too late now, isn't it?" she hissed quietly. "Why are we being all super secret agent?"

"Those men don't work here, Trix. Something's not right."

There was enough discretion in her to fall silent as the engine was turned off. Two car doors opened. Two men exited the vehicle, walked over to the island of light that denoted the entrance to the building, and went inside. The door had been unlocked. Good. I turned to my companion. "I'm going in. You can stay here if you want."

"Are you insane?"

"It might be dangerous."

"And you want me to wait in this freaky place? I'm gonna bet that the best place to be is right next to you."

She was probably right. Best place for her, maybe, but I wasn't sure I wanted someone to look out for. I counted the cars in the small garage. Four. Anywhere from five to fourteen people inside. If more people came, it would be harder to hide in this place. Zero thought the odds were good that she could at least stay out of the way, and maybe even help out. If I had to deal with bad guys, it could be handy having a set of hands free to do what we had actually come here to do. "Fine. Be smart, stay low, stay quiet, and do as you're told, okay?"

"I went through basic, you know."

But she also looked nervous. Basic was a far cry from an actual field op. Well, nothing to be done about it now. Hopefully her confidence would hold and get her through this. I nodded, and headed for the door, wishing that Tech Support agents would bring their sidearms out in the field once in a while. A gun in my hand, even if it was borrowed, would make me feel better about the situation. Before I opened the door, I remembered to tell her to turn off her cell phone, just in case, and then we snuck in.

The men that had come in before us were nowhere in sight as we followed the hall to the stairs up to the ground level. I wasn't sure what to expect based on what I could guess of the building's layout. There hadn't been any windows to give the floor plan away. They would need space for the servers. They'd probably be open layout. A few storage spaces. A bathroom, maybe a small room to accommodate humans that had to work here for a while. Somewhere to sit down, plan, spread out materials. That was probably where the people would be gathered. Seven stories, though. There would be more than one of those places. Top floor for view? Bottom floor for access? Difficult to say. And as to where we could access and disable the set of servers we needed to? I missed the days of using a little bit of C4 to get the job done.

Once we got out to the main floor, we found ourselves confronted by a conference table. Some bags were set down on its surface. Beyond this pseudo-lobby area, there were several open doorways leading into rooms filled with servers attending to their business with a merry hum. On the wall next to where we came out was an emergency exit map. It wasn't detailed, but judging from it and the supports we could see on this floor, Zero and I came up with a general idea of the building's floor plan.

I searched the bags on the table quickly. I found something I thought may have been used to carry an explosive device. There were maps printed out from a computer, but they covered enough ground that it was difficult to narrow down the field of possible alternative locations for the other bombs. More importantly to me at the moment, I found a handgun. It was small, but it was loaded. I borrowed it, knowing that if this one person had been carrying a weapon, it was possible for the others to be carrying as well.

I pulled Trix into one of the server rooms. Banks and banks of computers connected with thick, neat bundles of cables filled the place. We couldn't just disable things haphazardly. City forces were also using part of this network, and they needed to stay up and running so long as the other threats to the government buildings had not yet been found and neutralized. I sent Trix down the row to follow the cables to their source while I studied the configuration of the systems in front of me. Wiggling one box out of its slot, I dusted off the top and examined the fine print on top of the case. It told me what address ranges it managed. Sliding it back to work out the next box, I found the next set of ranges, and to check the pattern, I looked at a third, and then a fourth farther down the line.

::Fifth floor,:: Zero calculated before I could. The intervals weren't perfectly regular -- I guessed that some parts of the network needed more computing power to handle the load -- but it was good enough.

I headed out to where Trix had disappeared to, and met her on the way back. She jerked her head wordlessly back the way she came and I followed, finding a terminal in the back corner of the room. I was just about to give it a better look when I thought I heard something. "Poke around," I whispered to Trix, gesturing at the monitor. I headed toward the door of the server room without giving her time to question me.

It was difficult to hear anything over the monotonous hum of all the hardware, but I stayed well back from the entrance and closed my eyes. Zero helped to filter out the background noise, and I identified a pair of footsteps. Heavyset male, from the sound of it. Someone rustling through the bags on the table. I prepared myself in case he noticed the missing gun, but apparently that wasn't what he had been looking for.

Two more sets of footsteps entered the room from the stairs out of the parking garage. "Andre," the man already in the room said. "Everything set?"

"Let's go meet with the others."

The three of them headed up the stairs to the level above. I waited around a little to be sure, holding a silent conversation with Zero, then went back to Trix. I gestured to her that three men had just entered the building and had proceeded upstairs. She stared blankly at me, reminding me that she wasn't one of us. I repeated my message verbally for her.

"What?" she hissed. "What are all these people doing here?"

"This must be their temporary base of operations." Servers had built-in protections these days against massive data attacks, though most of them weren't foolproof. They could be overridden or worked around from the hacker's end with a little work, but it could also be done if they had someone on the inside to let the attacks through. It was simple enough to imagine one of the building engineers having nationalist loyalties. This was a coordinated attack on the city; he could also contribute by providing somewhere discreet for the radicals to meet.

"What?!" she hissed more loudly.

I dismissed her demand with a shake of my head and gestured at the terminal. "Anything?"

She muttered something under her breath, too low for me to hear without paying attention, then flipped through a couple of submenus. "Better map. But I can't actually do anything with this thing."

I studied the map critically, updating the guesswork in my head. There was a breakroom on every other floor. Electrical room on the third floor. Central control room on the second floor. I guessed that that was where the men were primarily gathering. I charted a route to the fifth floor, outlined it for Trix, then got moving.

There were two staircases on either side of the building. I chose the one that the other men had not taken, the one farther from the control room. This was not their primary base of operations, nor was it a high security facility, nor presumably was it a place where they expected intruders, so we could be fairly certain that there were no cameras in the stairwells, no outlandish booby-traps lurking around the corners. Still, I took the stairs lightly and quickly with my usual professionalism, stopping on each landing to reassess the situation and wait for Trix to catch up. She wasn't a complete novice, but she was far from a special ops field agent. I would have left her behind, if I didn't think that would be more dangerous.

We reached the fifth floor with little difficulty and started walking down the rows, looking for the right set of boxes. She searched the banks on one side, and I the other, but after inspecting three of them, I paused, gave the setup a closer look, and swore.

Trix looked warily at me. "What?"

I gestured at the bulky lines of cables running down the rows. "These machines have been upgraded."

"So?"

I pulled one of the servers out of its compartment and confirmed the interweave of its wires. "Cascading redundancy."

"What, you mean if we unplug one, the others are going to kick in as backup?"

"Aa." I shoved the machine back into its place with an ill-disguised annoyance. I remembered when they had installed the new equipment. Service on the network had been slow for a week. Duo had taken the opportunity to declare, 'less network, more nookie.'

"Huh. Well, we can just unplug them all," Trix suggested brightly.

"No. Our forces are also using this network, and until I'm told otherwise, I'm going to assume that there's still an emergency going on in the city."

"How would you find out any different? You don't have a phone on you, and no one's going to call me."

"Then we'd best assume there's still an emergency." Besides, there were still men in this building. They would be keeping a close eye on the proceedings. If something had happened, they would have reacted somehow. "Come on."

She blinked at me for a moment before following. "Where to?"

"Electrical room."

"Where the hell is that?"

"Third floor south."

"What the hell direction is south?"

Ah. It'd been a long time since I had worked with someone that didn't have a sophisticated sense of spatial orientation. "We took the south stairs to get up here."

"Oh. I thought we couldn't disable everything."

"We can't." I stopped, thought over the plan that Zero and I had come up with, and decided the right thing to do would be to give her another choice.

::You're wasting time.::

::It'll be more of a waste if she weighs us down.::

Zero didn't know why I didn't just whack her over the head and leave her in a safe corner somewhere, but didn't say so in so many words.

"Trix. We need to get into the control room." I paused for an outburst, but she bit her lip before she could say anything. Good. "Yes, where all the men are. We should be able to get the level of control that we need from the central computer. My plan is to see what electrical systems we can mess with from the electrical room. That should draw some of them out to investigate, which will leave us with a smaller number of people to deal with. It will probably be dangerous. I can do this by myself."

She hesitated. She wanted to take what I was offering. She would be smart to take what I was offering. But in the end, she shook her head. "Nuh-uh, no way. I'm not going to be responsible for telling your snugglebunny that I let you run off into a dangerous situation all by yourself."

"My snugglebunny knows that I have the bad habit of running off into dangerous situations all by myself." Dammit, why did I keep following her lead, every time she said 'snugglebunny'? I clamped down on that thread of doubt whispering to me that he wasn't my snugglebunny anymore and reassured both her and myself. "It'll be fine." I took further steps when she looked like she was teetering on a threshold of decision. "I won't think any less of you. You're not trained for this."

She threw up her hands. "Oh, what the hell. Am I a Preventer, or aren't I? I'm in."

"You're tech support."

She stuck her tongue out at me. "And you keep saying that the techies are agents, too. And you're tech support, too."

There was no denying that. "I'm different."

There was also no denying that. "I'm in, Heero. If someone holds me hostage, go ahead and shoot, okay?"

Zero concurred, but being outnumbered two to one had never worried me before. "You're only saying that because you know I'm a good shot."

"Well, duh."

I shook my head, then asked her one more time for good measure. I needed her committed to this course of action, or else she would become a liability. She wouldn't have the chance to change her mind later. "You're sure?"

She nodded firmly, and off we went.

The trip down to the third floor went off without a hitch. We infiltrated the electrical room, and I took a look at all of the switchboxes on the walls. In a place like this, they were clearly labeled. Zero spun out the possibilities of each one, and we decided to go with the lights. There were signs of a backup generator, but it would run the lighting in emergency mode. The men in the control room would still come out to investigate, and we would still be able to see.

We flipped the switch on the lights. They went out with a sudden lack of background buzz, and one and a half seconds later, the backup kicked in, bringing us back to twenty percent lighting. "Let's go," I said, signaling her to move out with a universal hand signal that even she understood.

We went to wait in the server room closest to the entrance to the north staircase. Five minutes passed and nothing happened. "Come on, you idiots," I couldn't help muttering as Trix grew more and more antsy. "Everyone knows that there's someone in their base, messing with their systems, when the lights go out."

"Who's been watching too many movies now?" Trix scoffed softly. "Maybe they just think someone leaned on the light switch or something."

"Then they would have tried to turn them back on with the light switch and noticed that it didn't work." Was I overlooking the obvious? Maybe they had outflanked us? No, they couldn't get in behind our position, and the building wasn't so wide that we wouldn't know if they decided to come up the other set of stairs...

Trix rocked nervously on her heels. "Maybe they just don't know where the electrical room is. Or that there even is one."

Ridiculous. Who took over a building and used it as their headquarters without knowing where all the important... Oh. Right. Not dealing with professionals here. Not in the art of defense, anyway. But that didn't mean we could waltz into the middle of their marshaled forces and gain control of the central room without luring some of them out first. Unless I assumed that some of them had already left, there were at least nine men in the building that needed to be dealt with. And that was assuming that no more had joined the party.

Zero and I were revising our calculations when the door to the staircase finally opened. The two slackers strolled in casually, making crude jokes about how someone back in the control room was worrying over nothing, and how that related to the large, unsightly wet spots showing through on the underarm of the man's shirt, with a corollary to wet spots on other parts of a person's clothing. I shook my head, signaled Trix to stay where she was even though she probably could have taken these delinquents out herself, and crept up behind them.

The man on the right fell behind a step, and I jabbed him in the kidneys to open the scuffle, following it with a hard knock on the back of his head with the handgun I had borrowed from the bag downstairs. Taking advantage of the other man's shock, I used the extra time to catch the first man before he fell to the floor with a loud thump, letting him down gradually while kicking his companion. The man doubled over, and I repeated the procedure with him. If any suspicious noises made it through to the floor below, hopefully they could assume that these goofballs had just been horsing around.

When it was over, Trix emerged with the fistful of cable ties and the roll of electrical tape we had found in a cabinet. "Wow, I've gotta take more of those hand to hand classes."

"That's only two of them," I noted as we bound the men up and pulled them into a side room. "We can't afford to wait for any more of them to wise up to the situation and get their butts out of that room."

"Well, we can't just go storming in there."

"No. We need to let them know we're here."

"Then they'll find us!"

"Not all at once." I grabbed the chin of the man I'd hit less hard and slapped him a bit until I got a groggy awareness out of him. "You. How many men are in this building?"

"Wha--?"

I slapped him again, ignoring the way Trix had covered her mouth with her hand. I didn't know if that was to keep a gasp in, or to keep from giggling. "How many men are in this building?"

"What? Shit, who the hell are you guys?" His eyes darted to Trix, whose uniform was in better shape than mine. "Oh fuck, Preventers? Shit, I'm not telling you anything!"

He opened his mouth to scream, so I planted the tip of my gun in his crotch. That shut him up rather quickly. "How many men are in this building?"

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit--"

I hit him again with my free hand. "Don't make me ask you again."

"Oh shit oh-- uh. Fuck, you wouldn't do that to me, would you? Man to man, here!" I flicked the safety on the gun noisily, making him think that I had pulled the hammer back or something, and the prayers started up again. After a pointed look, he shut up and finally decided to cooperate. "Um, I don't know, man! I didn't count!"

"Give me your best guess, then." I smiled for him, which I was told could be somewhat unnerving.

"Uh. I don't know, like, uh, twenty-something?"

My expression darkened, causing him to plead for mercy again, but it wasn't that I didn't think he had answered the question well enough. That was a lot more than I had thought. Either the first cars had been packed to capacity, or more people were arriving. We had the city under watch. This was a pretty good place for the terrorists to gather and wait for the heat to die down, and to watch the show while they were at it. "Are they armed?"

"Armed? You mean like guns? Some of them, yeah."

Great. Hopefully that just meant I'd have more opportunities to trade my gun in when I emptied this one. I knocked the guy out again and stood. "We need to move fast. This may take a while to deal with."

She finally uncovered her mouth and stared at me with wide eyes. "People really do that?"

I blinked at her, emerging for a moment from the haze of potentials buzzing through my head. "Do what?"

"Threaten to shoot off a guy's balls?"

"It's effective, isn't it?" Even when it was just a bluff. It was easy to tell who would fall for it. As if I would fire a weapon in here and give away my position. I shrugged, then got back to business. "The control room is too defensible. Alerting them to our presence will get more of them out of that room. The more spread out they are, the easier it will be to deal with them. Once there are few enough people within, we can approach the control room itself and do what we need to do."

She stared at me as if she didn't do this sort of thing every day. "How do you expect to get them out of the control room? Keep flashing the lights?"

Good question. They didn't seem to be the brightest bunch when it came to an intruder in their midst. What would we have to do, knock on their door and invite them to play?

Hm. That didn't seem to be a bad idea, actually. "Here's the plan. I'm going to walk into the room, let some of them see me, and then get the hell out of there. They'll follow, we'll circle around, get into the control room, take out the men inside, and then hold the position. I can keep them out while you take care of business with the computer."

She didn't look like she understood the plan. I was about to go over it again with her when she cut me off. "That's your idea of a plan?!"

I flashbacked to several instances of Duo saying the exact same thing to me. "Hey, at least I have a plan," I mouthed soundlessly, my usual answer. But now wasn't the time for this. I shook my head impatiently to clear out the random thoughts. "If you don't like it, then find a corner to hide in until this is all over."

She bristled. "Hey, I said I was in. Just... Just stand between me and the guns, and I'll be just fine."

I looked intently at her. "Are you sure?" It was a risk taking her with me, but it was a risk leaving her behind, too. Zero ran the odds for me again. The differences didn't amount to much, but I'd prefer the future I had control over, given the choice.

"You said you need me to take care of the computer."

"I can do it myself if I have to." I'd done it before. It was just easier with more tools at one's disposal, in a base built for defense, without a time limit ticking away. Already I was thinking ahead. The door to the room would probably be just a door. Bullets could pierce it easily, so I wouldn't be able to simply barricade it. Much would depend on where access to the computers we needed was.

After a few seconds, Trix huffed irritably. "I'm going with you."

I always did admire her gumption. Even if I did, at times, think that maybe it was just because she reminded me of Duo. Maybe she'd been his surrogate while I was away. Maybe I was just drawn to that kind of person. "Your next coffee is on me."

"My coffee for the rest of the damn year is on you. Now let's go before I change my mind."

::Give me strength,:: I thought as we set off, not out of need so much as superstition. Better safe than sorry.

::We shall keep her safe,:: he answered with no particular concern. Together, we could accomplish our goals. He didn't generally care what those goals were.

There were stairs on both sides of the building. The control room was right in the middle. I had Trix wait back in the stairwell of our 'escape route' while I executed my admittedly straightforward plan. An advantage of the plan was that I could see the numbers for myself. I walked toward the door and counted twenty-four men before someone spotted me. He shouted at me. A few of his companions also turned. One of them spotted my colors and the jacket I'd borrowed from Trix and shouted, "Shit, Preventers!" And then the chase was on, and I had just enough time to think to myself that Duo had better never find out about this plan before I wiped all extraneous thought away and focused on getting the job done.

I ran for the stairs with the first man hot on my heels. If there was anyone behind him with a gun, he was conveniently keeping me out of the line of fire. Before I got to the exit, I heard Trix doing as she was told, clambering up the stairs with her heavy barely-regulation army boots. I leapt up the stairs after her, turning as I reached the first landing to wait for the first man in pursuit. He caught up in a couple of seconds, but I easily dodged his lunge, turned his momentum against him, and threw him down the stairs. Another man stumbled over his body, and then a second got stuck in the jam-up. I caught sight of the gun the third man was carrying, and decided that now would be an ideal time to continue my upwards journey.

By pre-arrangement, Trix halted on the fifth floor. I signaled her to move safely to one side, and then I laid in wait for our guests. I caught them as they came through the door. Four of them now. The first was laid out by virtue of surprise. The second man had the gun. I caught his hand, twisted, and took custody of the weapon. The third was dispatched with a couple of quick kicks. The last man of the group was also armed with a weapon. He pulled the trigger, but telegraphed it clearly enough for me to dodge the first and then the second bullet. By that time, I had closed the distance between us and laid him low with a hard punch in the gut and an elbow to the face. I took possession of his weapon as well, and then headed for the stairs on the other side of the room.

"Holy mother of mercy," Trix gasped at me as she ran alongside me. "Knowing you're some sort of action hero and seeing it are two entirely different things."

I just handed her a gun and said nothing, far too caught up in the timing of our little cat and mouse game. She took the weapon reluctantly, but I'd spent enough time with her to know that she was a decent shot. If she got too nervous to actually do it, then she could at least hold on to the weapon for me until I needed it.

As we were leaving the fifth floor, another man emerged from the stairwell. I put a bullet in his leg and left him behind. The sound of footsteps filled the echoing space of the stairwell.

::At least four, possibly as many as eight.:: We couldn't go up and get trapped at the top of the building, so down we went to meet them. Footsteps above our position told us that someone had taken the high road. I made note of them as we went down, accompanied by the shouts of our enemies attempting to coordinate something. They were also wondering how many of us there were. Good. That part of the plan was going well, between the amount of noise we had made in the stairwell and the doors on the third and fourth floors that I'd thrown open. They'd waste manpower searching the rooms in between.

Someone fired a shot that had no chance of hitting us, so I didn't worry as Trix flinched violently. She didn't have the benefits that I had in being able to calculate the bullet's source and trajectory. As we closed in on the group below us, I fired a couple of shots down at them to cover us. Zero fed me an angle, and I aimed as directed, smirking mentally as the bullet ricocheted off metal and came close to causing bodily harm. Anxious shrieks rose. ::Show off.::

Zero assured me he would do it again if the opportunity arose. My rather affectionate chastisement did not deter him in the slightest.

We reached our rendezvous with the men, with Trix again hanging back at a 'safe' distance. I identified the man with the gun and took him out first, sliding in behind him to take control of his right arm and keep his weapon pointed at the others while I disabled him. I pitched him over the rails, then ducked past the men while they were distracted by the scream of their comrade to take out the guy that looked the most confident. I broke his arm, and the loud sound of it brought back the attention of the others. I used the gun I wasn't interested in firing yet and gave him a smart tap on the back of the head.

A bullet was fired from above me. ::Close range. Trix,:: Zero identified for me. I took a moment for a glance upwards to confirm, and saw Trix pointing her weapon toward the man descending from above. Good for her. Her elbow was a bit locked, but I'd forgive her, given the circumstances. She didn't actually have to hit anything, just keep them at bay for a little while.

The next man I faced went down with his nose pushed back into his face, and the last man went running down the stairs. I jumped after him, using gravity and the railing to kick him off balance. His head hit the wall and he fell. "Come on," I barked at her. She joined me gladly, and we didn't run into any more people before coming out on the second floor. One man was waiting outside the control room. He shouted a warning at his companions inside, then rushed us. Moments later, a second man came out to support him with a gun. I grabbed the first guy and used him as a shield against the second, letting him take a bullet in the chest, and then taking out the gunman while he was still blinking in surprise.

I snatched up the extra firepower, then headed inside. Only three men left within. I dealt with them, tossed them out, and pulled Trix in. "Go," I commanded, pointing her at the computer while I cleared off the table in the middle of the room with a few sweeps of my arm. Luckily, there was a terminal that was offset from the door so she couldn't be exposed. I flipped the table and pushed it up as a barricade against the open door. It would provide some cover, even if it wasn't bulletproof, and stop a direct charge.

Trix was cursing as she tapped away at the terminal, though it took a moment to register. "What?" I asked tersely.

"Shit, Heero, do you know how many guys you just took out?"

Oh, was that all? "I lost count," I lied blandly, continuing my survey of the room for anything that might be useful. My eyes landed on the papers that I had swept to the floor. With a glance over my table to make sure no one had come for us yet, I swooped them up and started looking through them. Pictures, lists, diagrams.

"Oh, come on!" Trix kicked the base of the computer in frustration. "Who the hell was smart enough to lock this system out?"

Their building engineer collaborator must have been here and taken precautions against our meddling, once we had announced our presence. "You're Tech Support. Deal with it."

"Oh, shut up," she muttered irritably, whacking away at the keyboard again.

I flipped through the papers, looking for something I recognized, something with a logo on it, anything that would tell me what sites the terrorists had been studying. Finally, I found one. "Trix, phone."

"What?"

"Give me your phone," I repeated sharply, realizing that at some point I'd have to apologize for not being able to address her with anything other than a command tone.

She made a sound of impatience as she pulled the phone off her belt clip and tossed it at me. I heard footsteps, looked over our table, and shot the man coming our way. He swore quite vociferously and stumbled back out of the short hallway and returned to cover. Once the threat had been put off for a while again, I turned on the phone, then made a sound of disgust. No reception. Figured.

I looked around the room and found a landline. I pulled the phone off its cradle, dialed my number, and stretched its cord to the limit to get myself back into a good defensive position.

"Winner."

"Office of the Registrar. Looks like a men's room."

There was only the briefest of pauses before I heard him calling Chang to pass the information on. Someone poked his head around the corner in the interim and aimed a gun at me. I fired at him and caught him in the neck. Sure, Yuy, that was really non-lethal.

::Target area was limited.::

True. That's what he got for taking cover around a corner. At least it hadn't been right between the eyes. It'd take him a while to bleed out. In theory, his friends could save him.

Winner got back on the line. "Heero, where are you?"

"ZenNet building, South Fourteenth Street. Local terrorist HQ, it seems."

"How many?"

"Twenty-someodd, unconfirmed."

"I'll send some men out."

"Registrar may not be the only one." I continued going over the photos, studying them for clues, running the references through my internal database. "They have pictures. I see Records, but one more site as well."

"City Hall. Behind a statue. We got that one."

Ah. The architecture matched, though I hadn't actually seen much of City Hall. I'd take his word for it. "We'll keep going on our end, then."

"The hacking thing?"

Another bad guy attempted to creep out and take a shot at me while I was standing in the open. I planted a bullet in his shoulder and checked my ammo. I was still good for another three shots. "Yes. We're working on cutting off anything coming through here, but this won't be the only site. Prepare for damages."

"Acknowledged. The system disconnect is proceeding about as expected."

The possibility trees ran off wildly, considering how much time it could take to find an office administrator, explain the situation to him, and then have him contact a system engineer in order to remove them from the network. "Understood. I'll keep you apprised. Yuy out."

I hung up the phone and went over to Trix, spying over her shoulder as she continued whacking the keys on the keyboard angrily. "Status?"

"Oh, come on!" she pouted. "I know I'm not crazycool like the big kids, but it's like what I'm looking for doesn't even exist!"

I watched her as she fished through the system, looking for something to leverage, but another sound from the hallway leading to our temporary fort had me quick-shuffling back to my position at the door. Before I came to a complete stop, the would-be attacker turned tail and ran. I kept my sights squarely on the man's back as he fled, but didn't waste the bullet.

I maintained my vigil by the door for another four minutes, going through the possibilities with Trix in our quest to break this system before some other system was broken. At that point, the mumbling and mutters outside in the main room took on a new tone. I listened hard and focused until words emerged from the noise.

"Forget this. It's already set. Let's get out of here."

"Shit, you mean all this time we've been here? You're fucking insane, man! You trying to get us all killed?"

"But it's awfully convenient now, isn't it? Two birds, one stone. Let's get out of here."

That was unexpected. I let them move as they pleased, certain they wouldn't be trying to storm the office anytime soon. Instead, I looked around the room with a critical eye. If I were a terrorist, where would I hide it?

I tapped Trix on the shoulder. "Move."

She didn't glance up for her work. "What?"

"I need you to make a phone call for me."

"But--"

"I'll take care of it. Move."

She started getting out of her seat, but tried to question me again as she looked toward the door. "But--"

"They won't attack. Move."

I waited until she was clear before taking over her seat and leaving her work behind. Once she got to the phone, I told her to hit the redial.

She did. "What's going on here?"

I finished locking the gates to the parking garage, then crawled underneath the computer console. "Tell him there's a bomb in the building."

"What?!" she half-shrieked. But then Winner answered the phone and she relayed my message shakily. "Um, hi? This is Trix. I'm with Heero right now. He says to tell you there's, um, a bomb here in the building, and holy crap, Heero, what are you doing!?"

I pushed some wires aside and read the timer. "Hm. Nine minutes, thirteen seconds."

"Nine minutes and--? Shit, Heero, you're Tech Support, not Bomb Squad!"

No, I was Gundam Pilot, and I ate bombs for breakfast. "Tell him I'm taking care of it."

"Heero--! Goddammit! He says he's taking care of it. Why the hell is there a bomb in this building?"

"To take care of evidence, I imagine." Hm, this wire connected to the timer, that wire went into the charge, and this wire connected to the power supply... "Tell him we'll unlock the gate to the parking garage when they get here. And they should be careful. There will probably be a few panicking terrorists down there."

She repeated my words into the phone, and then she processed them. "Wait, you locked the gate? That means--"

"Done." I pulled myself out from underneath the console and shook the bangs out of my eyes. "Phone."

She happily surrendered the device to me and scurried as far away from the console as she could get. "Winner, ETA?"

"Six minutes. Bomb?"

"Disarmed. Yuy out." I hung up the phone, estimated that I had another seventy-one seconds before the terrorists came back to try to unlock the gate controls, and used the time to get ready. I pulled off Trix's jacket and threw it in her direction. Then I began a weapons check.

"Heero, you're..."

I looked over to Trix. She stood hugging her jacket to her chest protectively. "What?" I asked. Bleeding? I did an internal diagnostic. That was usually the completion of that sentence. I didn't always notice minor wounds.

"Shit, you really are, aren't you? You, and Duo, and your friends. You're them. The Gundam pilots."

I didn't have time for this. I checked the safety and tucked a gun down the back of my pants. "You've known?"

"Sorta, kinda. I thought, but... Wow." She scrubbed her face with her hands. "Just... wow."

Hn. "Find a place to hide. Preferably under the console." I crossed the room, tapped a few commands, and then gestured her underneath. "It's going to get ugly in here. We'll have to let MinFa go. Use the chair for cover. When I tell you to, unlock and open the gates."

"Are you sure that bomb is disarmed?"

"Of course." If there were a safer place for it, I'd move it for her peace of mind, but I didn't want any accidents happening during the fight. Hopefully the terrorists wouldn't either, and would keep their bullets away from that direction. "If the bomb blows, being ten meters farther from it won't save you, anyway."

"Might as well die instantly? Yay. Can't we just open the gates now?" she asked, crawling reluctantly under the console.

"We can't let them get away."

I felt her glare on me through the cover of the chair. "Are you all like this?"

"Completely out of our minds? Yes." Though some of us more than others. I adjusted my grip on the gun in my hand as I lay flat against the wall next to the door. ::This is going to be a bit of a brawl.::

::We can hold them.::

::I never said we couldn't.::

We listened to shouts coming from down the hall. The men were giving themselves a pep talk, convincing themselves that they could take out two measly Preventers agents if they all just worked with each other. ::Eight seconds to start of operation.::

The countdown hit zero, and then we began. Three men charged in low to bull my table out of the way. I let them, then engaged them before they had recovered.

::On your four.::

I dropped low to sweep the legs out from beneath one man, aimed down the hall, and shot the man trying to put a bullet in me. He went down, and two more men shouting obscenities at me came rushing in over him. Elbow to the face, boot to the side of the head, two more fell to the ground.

::Man on your seven going to the console.::

I propelled a convenient victim into the enterprising young fellow that thought he could take advantage of my distraction.

::Chair from the corner.::

Sidestep, kick his back to add to his momentum, don't bother watching as he falls over the discarded table.

::SMG.::

Drop to the ground, roll to the side. More swearing from my opponents, this time at their comrade. Where the hell did that come from? Some of the newcomers must have brought stronger weaponry with them. Deal with the man who jumped the same direction I did, slide into an open space, shoot target with SMG, shimmy away from wild fire as target goes down.

::Flying tackle.::

Lift one leg, catch him in the belly, throw him over my head.

::Going for the console again.::

My turn to tackle. His forehead into the floor. Dodge away from re-use of chair as a weapon.

::SMG on your one.::

Again? Someone picked up the first one, then. Bullet to his knee, take possession of his gun, watch the rest of the men back away slowly. Too bad they're between me and the console. Watch as they figure this out, but still wary to turn their backs to me. They haven't yet figured out that I'm not interested in killing them.

One notices Trix, decides it's worth the risk. I put a bullet in his ass.

::Out of ammo.::

I make a note of it, prepare to discard the weapon at an advantageous moment. The men are shouting something at me. I process their words.

Bomb. We're all going to die. We can all escape if I let them unlock the doors.

I smile grimly and let them continue to think that bomb is going to go off any second. "Why don't we all die together instead?"

They finally decide I'm completely crazy and mob me. Two men go for the console. I prepare to free my gun arm and stop them, but a gun is fired and it wasn't theirs. No one was hit, but they back off when they realize Trix still has the gun I gave her. She doesn't let any of their promises of safety get to her. Good girl. Of course, she knows that the bomb has already been disarmed.

::Time.::

I throw my empty gun at the back of a head, leaving her with just the one for a moment. "Trix, time!"

The man left with her turns his back to her in surprise and she hustles out from underneath the table, pushing the chair that had been her cover into him and making him stumble and she takes the opportunity to tap a few keys into the console. I get a free moment to haul him away from her as she scoots back under cover.

They may be screaming like little girls about their imminent doom, but a few determined ones seem interested in taking me down with them, at least. The rest flee like they think they can escape the blast radius while still inside the building. There's shouting and gunfire in the background and I put down one more, and right when I think that's the last one in the room, there's another presence right behind me and I turn and point my gun and stop short of putting a bullet in his gut.

Trix is screaming something. But more importantly than that, Winner is staring me down. I blink, and then something snaps. There's a roaring in my ears and my vision fades from gold and my perceptions start to sway drunkenly. I lower my arm, stumble back a few steps until I hit the wall and slide down it, gasping for a breath I can't quite get a grip on.

"Heero. Heero, look at me." I register a hand on my knee, but it doesn't mean anything. Another hand pulls the gun out of my lax grip, and then they're both cupping my face firmly and forcing my head up. "Heero, look at me. Focus. Are you with me? Focus."

I do as the insistent voice says, and gradually time stabilizes and I'm as close back to the limits of my own mind as I could be under the circumstances.

"Heero?" Quatre's voice wasn't as sharp and urgent as it had been a few seconds ago. "You with me?"

I nodded weakly, blinking hard as the room settled into a fuzzy semblance of itself. Trix hovered nervously behind Quatre's back. I batted at his arms, and he let me go. My thoughts were still running on an adrenaline high, unable to come to a halt quite yet. I reached out, grabbed one of them, and wrestled meaning into it. "Status?"

"I've got men taking care of all the presents you left us. One of them confirms that we've gotten all the bombs. Except for the one in this building, of course." A corner of his mouth tilted up.

I flopped my hand toward the computer console. "Done. The, uh..." Too many things tried to get out of my mouth at once, and I stopped, swallowed painfully with a mouth that was suddenly dry and uncooperative. "The... men here... still alive... approach with caution..."

He nodded calmly. "We know. We're taking care of it. You can stand down now. Your job is done. Duo, take him home."

What? Something about that made no sense at all, but then I finally noticed Duo standing in the background, flak jacket on, gun out, watching the door. He turned, and something else bent and strained inside of me.

He wiped the vulnerable look off his face in a moment's time, making me wonder if I had imagined it. "But--"

"He's still a rogue agent," Quatre told him firmly. "And he needs somewhere safe to crash, and someone to watch over him while he does it. Now get him out of here before IAB shows up to arrest him."

"What?" Trix, this time. "After all this?"

Quatre turned to her and cranked the intensity down just a notch for her sake. "They have their orders, and they'll follow them until instructed otherwise. Which I unfortunately haven't had the chance to finish taking care of yet." He turned back to Duo and spared him no such mercy with his tone. "Now take him home and keep him there until I give you the okay, Duo, and if I hear any nonsense about it out of you, I will feed your entrails to the lions myself. Is that clear?"

That look flashed across his face again, and just as quickly, he smothered it with sarcasm. "Yes, sir, Mr. Winner, sir."

Trix protested as he approached me. "What? You can't make him go home with that loser!"

"Stay out of this," Duo snapped, dragging me upright and bracing me against his side. The warmth and solidity of his body nearly shocked the breath out of me, and I swayed, sliding one dizzying step closer to crashing, but I managed to move my hand in a way that was supposed to tell Trix that it was alright. I wasn't in any condition to go back into hiding by myself. And we took care of our own. Even if we weren't speaking at the moment.

They exchanged barbs once more, but Quatre shut them both up and shooed us out the door, saving us all. Duo supported me as I stumbled out of the room, muttering as we passed Quatre by. "Since when are the lions yours to feed, huh, Blondie?"

Quatre just smirked and turned his attention back to Trix for a report.

The next thing I knew, I was jerking back into my state of almost-consciousness when the car stopped in our apartment's parking garage. "Still with me?" Duo asked tensely.

I forced myself to keep my eyes open and nodded. "Barely."

"Let's get you taken care of."

He pulled me out of the car and half-carried me up the stairs and into the apartment. I leaned heavily on the sofa as another wave of disorientation swept through my exhausted body. Home. How long had it been? I almost didn't recognize it, but that was probably the withdrawal hitting me. I flexed my fingers on the semi-familiar fabric covering the cushions and refused to fall down on them. Once I was no longer upright, I wouldn't be getting back up again for a long, long time.

Duo ran his hands over my body, doing a routine check for injuries. When he didn't find anything requiring his attention, he squeezed my shoulder. "You okay?"

"Just coming down." We'd all gone through it at some point, when we spent all our focus and energy on getting the job done and then suddenly it was done and we were left drained and scrambling to get ourselves centered again.

"You sure?"

I nodded, using the sofa for support as I fumbled with my bootlaces. Duo made an impatient sound and finished the job for me. Once my shoes were off, I pushed myself away from the sofa. I staggered a few steps back, recovered my balance, and headed for the kitchen to take care of the first of my necessities. I chugged a glass of water, and then caught myself on a doorframe just a moment before I would have run straight into it.

Duo guided me away from it. "Shit, Yuy, let's get you flat before you hurt yourself."

I shook my head, resisting his attempts at guidance. "Gotta clean up."

"That can wait," he said impatiently, but not trying to alter my course.

I shook my head again and concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. "Can't rest yet..."

"Dammit, Yuy," he muttered under his breath, helping me toward the bathroom anyway. No doubt he thought it was just my usual penchant for good hygiene. There was a little bit of blood on me from getting up close and personal with a few broken noses and split lips and such, but it was negligible. Under other circumstances, maybe I wouldn't care, but Zero was still humming in the background, disengaged, but coming off his own high. If I didn't get the reminders of the rough day off of me, Zero would never settle down.

Duo hesitated at the bathroom door, and I shut it behind me. I beat my mind into yielding up a checklist for me, and then I followed it. The water went on first. I managed to get out of the clothes I'd left the apartment with, what, nearly two weeks ago? and almost stepped over the rim of the tub with my socks still on. Grand. I would have liked nothing -- almost nothing -- more than to stand under the hot spray and let it wash the week away, but I knew I wasn't long for consciousness. I did my business and got out of there, pulled a towel off the rack with a little more force than I had planned, and found myself teetering. I planted a hand on the shower door for balance and found an abrupt seat on the stack of clothes I'd left on top of the toilet seat cover. Not good. I had to get out of there now. If only I could do that and keep myself in one piece. All I could do was stare at the bathroom door like I could will myself there with what little I had left inside me.

The door opened. Had Duo been waiting somewhere near by? "Holy hell, Heero," he sighed.

I stared blankly at him, knowing that I should have been able to read something into those words, that look, but failing completely at it. The sense of loss echoed in the emptiness.

He hauled me to my feet again, attached me to his side and walked me out of the room. "Okay, that's it. Enough pushing yourself past your limits. It's like it's a hobby of yours or something. Time for you to crash."

Gladly. But I balked when standing in the doorway to the bedroom. Something about the bed and how neatly it was made, my erratic thoughts making the leap to reminding me that probably no one had slept in it for almost two weeks. I tried to turn around, but was rather ineffective at it. "I can... if you..."

Duo took firmer control of me and compelled me to the bed. "I'm not getting turned into lion chow, Yuy. Now lie down before you fall down."

I was out before I finished doing either.

*****

It was dim when next I opened my eyes, the dimness of early evening. I waited patiently for recollection to catch up with me. Home. My side of the bed. And Zero before that. I pinged him and got a green back from him. I asked for a time next, and determined that I had been sleeping for the last twenty-three hours, twenty-two minutes. I still felt worn out, but at least I felt capable of carrying out my bodily functions without collapsing in the middle of them, so it was an improvement.

I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the bed. It was then that I realized that I'd been tucked neatly underneath the blankets, which I certainly hadn't had the presence of mind to do myself when I had fallen onto the bed. My first thought was that I had been handled in my sleep and I hadn't even noticed it. My second thought was that Duo had handled me. What was it he said to me, right before I went blank? Lion chow? Was he following Quatre's orders? Or... I sighed, not wanting to think about it. I needed to save my strength.

Leaving the warmth of the bed behind, I remembered that I hadn't managed to get dressed after my shower, so I paused to push my mind into telling me where I could find some clothes. Dresser, I finally figured out. I trudged over and found some briefs, wincing at the protest of strained muscles as I pulled them on. I stretched a little and took inventory. A few aches and pains, and some nice bruises, but nothing I wouldn't get over in a few days.

To keep things simple, I decided to relieve my bladder before putting any more clothing on. I didn't want to think about the complexity of zippers twice. While I was there, I brushed my teeth and got rid of that sour taste in my mouth. Feeling a little more alert, I opened the door and spied Duo sitting in the living room, reading a book. Had he been there when I'd entered, and had I failed to notice?

No matter. Our eyes met awkwardly. He looked away first, toward the kitchen. "I figured you'd be waking up soon. There's some warm grub for you."

I felt a lot more exposed than I had just a few seconds ago. It'd been some time since I'd last had to consider the social niceties that came with living with someone. My arms wrapped around myself defensively without my command. "...Thanks. I'll... get dressed first."

I put on the first things I found in the dresser, some sweat pants and a t-shirt, and tried to enter the kitchen as if I didn't feel like a stranger here. A plate of asparagus, beef, and rice waited for me. A cleaned plate perched on the drying rack told me that I wouldn't be having company for my meal, so I took my dinner to the dining table and reminded myself to eat slowly. The food was simple, but it'd been a while since my last meal, even longer still since my last real meal, and even longer than that since my last home-cooked meal.

The tenuous silence between us unnerved me, as I ate and he sat in the living room with only the occasional turning of a page marking his presence. I broke through the quiet compulsively, sticking to a neutral topic. "Any news?"

He didn't answer for a few seconds. "Nothing's blown up yet, so I guess we got all the bombs. No new threats have been identified."

"MinFa?"

"What?"

I'd obviously been out of commission. I wondered if Trix had been pressed into reporting on my behalf. "Have any government systems been hacked?"

"Oh. Yeah, a couple. Nothing major. Dunno whether that's because the major ones were unplugged or because they just weren't targets."

"Either way, I'm glad."

"Yeah."

I pushed rice around my plate, my appetite having seeped away after the first few bites. I felt a headache creeping up on me. There was still room in my stomach, and I knew I needed the nutrients, but I found myself lacking the interest to lift a fork and chew and swallow. I did it anyway. They were mechanical actions. I tried distracting myself from them. "Did Trix get in trouble?"

"Trouble?" Duo asked, looking up from his book again. "What for?"

"Hanging out with a rogue agent?"

"Oh. Yeah, I guess that could be a problem. No, Quatre got her squared away, I guess. You, too, mostly. The APBs on you have been canceled, but Quatre says you might want to keep a low profile for a while and avoid the political fallout for a bit."

"...'Political fallout'? What has Quatre been doing?"

"Heh." He marked his page with a bookmark and set the volume aside, leaning back in his chair in preparation of a good tale. "He told Mommy on them."

"Excuse me?"

"Turns out Une didn't know what was going on. Busy babysitting all the government types and all that. Her ADs figured they'd do her a favor and give her one less thing to worry about."

That was true. We hadn't heard much from Une. She had her job and we had ours. Would recent events make her job more, or less, easy? "They were acting without her permission?"

"Well, more like 'on their own recognizance', since it's not like she ordered them not to go after any of her top agents or anything. So when mommy heard what was going on, she, well, she's on your side, anyway. Be glad."

"Heads have rolled?"

"Not officially. They were just doing their jobs, technically. But I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few reassignments coming up."

"Oh." That felt really strange. Not that they had just been doing their jobs, because Sherwood had never seemed personally motivated to me, but that the whole thing was so easily... dismissed? What was I looking for? Vengeance? I hoped Sherwood would discover a new found phobia of the taser, but I didn't feel enough animosity toward him to warrant a greater punishment. I shivered as Zero started assessing the ranks for enemies. "So what was that? Wrong place at the wrong time? I think I'd feel better knowing that there was someone gunning for me."

Duo laughed grimly. "Funny you should say that. Not to say that everyone wasn't just doing their jobs. But also not to say that the whole thing wasn't inspired and escalated by a personal motivation or two."

"What are you talking about?"

"You know, it was AD Minchella that put you up for that promotion two years ago."

Minchella? Interdepartmental affairs Minchella? AD with a chip on his shoulder, to whom I had to report occasionally? "Why would he do that? He doesn't even like me."

"Apparently, in large part because you turned down the promotion."

"You're kidding, right?" Why would anyone take that personally?

Duo shook his head. "Nope. Trowa did a little digging around. Not that you aren't the best guy in the department, but it seems Minchella thought he might earn himself a favor or three for putting in a good word for you. Was always a little miffed with you for cheating him of that."

"But..." This was not what my tired little brain needed right now. "What kind of favor could I possibly do him as chief of Tech Support?"

"Oh, come on, Yuy. Everyone knows you've got Une's ear. Of course an enterprising guy like him's gonna try and capitalize on that. And get annoyed when it falls through. An indirect line to Une's pretty big. Not big enough to put him out there gunning for you, but certainly big enough to make him, hm, quick to judge against you? When you find yourself sitting on a bit of controversy."

"But..." Humans. What in the world were they thinking sometimes? I gave up eating to rub circles over my temples. I was almost done with my plate anyway.

::It would make sense strategically, if you were like other humans.::

If I were like other humans. I sighed and stood to bring my plate to the kitchen. I cleaned it up, then decided I could use a cup of tea to settle my stomach. If I were like other humans. Hn. At least it presupposed that I actually was human. A strange human, perhaps, but human all the same.

I took my tea to the sofa and sat down gingerly before realizing that maybe Duo had wanted the space between us. He had a seat on the one-person armchair to the side, obviously not inviting company. His book was open again. Oh well. I wasn't getting back up. If he wanted to get away from me, he could do it his own damn self. We'd been civil enough to each other so far, though.

The tea brought warmth, and a loosening of the knot in my throat and down my belly, but no relaxation. I recognized the pattern I was seeing in the potentials being drawn in the reflections of my tea's surface when I realized I had to loosen my grip on my mug. "Une's going to call me to her office, sooner or later. She's going to want to talk to me."

"Of course," Duo answered matter-of-factly. "You're one of her top agents. She's going to want to --"

"--use me," I finished softly, cutting him off. "Doesn't matter that I..." Zero had been on their side since I joined up five years ago. Zero had been working on their behalf all that time, with me as the intermediary, but now they knew it, and suddenly I wasn't there anymore. The computer was all that mattered. It was all they'd see. The weapon. The tool. That was all that mattered anymore. "It's just like Sherwood, or Minchella, or whoever it was. Maybe she doesn't want to lock me in a box, or...." I needed to stop, but I couldn't help looking around the walls of the apartment. This was, what, my third? fourth? prison in the last two weeks? Maybe Zero was a little prison I just toted around with me everywhere I went. Okay, I needed to stop that, too. Maybe it was time to leave. The last week had proven that I could still do what I needed to do without Preventer resources. There was nothing compelling me to keep my job with them.

"Hey, no sense in worrying about that now," Duo said, obliviously dismissing my concerns. "Take Quatre's advice and lie low for a while, recover. You're still looking pretty wiped out. Where have you been hiding out this last week, anyway?"

I shot a quick glance at Duo and sensed no duplicity in the question. Quatre hadn't told them? He'd said he wouldn't, but it hadn't been the easiest thing to believe. "I... went to where we were. Five years ago. Quatre's place."

There was a short, awkward pause. "Oh," he said finally.

It was the closest we had come to 'us' so far. I tried to work past the moment with some banal chatter. "It's not quite the same anymore. Some new furniture, some more amenities. New curtains. Not... quite the same anymore," I concluded, a little ruefully, I thought. Maybe a little sadly. I hadn't been trying to make a point. I fixed my eyes on the surface of my cooling tea and wondered where we were going to go from here.

"Did Quatre know?"

I considered sparing him for a moment, given that he had kept his promise to me. But I had no intentions of lying, and Quatre was a big boy. He could take care of himself. "He got an alert when I broke in."

"Oh," Duo said again, unspoken thoughts rolling through his mind. He started up conversationally once more after a few seconds' silence. He was trying. Was that a good sign? "Well, you sure chose some nice digs to crash in, didn't you? Should have had yourself some good nights' sleep in that place."

I made a wry sound. "I was working. You know how that goes." Again, the words came out before I gave them much consideration.

And yet again, I stole the words from him. It took him longer still to recover. "Well. No wonder you crashed so hard. You were so running on empty that Quatre had to talk you down from it."

I caught myself this time from making a comment alluding to something we didn't seem ready to talk about yet, only this time, it wasn't about us. It was about Zero. And suddenly I didn't care too much anymore. If one of Duo's main complaints about this whole thing was that I hadn't been honest to him about Zero, then I would give him honesty now. I was tired of sparing his sensibilities and working around his issues. Letting him stay willfully blind to certain things had gotten us where we were today, and if I wanted any hope of the two of us working things out, he was going to have to accept all of me. "Actually, that was my sync ratio."

"Sync ratio?" He made the query automatically, but I could see him realizing what I meant, and not liking it.

"Adrenaline accounts for the physical exhaustion. The sync/desync accounts for the mental exhaustion. My sync ratio was high, and I desynced too rapidly at the end. That's why I crashed so hard."

"How high?" he asked, caution staining his words. I gave him credit for asking a question he clearly didn't want to know the answer to.

"Seventy-eight or so."

He blinked at me, looking both disturbed and puzzled. "Where are you normally at?"

"Upper sixties, seventy."

He looked at me some more, then subsided with a bland 'Oh' and buried himself in his book when it didn't seem like the conversation was going to go anywhere else.

::He has not turned a page for six minutes, thirty-six seconds.::

True. Since I was feeling so 'what the hell' about things, I decided to push him. "Is that high or low?"

He didn't look up, but I could see his muscles tense. He disappointed me with an evasive answer. "You tell me, man."

Normal for me. High for anyone else. I assumed, anyway. Data from other users during the war had been lost. Maybe Quatre had gotten pretty high marks. "He should have known better," I murmured to myself.

"Huh?"

"Quatre. He should have known better than to have come up behind me like that. He broke my sync, making me pull up short like that. I'd have come down just fine on my own, once there weren't any more targets."

"I told him he was crazy," Duo mused, shrugging slightly. "But he seemed to know what he was doing. Maybe it would have taken too long or something?"

::Maybe he wanted to put you out of commission for a little while.::

::Quatre's not an enemy, Zero.::

::You can't be sure of that.::

::Quatre may be cooking up some devious things inside that head of his, but I wouldn't classify him as an enemy. He's... like me. He sees a different picture than the rest of us and acts accordingly, sometimes in ways we can't understand.::

::That does not make him not an enemy.::

::Nor does that make him an enemy. I trust that he has our best interests in mind.:: I tilted my head from side to side, feeling my neck muscles whine in protest before I got very far.

"What's the highest you've ever been?" Duo asked me, breaking me out of my thoughts.

"Hm? Sync, you mean? Seventy-eight or so, I guess." Maybe higher during the war, but that had been a different system, and I didn't have the stats from that time, anyway. I doubted it, though. The limited interface wouldn't have allowed for such a close sync.

Duo studied me, guarded thoughts dancing behind his expression. I felt like holding my breath to keep anything from breaking. He was getting at something, possibly something in my favor if he hadn't shown any upset yet, but I probably wouldn't be let in on what it was. In the end, one corner of his mouth quirked upward in a partial sneer, half playful and amused, and half... something else. "That's like, what, a C plus, Yuy? Substandard."

I shrugged, resigned to not knowing if that was good or bad. "Man was not meant to sync so closely with machine."

"What happens if you do? Get up into B territory, A."

"It's not recommended that you go over eighty or so. You'd... probably have a tough time coming back."

"Tough like that Stewart guy?"

I didn't recognize the name immediately.

::Stewart, Mario. Assistant directory of technology, biomechanics department, Meridian Biotechnologies.::

::Ah. Thank you.:: That Stewart. The one that had been found in Bonn in a permanent vegetative state after his mind had been blasted by a bad experience with Zero. I didn't recall the name off the top of my head. I wouldn't have expected Duo to, unless he'd been thinking about the man recently. Or thinking about his fate, rather. "Stewart had an unfortunate accident, a combination of being unprepared, unsuitable for the interface method, and of Zero being improperly configured. Hoffman killed Stewart, not Zero."

It was the first time we'd mentioned Zero by name, and Duo didn't like it. I shouldn't have done it in such a negative context. That was a strategic error on my part. I overrode whatever protest Duo might have had by continuing my answer to his question. "The human brain isn't made for that level of interface. To achieve that sort of sync ratio, some things would probably have to be rearranged. It's conceivable to bounce back from that, put everything back where it belongs, but it would probably take a while. So no, I don't spend all of my time as one with the machine, or even some of the time. If I did, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you right now."

I hadn't meant to get snippy there at the end, but I'd just realized why the numbers may have been important to him. I was proud of myself for figuring it out, but still frustrated that it was even an issue.

Duo's eyes narrowed at me, but he didn't retreat to his book, so it looked like we were going to have it out again. I braced for impact. He took a breath to begin, but then deflated a little before saying a word.

I don't know if it was something internal that got to him, or just an effort to stop our bickering, but I could do the same, couldn't I? I used my mug as a distraction again, staring at my distorted reflection as I tried to put it away. ::Duo is not an enemy.::

Zero wasn't so sure of that, but he claimed no responsibility for my spike of irritation.

Damn. But I couldn't blame him for everything. That would have put me on the same page as Duo, and while I did want to be there, I didn't want it that way. It was easy to blame someone else. Zero, Duo, Quatre. We had to take responsibility for our actions, our emotions. How could we claim them as our own, otherwise? "I'm sorry," I said to my mug, needing to apologize for what I could, perhaps to make up for the things I could not and would not apologize for. "About Sherwood. He brought you in, right? I tried to stop him, but... I probably just made it worse. I'm sorry."

There was another long pause before Duo made the next offering, hesitant, though spoken with a good degree of confidence. "I hear you tased the bitch pretty good."

I broke into a small smile. Whether because of what Duo decided to bring up, or because of some inner satisfaction, I chose not to dwell upon.

::Sherwood is an enemy.::

::He was doing his job. Well, maybe a little bit of an enemy. But he was still doing his job.:: Satisfied with the concession, Zero subsided again, leaving me on my own to carry own. "I heard he was okay."

"So I hear. I wouldn't know. I thought it'd be better if I didn't visit him in the hospital."

My smile widened fractionally. "Yeah, I wouldn't have, either." So my apology hadn't been acknowledged, neither accepted nor refused. I would take the resulting banter as a positive sign.

"What did he do to you?" The tone dropped a notch into something more serious as he finally shut his book.

RJ probably hadn't had all the details when he'd told the others. I doubted that Quatre would have found out, being both too busy and too stonewalled. And I was sure Sherwood wouldn't have been very forthcoming, both in the interrogation room and the hospital room. So no one really knew. "He..."

::I advise against revealing a weakness.::

::Noted.:: But Duo wasn't an enemy. And there was no weakness that Duo didn't already know about or couldn't already figure out. "He brought me in for questioning. Took me down to Interrogation SE2."

"Ooh, special boy," Duo inserted with a slightly teasing tone.

No, just a victim of an IAB investigation. "He started out asking me about five years ago. Brought up my 'unauthorized possession of Preventers property'. Moved on to my supposed perjury. Expressed concern over my personal health. And then expressed concern over the health of the people around me." That was when things had really started to fall apart. I'd been known to put myself in danger all the time, but it offended my moral fiber to suggest that I was willing to put others in harm's way, especially for pure selfishness. On one level, I understood that that was the sort of person that Sherwood would normally deal with in his job. But on another level entirely, well, he should have done his homework better.

I shook my head and moved on with the story. "I tried to leave. They didn't like that. Someone pulled a gun on me. I didn't like that." Duo winced in sympathy. Someone really, really should have done his homework better. "Someone pulled a taser on me. That really didn't agree with me. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in Holding, D block."

Duo let out a low whistle. "Special boy, indeed. They don't use D block very often."

"Because it's inconvenient. Too out of the way."

"Perfect for you, then."

"Because D block was embedded in the infrastructure of the building. There were metal beams running through the walls and under the floor. It allowed them to maintain a low level EM field in the room."

Duo stared at me, incredulity warring with horror and vying with outrage. At length, he tucked it all away with another cool whistle. "And I wondered how they managed to keep you prisoner against your will."

"Hn. They let up on the field enough for Sherwood to come in and talk to me once in a while. I'm not sure what he was trying to get out of me. After a while, he figured out that I wasn't going to be giving the system back any time soon. And then he... seemed interested in figuring out how he could use it. Or the Preventers, anyway. I'll concede that he never seemed interested in it for personal gain, at least. In any case, I finally got my senses more or less in order and broke out of there."

He exhaled loudly. "Wow. We didn't know, man."

"I know. And there was a terrorist threat hanging over the world, too, which just made the entire thing absurd."

"Well, you know those IAB guys. You gotta be pretty devoted to your job to join the narcs. But still." He shook his head. "Damn, that Sherwood guy. He started out all normal. But then he started up about Zero and going crazy and machines meant to be used and pretty much said they'd use you, with or without your consent...."

"And how much did you agree with?" I asked softly, unable, or perhaps unwilling, to stop the words.

"What?! Are you crazy? Of course I didn't agree with..." He trailed off slowly as I stared directly at him. His eyes dropped first. "Aw, fuck, Yuy."

I snorted. "I thought so."

"That's not what I meant," he snapped, pinning me with an angry look. "You know I wouldn't turn on you."

Turning on me and turning his back on me were two entirely different things. Duo wouldn't turn on a comrade. He just didn't do that. It had nothing to do with our relationship. "That doesn't mean you can't share his views."

"I... Fuck." He ran his hands through his bangs frustratedly. "Okay, so maybe I thought some stuff. But never like that!"

I looked at him expectantly, but when he failed to elaborate, I gave him a prompt. "Was it true, what Quatre said? That they were interested in carving me up for science? Or was he just exaggerating?"

Duo winced. "Yeah. Yeah, that was the gist of it. You know I'd never think that, Heero."

"I know. If only because you'd rather see Zero destroyed than studied." He looked pained, but not hurt. There was no denying the truth of it. "Look, I know you don't like Zero. I even kind of understand why. But you don't like a lot of things, and this is the only one we're at each other's throats about. Why is that? What makes Zero so damn different?"

It should have been obvious, his look said. "Heero. You have a computer bonded to your brain on a nanoscopic scale. You don't think that's a little bit... different?"

"Certainly, it's a little bit out of the ordinary, but so is blowing up your Gundam while you're still inside it and living to tell the tale."

He covered his face with his hand for a few seconds. "Two wrongs don't make a right, Heero!"

My point was really that neither of them were wrongs. "I don't know how many times I can say this, but once again, clearly, I am just as frustrating, annoying, ornery, and generally just as much of a bastard as I've always been, with or without Zero. Why am I suddenly being defined by the little fact that I happen to have a computer bonded to my brain on a nanoscopic level?"

"Because it's your brain, Heero!" he shouted, a half-strangled sound. He jabbed his hand at me in emphasis. "It's not like it's bonded to your pinky finger and you can just ignore it when you're not using it or something! It's your brain, and you can't ignore your brain. You, especially! You're always using your brain, dammit, and how much of that brain belongs to Zero?"

A legitimate question. Sort of. "Just some of the gray stuff I wasn't using." I finally saw a glimmer of a corner of an issue here, and thought maybe I could address some of it. Fortunately, that came quickly enough for me to use before Duo turned an embarrassing shade of red-purple. "I know you say that Zero 'ate my brain' metaphorically, but seriously, Duo, all of me is still here. This isn't like some... some zombie virus where I turn all soulless flesh-eater and you have to try to appeal to the last scrap of humanity inside of me..."

I trailed off as he stared at me, and then it was my turn to hide again and rub at my temples. "This is really not coming out right." I took a deep breath, gathered my thoughts, and set aside my near-empty mug. "Okay. Let's start at the beginning. First things first. Zero is just a complex neural network running on sophisticated, high-speed hardware, with a nifty interface, right? That's all Zero has ever been." I waited for his cautious nod before continuing, encouraged that he seemed willing to hear me out. While I wasn't exactly volunteering to go through it all again, it seemed our forced two-week separation may have had some positive side effects.

Pulling together the progression of my argument, I got it all organized, and then moved on. "At Olin, when you all got me out of there, Zero was installing itself. It never finished the process. Zero has three parts: hardware, data, and interface. The hardware now is me. My brain, specifically. And the nanobots. The interface is handled by the nanos. But what really made Zero the Zero you knew during the war was the data. It's the data that drives the predictions, the probabilities, the calculations. The rest of it affects Zero's speed, Zero's level of complexity, but it's the data that produces the answers. And I never got all of that. Zero hadn't yet figured out a way to carry all of that data over to my system before you all came in and got me."

His expression was closed off, the rest of him held tightly in check as he considered my words. "What's your point, Heero?" he asked, tensely and carefully.

I let out a puff of breath into my bangs. "Zero restarted, practically from scratch, when I left Olin. All of the data that Zero has collected since then to form its association matrices has come from my experiences. It would be far more productive to ask how much of me is in Zero, rather than the other way around. Zero values the things that I value." More or less, but that was a detail I could bring up at a later time. "And that's what all the calculations are based on. And I am informed of those conclusions, and then it's up to me for how I decide to use them. So if I have a point here, it's that... Zero isn't what you think it is. And I'm hoping that, if we can clear that up, then..."

Then we could move on, rather than getting ourselves distracted by the fact that we were talking about two entirely different things. I knew that there was more going on here than just a dispute about Zero, but we never seemed to get anywhere near it. It was that kind of frustration that so easily escalated things on my side of the fence.

Duo licked his lips as if in ritual before responding. "It's just data, huh?"

"Yes."

"But underneath, it's still running the same application, right?"

"Mm-hm."

"So it's still Zero. Maybe the conclusions it comes to aren't the same, but it's still Zero. That right?"

"Yes."

He shook his head. "Then sorry, but I'm not just gonna take your word for it. I gonna hafta assume you're biased. If Zero still works in the same, fundamental ways, then... I can't take your word for it."

I nodded slowly. Based on his experience with the system, I could understand where his doubt came from. But Zero was like alcohol. It didn't make a person do things that weren't already in him to do. That was probably what made a bad Zero experience as frightening as most people found it. And maybe, as usual, it was easy to place the blame for our actions while under the influence on someone or something else's shoulders. "Okay. Fine. I can see why you might think that. I hope I'll have the opportunity to prove you wrong, though."

A variety of unreadable thoughts flittered across his expression before he shrugged uncomfortably. "Yeah, maybe."

A strained silence rich with possibilities stretched between us as we both withdrew to our own thoughts. After nearly twenty-four hours of sleep, I was still feeling exhausted. Though maybe that had more to do with the last twenty-four minutes than anything else. I couldn't help the traitorous little thoughts that paraded through my head, claiming that maybe I'd been right to keep quiet all these years. The course of the last two weeks would have been significantly different if I just hadn't had the impulse to tell Duo the truth, and we all would have been happier. One little admission, and suddenly people were interested in cross-sectioning my brain before I was done using it.

::I advised against telling him.::

::Oh, shut up. You didn't want me revealing a weakness to him. Don't pretend that you predicted this whole fiasco. I know that's beyond you.::

It was beyond me, too, apparently. Maybe Duo questioned himself, wondered how well he really knew me, to have missed this part of me. I questioned myself, too, to have imagined that things would go more or less smoothly. Under what blind delusions had I labored, to have gone so wrong? Yeah, maybe I understood where Duo was coming from now, just a little. And from there, it was easy to question so much.

"Even assuming all that stuff.," Duo started up again. "Zero or not, it's still a computer, Heero. I just... I just don't understand how you could choose to make that a part of yourself."

"I didn't choose this, Duo. It happened. And it isn't going to un-happen. So I deal with it." I stopped, not knowing what else I could say. I wouldn't ask anyone to do what I wasn't willing to do myself, but that didn't mean that I would ask anyone else to do what I was willing to do. This was my decision, my 'burden', and if I had to live with that alone, then so be it. I wouldn't force it on anyone else.

"If you did have the choice," Duo said, clearly reluctant. "Would you choose it?"

"...Between having Zero in my head, and Zero's complete destruction?" Wasn't much of a choice. I wanted it to be one. I wanted to tell him what I knew he longed to hear. But he'd hate me even more for the lie he would know it for. "Yes."

His response wasn't immediate, but when it did finally come, it was a cry of frustration. "Argh! I don't get it, Heero. Why does Zero mean so damn much to you? It's like... it's like you're on this one-man quest to save the endangered Zero!"

Wasn't I? One-man? Check. Endangered? Check. But I wasn't one to take up a cause based on its trendiness, or its lack thereof. I'd always felt an affinity for Zero. When we'd chased it after its theft, I'd often thought of the job more as stopping someone from abusing Zero, rather than catching the thieves before they had a chance to use the Zero system against the world. "Well... I suppose there's the easy part. The part about Zero being just some data and some hardware. But still the only one of its kind. I hate to see the world lose such a revolutionary piece of technology... And then... there's the hard part. The part where... everyone keeps saying that Zero is just a weapon, a tool. That it's not good for anything but war. And... and maybe... maybe I've heard that before."

I had my eyes fixed on the hands I held in my lap. Wow. Duo was a fool if he thought that I had this whole life thing worked out. I was a fool if I thought so, too. Apparently I could be just as insecure about things as he could be. The realization felt good, in that twisted kind of way, but I wasn't strong enough to leave the epiphany in a state with implications for my own self, so I looked up at him and tied it back to the point at hand. "Zero's so much more than that, Duo."

I waited, wanting to hear him finish the thought, but it was Zero that did, eventually. ::We are so much more than that.::

That stung. Duo's silence drove me out of my seat, and looking for an excuse, I snatched up my mug and headed to the kitchen, an action that prompted a dizzying rush of déjà vu. Hadn't this happened just a couple of weeks ago? I scoured the inside of the cup, scratching away at tea stains that weren't there, and somewhere during the process I developed the urge to hurl the unoffending mug across the room and watch it shatter. I wanted to smash something, destroy something in the way I hadn't been able to when I'd left Duo behind at HQ and ended up in a supply closet. Given the option and a crowbar or something, I'd have happily pounded the frustration out of me, but such a tantrum at work would surely have caused more trouble than it was worth, and there was nothing quite like hiding in a closet to make a person really feel like he was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Well, I wasn't at work now, but this was still my home, still a place I wanted to consider sacred. There was enough breaking going on in here that I refused to add to it. I put the cup down and tried to flee the kitchen and all of its breakables, but Duo was standing in the door. Again. Images of the present and the past and a future not set in stone overlapped themselves in my mind's eye, disorienting me.

He was still tense, but his stance wasn't aggressive. I didn't know why he followed me in here. I settled my gaze on him and waited for him to make the first move.

"Heero..." He shifted his balance from one foot to the other, but then I guess I betrayed my impatience and his expression hardened. "Hey, I don't think it's that out there to think it's kind of wrong to have a damn voice in your head talking to you all the time."

"No, you know what's wrong, Duo?" I snapped. "'Wrong' is putting up with all the shit that I've put up with for the last two weeks, and the only person consistently being on my side and being there for me and offering sympathy and support was the damn voice in my head! That's what's wrong."

We stared at each other for a little while, and then I stormed past him and retreated into our 'home-office'. Crap, hadn't this happened, too, last time? I guess there were only so many options in our apartment. Which only reminded me of how I'd wanted to buy a house some time. Granted, it probably wouldn't have been a very big house, but it would have been a house. With a yard. It would have been ours. Ours to bang up and bruise, ours to embrace and love. But Duo hadn't ever seemed keen on it. He hadn't been ready, I thought. Maybe he just... hadn't.

Aiming my butt at the chair by the desk just seemed too complex a task, and landing in the unanchored papasan chair by the window seemed to be a recipe for disaster, so I ended up on the floor against the wall, and now echoes and flashbacks from that damn closet started to come back and haunt me. I squeezed my eyes shut and attempted to distance myself from that painful time, to keep the frustration from then combining with the frustration of now and forming something too terrible to escape from.

I was probably out of sync again. And it scared me to consider the implications of the repeated movements. Not many choices, maybe, or maybe the instinctive seeking of a comfort zone. Or was it Zero, prodding me along on that instinctual level, perpetuating patterns that it had learned from past experience? Was it the same as when I'd ended up at the flat where I'd spent my recovery five years ago? Was Zero really driving my actions on some level beyond my reach? Or was it really just Zero imitating humanity? The human brain was a neural network, too, after all, also learning through patterns and experience.

In time, I became aware of a presence sitting down next to me. I loosened the grip of the hands that had somehow found their way into my hair, but I didn't exactly uncurl from my huddle. It was a classic defensive position, I recognized, but it was defensive for a reason.

"You're lucky a guy doesn't just fall out of love overnight," he said, offering it as an offhand remark, but failing to capture that feel with his careful, measured pacing.

I almost relaxed, almost felt relief. "It's been a little bit more than 'overnight' by now."

"Don't get difficult with me, Yuy. You think I want to be right? Trust me, I don't want to find out I fell in love with a computer... any more than you want to be one."

I chanced a peek at him through the fall of my hair. "Then let's not."

His smile was almost bitter. "I know that works for you, Yuy, but it's never been that simple with me. You know that."

"I know. And I don't know why."

"You and me both, Yuy. You and me both." I spent the next half minute trying to convince myself to stop being so pathetic and sit up straight. Apparently he spent it dwelling on pithier matters. "Was it true, what Quatre said? That... that you were ready to give up on me? Or was he just exaggerating?"

That got me raising my head from my arms with a slightly peeved frown. "Dammit, Quatre...."

Duo avoided eye contact as he shrugged self-deprecatingly. "Yeah, I thought so."

"That's not what I meant," I said, unconsciously echoing our exchange from early, when our roles had been reversed. "I meant... I meant that... things are clearly complicated right now. If it would help you to remove one of the major sources of complication from your life... I'd do it. I'd give you up." It seemed to have worked these last two weeks. Maybe our separation hadn't been voluntary, but my absence had apparently allowed Duo the opportunity to think about some things more clearly, in a way he hadn't been able to when we'd been shouting at each other every time we were in the same room together.

The tightness around his eyes softened with amusement and exasperation. "That's giving me up, you self-sacrificing idiot, not giving up on me. Big difference."

A corner of my mouth tilted up in a half smile. I hadn't consciously been avoiding the question, but I'd chosen to answer with what seemed easier to say. "That doesn't make what I said any less true."

"Hey, come on," he prodded, taking my lack of immediate response as further evasion. "I answered your 'was he exaggerating' question."

"With, 'that was the gist of it.' Not the most precise of answers." I felt my smile widen fractionally. We were bantering, sort of. It felt good.

"Hey, that's just 'cuz it was all Sherwood crap, and who really cares what he said?"

"And you care what I said?" It was just banter, a volley, a snappy response, but it had meaning. Too much meaning. I shook my head to expunge it from the record. "Never mind that. About giving up... I meant..." I hesitated. What we had here were things that lay at the crux of our problems. I didn't want to put that kind of pressure on him. But I needed to answer the question. "I meant... that you're not happy, Duo. You haven't been for years. I really want that for you, you know? Even if I have to give you up for that to happen. I just want you to... be at peace with yourself. And in an ideal world, I'd be there right next to you, and we'd be happy together. But... this doesn't seem to be an ideal world. Yet? I don't know. You pegged me as a dreamer, years ago, but... sometimes you have to let your dreams go. Can't spend your life hanging on to... something that may never happen."

There. I said it without saying it. But it was clear he knew exactly where giving up on him fit into the equation. His head hung low as he stared at his feet. "I want to say you're wrong, Heero," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "That... you're crazy. You don't have any idea what you're talking about. I'm fine, happy as a clam, couldn't be better, disregarding these last coupla weeks... but... I don't know. I can't say it. So... I guess it'd be a lie. Why is that?"

I bumped my shoulder against his, unable to really give him an answer. I'd probably seen more glimpses of it than he had, with a more objective eye, but it wasn't something I could figure out without him to fill in the holes he didn't even know were there. "Don't think I want to, Duo. Don't think I want to... give up. You know I hate doing that."

He made a little choking sound. "I know. That's why I know things have to have gotten really fucked up for you to even be talking about it."

My shoulder made contact with his again, and this time, it stayed there. "Duo..." I sighed. "Maybe I should leave."

"What?" His head snapped up. "No, you can't..."

"You're... measuring yourself against me, Duo. If you're looking at me, and using me as some sort of standard and deciding that... that you're not doing well, then... I don't want to be here. Not if I'm just making things harder on you."

"You think I can't do that, even if you're not here? You can't just leave. Leaving wouldn't solve a thing! Especially not when... when..." His arm stole around mine and held on tightly. "God, Heero... I know I've messed up a lot of shit in my life, but you? You... are not one of them. God, I hope not. Not when you may well be the only one. You can't just... just..."

I put my free hand on his arm and squeezed. "Well, this is a mess, isn't it?" I tried to force out a laugh, but couldn't. Damned if I did, damned if I didn't. "Looks like the only solution is to slog through this the hard way."

He managed a laugh, though it carried a faintly desperate edge to it. "We're Gundam pilots, Heero. We never choose the easy way."

"Ain't that the truth," I muttered.

*****

I woke up again to a soft voice and a hand brushing lightly through the loose ends of my hair. "No, he's still asleep." I heard the faint sound of a voice on the other end of a phone line, but didn't work to make out the words. "Mm-hm. ...Yeah, okay. ...Really? Oh, yeah, he asked about her. ...Oh, shut up." He snapped the phone shut with a sigh and set it down on the bedside table.

It was another couple of minutes before he spoke again. "How much longer are you going to pretend you're sleeping?"

"How much longer are you going to let me?" His hand stopped and withdrew self-consciously, which I took to mean, not any longer. ::Time?::

::Oh-nine-twelve.::

My sleep cycle had finally righted itself, at least. I sighed, opened my eyes, and sat up. Duo had slept a healthy distance away from me, but we were in the same bed, so I wasn't going to complain. "What news?"

"Well... the public now knows that their friendly neighborhood Preventer forces have saved them from an evil terrorist bomb plot. So the media's having a lot of fun with that. So's the government spin machine. And they're still processing the guys you rounded up from ZenNet."

"How many of them are there?"

"Nineteen. Five dead. One hanging on in the hospital."

"One, bullet to the chest. Wasn't me. One, bullet to the neck?" He nodded. "Who were the others?"

"Wasn't you. Two were killed by the Preventer forces as they cleared out the building. One blew his own head off."

"Ah."

He paused in the telling of his story to look at me curiously, but after a few seconds he glanced away guiltily.

"What?" I asked, staying carefully patient.

"You know, just..." He shrugged, not quite nonchalant. "It's good with the whole not-killing thing?"

By 'it', I assumed he meant Zero. By 'good', I couldn't figure out with certainty if he meant 'okay with' or 'good at', but it didn't really matter. "Yes."

"Oh." He chewed on his lower lip for a bit before sweeping on. "Um, so, yeah, the guys. Wasn't all of them. Guy that killed himself was one of the higher-ups, it seems, but word is that there's the whole rest of the network still out there. Don't seem to have any other plans soon, though, not that we could tell."

"But they still need to be found. Being stopped once won't stop them for good. Any leads?"

"Some. Quatre didn't elaborate. Said you still shouldn't come in today. It's Saturday. Not much for you to do, anyway. You'd probably just end up sitting in the corner or something."

I sighed. "It'd be nice to get out of here, though."

"Yeah, I know."

I drew a meaningless pattern on the blankets with my finger. "I can take care of myself now, thank you. If you want to go in..."

There was an awkward pause before he shook his head. "Nah, Quatre made a point of telling me to stay home, so... I better do as Blondie says. No one wants to get Daddy mad."

I snorted. "So if he's Daddy, and Une's Mommy..."

"Eww." He shuddered dramatically.

I laughed. "Your words, not mine."

He whapped me on the arm, but let it drop. "He said he got Trix squared away. I think he's working to get your file spun into undercover work or something. Like you got 'tossed out' by the Preventers, which would have made you disgruntled enough to join up with the bad guys, earn their trust, and unearth their plots."

"That's funny. I don't remember ever using my name to win my way into their organization."

"I'm sure Blondie'll brief you on the official story later. In any case, our brilliant strategy worked since you found out about that hacking thing, which saved the networks of countless government organizations, plus led you to their hideout, which led to the arrest of dozens of wicked terrorists."

Not a bad story. "'Countless' because we'll never know whether or not they would have been hit."

"Just go with it, man. If we can't prove anything, neither can they. Anyway, point being, your little buddy never teamed up with a rogue agent. She just got pulled in as part of your undercover operation."

I shook my head in appreciation. "Quatre's smooth."

"He's not Daddy for nothing, you know."

With the end of the report, I got out of bed, feeling better than I had yesterday. Breakfast sounded like an excellent idea, since my appetite was back. I had to be glad that Zero had done some work on stabilizing my physical systems, or else Sally would have had my head for mistreating myself the way I had the last couple of weeks.

We didn't talk much, Duo and I, just sort of avoided each other a little and got used to being in each other's company again, trying not to break our ceasefire. It wasn't until early afternoon that I noticed my Preventers jacket was hanging over the back of the chair in the living room.

Duo slowed as he walked through the room, watching me straighten it out when it didn't really need adjusting. I looked up and met his eyes. "You brought it home."

"Well, yeah," he answered, avoiding eye contact again. "It got kind of depressing, seeing it at the office, hanging off an empty chair."

And was having it at home any better? Or had he just not been home long enough during that time for it to get to him? "I'm sorry," I told him, fingering the bump in the collar. It was lucky the Preventers made jackets built to last, otherwise I'd have had a hole in the collar, with all the rubbing it endured. It had been a promise over the years. A promise I'd broken. "I wasn't wearing it when they took me away."

"Now what the hell kind of thing is that to apologize for, Yuy?" He leaned against the back of the sofa, indicating a willingness to stay and chat.

"You couldn't find me. Though maybe you didn't want to."

"Of course we wanted to, Heero." He took a few steps closer to me, but didn't remove himself from cover. "I'm sorry we didn't, but we tried. We wanted to."

I surrendered to a moment of weakness. "Just tell me you wanted to."

"I..." He faltered a little, then found the words he wanted and recovered. "I was... kind of pissy. That I couldn't find you. Though I guess it was hard to tell, given how pissy I was in general. Just more fuel to the fire, I guess. And yeah, I know it was one of those, can't have it both ways, kinds of situations. You know, not being around you, but wanting you around. Which, okay, I'll admit it, kinda pissed me off a little bit more. 'Cuz come on, there's a huge difference between not being around and totally disappearing. And when Quatre asked around, they said you were on 'administrative' leave and strongly implied that you must have taken off somewhere, and hell yeah, that pissed me off, 'cuz... because you said you wouldn't do that anymore, and..."

"I know. I'm sorry."

He wilted a little, tried for a weak smile. "Forget it, Heero. Not like you ran off, really."

"But I did disappear. I'm sorry for that."

A breath was drawn to answer, but was then released, unused. He ran a hand through his bangs instead and just looked conflicted.

"Did I... just make things worse again?" I ventured.

He turned to me with a disturbed expression. "Earlier. Like, a couple weeks ago. Before all this crap. You said... You said something about 'all of you'. And I thought you meant this whole Zero thing, but you said I was wrong, so... what else is there about you that I don't know?"

That wasn't what I had been expecting. Apparently he'd been doing some thinking. I stepped away from the chair to lean back on the desk, leaving him the space between us if he needed it. I crossed my arms comfortably over my chest, thought maybe I looked confrontational, and fidgeted them around until my hands ended up resting on the tabletop behind me. It crossed my mind briefly to duck around the question and save it for a time of greater stability, but I recognized that for the stalling tactic it was. Duo was finally interested in hearing the answer. I couldn't chicken out now. "I wouldn't really say it's something you don't 'know'... so much as 'haven't figured out yet'."

He snorted. "I could say that I just 'never figured out' you had a... Zero in you."

"That wasn't your fault, Duo. You had nothing to-- You know, that's a different conversation, which has nothing to do with this one." He conceded with a tilt of the head and gestured at me to carry on. I marshaled my thoughts, and did. "Do you remember five years ago? Shit, let me rephrase," I corrected myself hastily, seeing him blanch. He glared at me. I tried to look contrite. "That is to say... remember when I first came back after being gone for five years? You weren't really happy with me then."

His wariness faded gradually, to be replaced with remembrance, if not fond nostalgia. "Yeah, I remember. Do I at least get points for consistency?"

"I hope not. I don't want you getting upset with me every five years."

"Stop doing shit that upsets me, then." He paused, then backed off. "Okay. Unfair, maybe. Either way, let's have it, then. Let's just get all this upsetting stuff out now so it doesn't have to happen again."

He always was a bit bullish when it came to things like this. "Okay. You weren't happy with me for... a few reasons. And some of it was just you not being happy with yourself. I don't think all that stuff has gone away yet. In fact, I think most of it's still there."

I didn't get the immediate denial that I expected, but I did get an unsurprising sidestep of the point. "So what does that have to do with you not being who I think you are?"

That somehow got twisted around to being my fault. Whatever. I'd forgive him a little bit of peevishness. "One of those things that upset you was who I was, compared to who you thought I was. You had an image of me, and I didn't match up to it. Are we having any déjà vu moments here yet?"

Apparently, he could forgive me a bit of snippiness, too. "Wait, what are you trying to say here? That..."

"And we've managed to 'pretend' some sort of happiness over the last few years. How? I hate to break it to you, but you've sort of been pretending that the parts of me that don't fit into your little Heero-mold don't really exist."

"Hey, wait a minute--"

Too bad. I was on a roll. "What were we talking about that night? How Trix doesn't like you, was it? And then there was something about the two of you not knowing the same person, and I don't know why, Duo, but there seems to be this partition or something between the person you know and... and... the rest of me," I finished, not even knowing how to define two separate parts of me when they were all the same.

"Why would I do that?" Duo demanded, back on the offensive now that I had finished my part. "How could I do that? Just ignore bits and pieces of you? It's not like I've 'forgotten' you went off to school or something."

"But it's not real to you. You thought you were joking, but you said you knew the 'real' me, compared to the me that Trix knows. That's why I went off like that, that night. You don't like Trix, yes, but that's one thing, compared to the other thing, which is that you don't really consider her to be a 'real' friend of mine. I know she's nothing compared to the five of us, but that doesn't mean she's not still a friend. I wasn't just using her for cover while I was there or something. Those five years weren't just some sham, something I played at while I got my head together. Those five years are a part of my life, Duo, and I'm sorry if it pisses you off that I got my head together during those five years and you didn't!"

Oh. Wow. I'd sort of thought that, but never in such strong terms before. No, that wasn't true. This wasn't anything new. We both knew that it was one of those things that had upset him when I'd come back, that I had succeeded at picking up a reasonably normal life, whereas he had not. All signs had pointed to it being the other way around. But we worked through it. Or so I'd thought. I shared what I had learned with him about life, and we put together a reasonably normal life for him. I'd thought. And any reason for resentment should have faded with that.

And maybe it did. Maybe it wasn't those five years that were getting to him now, but these last five years. The last five years where he'd still managed not to make peace with himself, despite being in a much better environment. And just like last time, he'd managed to convince himself that he'd been doing okay, but there was just one thing that happened, that forced him to confront it, and suddenly all of his notions started falling apart on him and nothing was okay anymore.

I saw him realizing the same thing that I was. I'd said something of the sort last night, but I guess it'd gotten lost beneath everything else. He stared at me for a good long time, looking a little shell-shocked, before he ran a shaky hand through his bangs. "Um, yeah, having a déjà vu moment here, thanks."

Screw it all, I thought, and pushed myself off the desk. I planted myself in front of him and I hugged him.

He stood blankly for a moment before his arms crept up my sides, and soon enough he was squeezing me back tightly. I stroked his hair, rubbed his back, did all of those nonsensical, instinctual little things that were supposed to soothe him. At length, he sighed explosively over my shoulder. "Fucking hell, Yuy. Five years. Don't tell me it's been five fucking years and nothing has changed."

"Plenty has changed, Duo. Plenty. Just... maybe say you aren't quite where you wanted to be yet?"

He chuckled weakly. "That's not much better, Heero. No wonder you're about ready to give up on me."

I gave him a little shake. "You know I hate giving up, Duo."

"I didn't really process what you said last night. About using you as some sort of measuring stick."

"Don't worry. I didn't really know what I was talking about." It wouldn't have come as such a surprise to me now if I had.

"But you were right," he said, a tiny laugh hitching a ride on his words. It was more of a hiccup than anything else. "God help me, it pisses me off when you're right all the time, too."

"Sorry."

"Aw, hell, Heero. Why do I have to be so fucked up?"

"You aren't. You're... just a late bloomer."

He laughed again, a little better this time. "You're just a regular ol' spin doctor, aren't you? You could give Quatre a run for his money."

"Quatre's got a lot of money," I answered gravely.

His shoulders shook, though I didn't hear any real sound of amusement coming out of him. It ended with a loud sigh. "Goddammit. So I'm still not happy with what I've got. Hell if I know why I'm not. You got any bright ideas?"

"Sorry." I had some dim ones, but I wouldn't bring them up without a scrap of confirmation.

"I mean, I've got a job I like, a place to call home. Good friends. An idiot that I love, who loves me back. What the hell is wrong with me?"

"Don't think like that, Duo."

"And what the hell does Zero have to do with it?"

I pulled back a little to look him in the eye. "You think that's related?"

He broke the eye contact to look heavenward for patience. "I think I'd rather have one stinkin' huge problem instead of a dozen little ones. I can deal with just one problem."

When he wanted it all at once, he really wanted it all at once. I slid my hand up to cup the back of his head. "We'll figure it out."

He made a dubious sound. "If you say so."

"You want to, don't you?"

It took him more time than was comfortable for him to answer that. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

"Then we will. Because we're two stubborn sons of bitches, and we do what we set out to do."

He blinked at me, then tugged me closer and set his chin on my shoulder. I thought it would be harmless for me to believe he was hiding a helpless grin. After a while, he sighed again, though. "God help me, but I envy you your confidence, Heero. Another thing I can't be proud of."

"Some people might call it 'obstinance'. I won't mention names, though."

A moment of levity passed through him, but left him quickly enough. "Why have you stuck with me, Heero? I know you hate giving up, but..."

"Don't you dare think that's the only reason I'm here, Maxwell."

"Can it-- What does Zero think about that?"

I was pretty sure I knew what he'd been about to ask. I gave him a point for rephrasing it to give me the benefit of the doubt. When would there be no doubt? When would he believe me, without reservation, when I said that Zero didn't run this show? Of course Zero couldn't really 'love'. But what did that matter? I certainly could. "You know..."

::Don't do it.::

::What, scared?:: I smirked. The objection seemed to be on general principle. He didn't like to give an advantage to anyone, no matter how small. He'd just gotten lucky with his advice, last time. "Zero doesn't like you, either."

There was a significant pause before Duo pulled back to level a look of disbelief at me. "Excuse me?"

"And he didn't want me to tell you that, too. He can never figure you out, you see. Not that I'm great at it, either. But you... don't fit very well at all into his calculations. Drives him nuts. That's why... that's why you had such a bad experience with him, you know? Two completely different, uncomplementary wavelengths. Nothing but noise. So trust me. If I'm here, sticking with you like an idiot, it's got nothing to do with him."

A tenuous smile spread slowly across his face, but then it collided with a furrow on his brow. "Wait a minute. Zero doesn't like me? So does that mean you've got some heckler in the back of your head, badmouthing me all the time? Right in front of me, no less?"

I gave his braid a tug. "Zero's got better things to do." Most of the time. But then a ridiculous image struck me and I broke out in a laugh.

Duo blinked warily at me. "What?"

I shook my head, ready to brush it off, but then I figured, what the heck? Maybe it would go a long way toward smoothing things between the two of us. "Just... think of Zero as an annoying mother-in-law, and you'll have it just about right."

The chortle burst out of him before he could stop it. "Excuse me?"

"He doesn't approve of you. He doesn't think you're good enough for me. He nags me about you. Occasionally. How does the analogy not fit? The two of you don't get along. That's okay. There are people all over the world that don't get along with their in-laws, but they deal with it, right? I know you think Zero's the controlling type, but trust me, if I listened to everything he told me, I'd never have gotten into this relationship at all."

He stared at me some more before shaking his head. "You sure, Yuy? I always did think you'd make a good momma's boy."

"I have a history of rebellion. Especially when it comes to the bad boy on the block. You're the kind of boy he always warns me about, you know. A bad influence and all that."

He looked like he couldn't believe he was having this conversation, but he was still with me, so maybe the image would stick, and he'd find something he could live with. I'd be happiest of all if they could actually learn to get along instead of just tolerating each other as a necessary evil, but I'd take what I could get.

*****

"Well, you're here early."

"I didn't think it'd be nice to make you wait." I'd arranged the meeting, after all. And while I thought I had just cause to chicken out of it, it seemed more appropriate to cede that privilege to her, should she wish to take it. I forfeited that benefit by being the cause of the meeting. I pushed a coffee to her side of the table. "Yours."

She eyed the cup critically, then took it up, popped the lid, and inhaled deeply before deciding that my offering pleased her. "Well, that's one down," she said as she deigned to take a seat. "How many more to go?"

"I'd rather not count, thanks." There were plenty of days left in the year. Trix could be a religious coffee drinker, given the opportunity. Having someone else pick up the tab was a golden one. I'd have to try to avoid her when I could. I let the coffee soften her up for me before I started with what I had come here to do. "I wanted to apologize for Thursday."

She took another careful sip of her drink before setting the cup down. "Your friend gave me a call the other day. Winner. Told me a lovely story about undercover this's and that's. How much of it was true?"

"Just enough to make it sound good, probably. I haven't gotten the full run-down on it yet, myself." Hopefully I'd be able to get the story before Quatre let me go to work next.

"So is the other story true?"

"Which story?"

"The story you were supposedly undercover with."

I assumed that was the story that had APBs out on me. I'd never quite gotten that full story, either, but I'd heard enough to piece it together. "Just true enough to make it sound good, probably."

She rolled her eyes. "So if I ask you what the real story is, are you going to tell me just enough to make it sound good?"

"Probably. But that's in terms of quantity, not quality." I wouldn't lie to her, because she deserved some good answers for what I put her through, but there were some things she just didn't need to know.

"Is this how you high-rollers always play?"

I shook my head. Thankfully, no. "Only when things get messy. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have gotten you involved."

"So what can you tell me?" she demanded, brushing off my apology for a second time. Information had always been more interesting to her.

My cup of steamed milk provided some useful, short-lived cover. I was still feeling the occasional twinge from my misadventure, but I'd decided that I didn't need or want the caffeine stim anymore. I wanted things to get back to normal. "Well, it all started five years ago."

She settled down comfortably in her seat, with artful enthusiasm. "Ooh, an epic tale! Those are the best." Then she did a little bit of math in her head. "Oh, hey, lemme guess. Is this when you came back after that one summer and you were kind of wonky?"

I raised a dubious eyebrow at her. "'Wonky'?"

"Well, you were gone for so long. And then you finally came back and you said you were sick and still getting back on your feet and you never did tell me what that was all about. And then hey, your snugglebunny came and visited not long after, right? Say, how are you and the snugglebunny? Everything good, I hope? 'Cuz if not, I'm gonna get mad at someone. Especially him."

"The snugglebunny and I are talking again, thank you." I paused, then leveled an exasperated look at her. "Would you please stop calling him that? You've got me started."

"So? It's a perfectly fine nickname, don't you think?"

"Heaven help me if I ever call him that to his face." Duo would probably be amused, actually. Up until he figured out where I'd picked up the habit.

She swirled the coffee in her cup thoughtfully. "So that wasn't, you know, part of the story?"

"Regrettably, no." I'd almost wanted to cancel our meeting, in light of the revelations Duo and I had just come to a few hours ago. I thought I ought to be there, but he urged me to get out, get this over with. He knew I needed to get this out of my system. It wouldn't be nice to cancel something I'd scheduled just that morning. And besides, I think Duo just wanted some alone-time. Having me around seemed to pressure him somehow, even if he wanted me to be there. What a sticky situation we had on our hands. "But we seem to be heading in the right direction, so don't worry about it. That's neither here nor there."

"Are you sure? Because I could, you know, kick his ass for you or something."

Somehow, I doubted that. I could take care of myself just fine, and Duo had more than enough things to worry about right now without an angry Trix after him, so I thought it wise to move on. "Thank you, but no. I was working that summer. Yes, I... suffered a job-related injury. Just a couple of weeks ago, it came out that I... 'retained' some of the tech from that job. IAB got involved, and then everything went to hell."

I could tell she knew I was omitting massive chunks of the story, but she was willing to go along with me for now. "So how'd you end up with an APB out on your head?"

"Things... got out of hand. They thought I had stolen something, and when I didn't prove 'cooperative' enough for them, they decided I was dangerous, so they locked me up. So I broke out. And then, well, I don't know exactly why they went with the story they did." Probably just covering their asses, but I'd give them the benefit of the doubt. Given that Minchella was apparently pre-disposed toward thinking the worst of me, maybe he really did believe I would be interested in defecting.

"I like the way you say, 'So I broke out,' like it's nothing."

"Gory details. You don't need to know them."

"I can imagine them." From the way she was looking at me, I guessed she was thinking about Thursday. "So... I was right, yeah? You and your friends? You're them."

I appreciated her discretion in this public place. I'd chosen a table to the rear, near the door to the back, with a clear view out the front, but that didn't mean there weren't people relatively nearby. The Saturday afternoon crowd made enough noise to cover a soft conversation, but if people really wanted to listen in, they could. "Yeah."

She exhaled audibly. "Wow. You're... well. Young, for starters."

"Yeah." Not much to say about that.

"So..." She leaned in conspiratorially. "Do you still have 'em?"

It took a few seconds to understand what she meant. "What, you think they'd just fit under the bed or something?"

"Well, I dunno," she defended herself, pulling back again. "They could be hidden somewhere or something."

"I don't know why you insist on asking after information you already presume to be secret."

"Because that's the only stuff that's interesting."

I pointedly did not answer her question. There wasn't anything to hide, given that the Gundams were well and truly gone, but the principle of the matter remained. "So, you knew, you said. How long?"

She sighed gustily, forced to resign herself to not knowing what I didn't want to tell her. "Well, I didn't know know, I said. I just sorta knew, in that, 'hey, wouldn't it be funny...?' sort of way. Where you think about it, and then it starts making a scary sort of sense."

"Really? Why?"

"Well, you are, like, super-uber badass. And, sheesh, Heero, think about the people you know!"

"What about them?"

It took her a couple of seconds to realize that I was serious. "Oh, come on, Heero! How many people do you know who go Christmas shopping for the former Queen of the World?"

"Quite a few, actually."

"And they're all Very Important People!"

I shrugged. Not to me, they weren't. "She's allowed to have friends. 'Normal' friends. I did go to school with her for a little while, you know." Sadly, though, I didn't think she kept up with anybody from her school days. Quatre, Dorothy and I didn't count. But listening to her tell it, she was never very good friends with anyone in high school to begin with it. St. Gabriel's had always struck me as a place to make connections, not friends.

Trix tapped the side of her cup with one fingernail. "You didn't make that up?"

"No, that was true." That little fact had worked out well as part of my 'cover', though it was based on a mistaken impression. Most people didn't know much about Relena Darlian. They generally assumed that she had always been in Sanq, despite knowing that her father had been the Vice Foreign Minister, so no one ever realized that I couldn't really have gone to school with her and have been a citizen of the Sanq nation. If anyone had, I could have claimed an acquaintance through her pacifist academy instead.

Denied one route, Trix tried another. "Did you know you never refer to Director Une by rank? Nope, it's always just plain 'Une', and you never get in trouble for it."

"Hm." I'd never given that much thought before, but I knew it to be true.

"'Hm', he says. Like it's nothing special at all. Tell me, are you always that super-uber badass? 'Cuz on Thursday, you were like some sort of mad kung fu machine."

"Don't call me that," I responded automatically. Not a good sign when the reaction became habit. I shook my head dismissively when Trix gave me a funny look.

"Um, no. Don't call you what?"

"It was nothing."

"No, it wasn't. But if you tell me something lame like, 'it wasn't kung fu, it was karate,' I'm going to kick you." She nudged her shoe against mine underneath the table.

"It wasn't either." I didn't really have a style, unless I was just sparring in some particular form. Otherwise, it was whatever worked.

She went ahead and kicked the side of my shoe. "Don't change the subject. If I said something that bothered you, I want to know so I don't say it again. Otherwise, I'm not going to be much better than that loser of--"

"Don't call him that." She wanted me to be clear? I would be perfectly clear on this point. "Despite being 'important' people by most estimates, we're still just normal people. We have problems, just like everybody else. And we're working through them, okay? So don't call him that. I will not have you making things more difficult."

She looked suitably impressed. "So when you said you and the snugglebunny are talking again, you meant you're really talking, huh?"

Between 'snugglebunny' and 'loser', the former was definitely the better label. "Yes."

"So you're finally going to tell him to stop being such an ass about your choice of jobs?"

That hadn't even come up yet, despite being such an easy target. "After I get him to stop being such an ass about his own things, then we'll worry about my things."

She held a hand up in a sign of defeat. "Okay then. I'll give him a while to prove himself. So you totally didn't answer my question. How have you been hiding your crazy ninja ways all this time? 'Cuz seriously, you were, like, wow. Someone else entirely." She frowned. "You winced."

"I did not."

"You did, too." She jabbed her finger at me to emphasize her point. "You didn't even go, 'huh, what are you talking about?' You just skipped right to the denial, which means you must have winced."

Hm. There weren't any huge flaws in her logic. Damn. I shook my head again. "Just forget it."

"Uh-huh. Yeah. No. Tell me what's bothering you."

She could rival Duo in his tenacity sometimes. Again, I wondered why I had ever allowed her to become my friend. Had she reminded me of him? Did I just rely on having someone lively around to spruce up my day? But it wasn't unnatural for a person to find friends in people with similar temperaments. I couldn't think of her as a flawed echo of Duo, otherwise I would be in the same place he was, adding a layer of artificiality to my time away from the others. No, Trix was a friend. A real friend. She wasn't a friend like the five of us were friends, but that didn't make her less of one. Just a different one.

I knew that avoiding the question would be useless. Sooner or later, she would ask it again. Possibly at an inopportune time. For a moment, I considered telling her, but it just didn't feel right. Obviously, it wasn't just us that knew about it any more, what with the whole mess that had put me on 'administrative leave', but she would ask more questions I wouldn't be willing to answer. And it occurred to me that Duo probably wouldn't be very happy if I told her. She didn't deserve that kind of access to me, he thought. And, well, he was more or less right. Though I wouldn't use the word 'deserve'. She was a friend. But a different one. She just got access to different information.

"I... wanted to apologize," I settled on, returning to the original reason I had set this meeting up. It answered her questions well enough. "For last Thursday. I'm sorry if I got curt with you. I'm not used to dealing with people under those circumstances. And... I'm sorry if you didn't want to see that. No, I'm not normally that 'badass' on a daily basis. Maybe I seemed like a different person to you, but it's a good part of who I am, whether or not I show it. I'll understand if that makes you... uncomfortable."

After a short pause, she gave me a disdainful sound. "Do I look uncomfortable to you? I'm here, aren't I?"

"I offered you free coffee."

"Well, yeah, but..." She shrugged, looking uncomfortable to me, but that may have been simply the 'touchy-feely' nature of our conversation. "Okay, so it surprised me. No big deal. Other than that, there's nothing wrong with having a friend that's mild-mannered by day, and badass ninja by night. Especially one that can disarm a bomb. I mean, it's not like you turned green and started tearing people's heads off or something. I've always known you were special ops. I guess I never really thought about what that meant, but... so long as you use your powers against the forces of evil, it's cool. Although if you were evil, then I'd probably join up, too, because I'd really rather not have to go up against a ninja like you."

::Ninja are far more stealthy.::

::I know. It's a pop culture thing.:: It had been a long time since Duo and I had watched a good ninja movie. It had been mostly zombie movies recently. Maybe it would be a good way for us to bond again.

*****

Quatre gave me a slightly accusing look when we walked in on Sunday afternoon. "What?" I said innocently. "You didn't tell me not to come in today."

"You were supposed to enjoy your weekend."

"The same way I was supposed to enjoy my vacation?" I asked dryly, remembering his last words to me in person before he had left the apartment. Either Quatre had a strange definition of 'enjoy', or he had a strange definition of 'vacation'. "Oh, by the way, I left your laptop at the suite. I'll have to stop by and pick it up for you."

"Don't worry about it. I already got it. The place is cleaned out already."

"You move fast." I shouldn't have expected any less.

"Oh, and I have some stuff that belongs to you." He unzipped the carry case by his side and pulled an item out. "I got your wallet back."

I'd wondered what happened to it, after being reminded of its absence after paying for the coffee the day before. I took the wallet with a murmur of thanks before remembering something that would be good of me to mention. "Oh, uh.... I borrowed some money from you, Duo. I hope you don't mind."

His attention hadn't wandered from our exchange, but the comment caught him off-guard and he blinked blankly at me. "Huh?"

Just a few bucks," I explained. We shared money all the time, but that didn't mean I wanted him to worry when his accounts didn't balance up right at the end of the month. "They took my wallet, and obviously I wasn't going to access my accounts, so... I borrowed some money."

He opened his mouth to say something, then thought better of it and stayed silent instead. He thought of something else to say, but swallowed that as well. In the end, he just shook his head in amused resignation.

That wasn't quite good enough for me. "I get points for telling you, right?"

He just shook his head incredulously again.

My duty done, I inspected the contents of my wallet. The members of IAB were surely above the theft of petty cash, but who could say what they might decide to keep as 'evidence'. Luckily, I didn't tote anything really important around with me. That left me room in my pockets for my badge. I studied it, absently polishing a scuff mark on the edge with my thumb. Some people took great pride in their badges as a visible symbol of what they stood for. Personally, I thought it was mostly just a piece of metal one waved around for show. But it did mean something. It represented an institution. A job? Not a duty. I bore that duty without the badge to show for it. So did I still need it?

"Thinking about shovin' it back where the sun don't shine?"

I glanced up to meet Duo's grim smile, and couldn't resist an answering smile. Mostly because his thoughts had echoed mine. "It crossed my mind."

His eyes flicked to the badge and back again. "Not gonna do it, though, huh?"

The best response I had for that was a sigh. He was probably right. I didn't have to be here, but it was the best place to be.

I tucked the wallet and badge away into my jacket pocket. Joining the others in their labor, Duo started poking around the accumulation of files spread out over the table top. We still needed to root out the main malcontents in the nationalist movement. And I was working my way up to that point. It still felt too strange to be back in the office. Which was why I was here today, a Sunday, when there weren't very many people around. Hopefully that would ease me back into the swing of things.

"Why don't you?" Duo asked suddenly, putting down a file. After a moment, he looked a little awkward and picked the file back up again, intending perhaps to use it as cover of some sort. "I mean... it can't be, like... tactically advantageous for you to hang out where your bosses are gonna screw you."

Another one of those questions I wish he didn't have to ask, but it was still much better that he ask it than not. The sooner we got it all out, the better. I let the irritation sweep through me and waited for the amusement to kick in. "It's not really tactically advantageous for me to hang out with you and let you screw me, either," I answered mildly.

A flash of anger passed over his face at the supposed accusation before he realized I had been using 'screw' in a way he hadn't been. Then his expression turned into a strange hodgepodge of humor, embarrassment, and enlightenment. "Oh. Uh, well, ahem, when you put it that way..." It wasn't long before all those things were lost and replaced by horror. "Eww! It's been watching this whole time, hasn't it?!"

"Excuse me?"

"Ugh! That's...!" He shuddered dramatically. "Okay, it's gonna take me a while to get over that one."

"...Excuse me?" 'It' had to be Zero again. 'Watching'?

Quatre snickered.

Duo turned to him and pointed a threatening finger at him. "Shut up! You're not the one it's been... watching."

Now seemed a good time to ask a question. "Watching?"

Quatre answered through his smirk when it became apparent that Duo wasn't going to be able to say the words. "Duo's just realized that you've had a voyeur in the bedroom all this time. Or wherever else you may have been screwing around."

It didn't click immediately. When it did, I thought surely I had to be wrong. "A voyeur?" I repeated. Once it became apparent that I had heard correctly, I laughed. I tried to stifle it when Duo glared viciously at me, but it only magnified the humor until I had to put my head down on the table in front of me, cushioned by my arms, and hide until I could get my shoulders to stop shaking.

"It's not funny," Duo hissed at Quatre. "Those were... those were personal moments."

The humor faded as I realized that it was going to be a while before Duo would be interested in engaging in any personal moments again. I certainly hadn't expected any of those moments to be popping up any time soon, nor did I really want them to, but I hadn't considered voyeurism as a possible cause for it.

::That is because it is unreasonable.::

::No, I can kind of see where he's coming from on this one. Wouldn't you feel at least a little violated if you found that someone had gained access to your private data without your permission?::

::I cannot feel violated.::

::You know what I mean.:: However he wanted to phrase it, it wasn't good finding out that someone had the details to things you had never intended for them to have. I sat up again and regarded Duo seriously. "Duo."

He turned away from sniping at the others and came back to me looking quite disgruntled. "What?"

"...Zero isn't a voyeur. If we had a pet, would you consider it a voyeur if it watched us?"

"Will you stop thinking of it as your goddamn pet, Yuy?"

I bit my tongue on my immediate response and waited until I could answer levelly. "Will you stop thinking of it as a criminal miscreant? Maybe they've been personal moments, but..." I trailed off, noticing the others not pretending this time that they weren't listening in on this. I shook my head, stood, and took Duo's hand to pull him out of his chair and out of the office.

"Boo!" Quatre taunted us as we left. I threw him a withering look and shut the door firmly behind us.

It looked like Duo wanted to stay standing, so I perched on the arm of one of the chairs to put myself in a less confrontational stance. "Duo..."

"Personal moments," he repeated emphatically, pacing back and forth a little. "Personal. As in, just between the two of us. And..." He halted and stared uneasily at me. "God, it's a personal moment right now and he's watching."

"Don't look at me like you think you can see Zero looking back at you," I snapped. "When did Zero become more important than I am?"

He looked torn. "He's not, but that doesn't mean--"

"No," I cut him off. "I worked hard to get where I am today. I worked hard to figure out who am I and get comfortable with that, and I will not let you or Zero take that away from me."

His first instinct seemed to be an embrace, but he flinched back from it and folded his arms around himself instead. After a tense moment, he rubbed at his face. "Dammit..."

I stopped watching him and stared at a point on the wall next to him. Such interesting things always came out when we talked to each other. It was interesting, though ultimately pointless, to wonder if I would have had such an 'easy' time melding with Zero if I hadn't already worked out a lot of the kinks in my psyche. I'd been 'ready' for Zero. It couldn't have happened at a better time, in a way. I'd already considered myself to be in a transitional period. The addition of Zero had just been one more thing to deal with as I moved from one mindset to the next.

I didn't know if it would be possible to get Duo to understand that. They were things I was only just coming to realize for myself. I'd never really thought about them before. "Duo... It's not like Zero's ever going to share what he sees with anyone else."

He tucked his hands back under his armpits and considered my opening gambit doubtfully, leaning against the wall and keeping a distance between us. "That's nice, but that's not really my point."

"I just wanted to get the easy stuff out of the way first. The hard stuff... I don't know what to tell you. Yes, he's... 'watching'... but not with any prurient interest. He's certainly not criticizing your performance or anything, either. He's just... there."

"Like a pet dog or something," Duo said, obviously echoing my sentiment from earlier and not believing it.

"Sort of."

"Only a dog doesn't understand what's going on around it."

"Doesn't it? A dog can understand kindness, affection, mating. It doesn't assign the same values to those things that we do, perhaps, but it understands. Humans are animals, too."

"Zero isn't."

"Which would make this entire discussion less relevant, it seems to me."

"It's creepy, Heero," he answered flatly. "It'd be just as creepy if there were a video camera following us around all the time or something. It's... It's never gonna be just you and me, Heero. There's nowhere in the world we could go to get away from that. What could we do, EMF the whole apartment? You wouldn't even be able to see straight."

I took what comfort I could from the confirmation that he still wanted us to be together. There were benefits and drawbacks to the way he often made a decision about how things should end, and then worked backwards to try to make it happen. "But it might as well be just us, Duo. There might be no getting rid of Zero in my head, but that also means he's not going anywhere. The only part of him that comes out is what I let come out. You don't want to know that Zero's there? Fine. Just stop thinking about it, and I'll never let on, same as it's been for the last five years."

His eyes narrowed slightly. "Don't remind me of that 'little thing' you just forgot to mention to me all these years, Heero. Not gonna help."

He was right. My omission, no matter that it wasn't deliberate, had nothing to do with this discussion. "Fine. You don't think it's just us? You're right. It's never been just us. There's been you, me, Zero. Our pasts. Our issues. Our baggage. Our friends. All of that's been there, too."

"I don't care about all of that. All I care about is when it's just you and me and... and... there isn't all of that crap to get in the way. 'Cuz sweet Jesus, is there a lot of crap. A hell of a lot more than I suspected. So can't you, I don't know, just turn it off or something? Turn it on when you need to, if you have to?"

If only things were that simple. Zero was far too integrated to just shut off. And even if I did manage to turn him off for the duration, he'd just review the data after the fact.

::Lie to him.::

::No.::

::Give him what he wants.::

::He wouldn't believe me, anyway.:: He didn't even believe the truth. He didn't believe good things right off the bat, not before poking and prodding at it carefully and thoroughly. There had to be another way, something tangible in some sense that could convince him that Zero wouldn't -- couldn't -- come between us. I took refuge in the numbers.

::Must you?:: Zero sighed, a whiff of resignation staining his tone.

::See what I mean about giving someone access to private information? You don't like it anymore than he does.:: And I normally didn't like it either. But Duo fit inside my personal bubble. I would tell him things I would tell no other. "Sixty-five, seventy? That's the ratio when I'm being my usual annoying, reasonable self. The number goes down when I'm being less than reasonable. And if there's one more reason you drive Zero nuts, Duo, it's that you make me less than reasonable. Zero may be a strong presence when I'm up at seventy-five, but when I'm just an idiot in love, Zero's the last thing on my mind. You know what I'm talking about, right? The more emotional, the less focused, the lower the sync."

His expression darkened a little from remembering his own experience with the system, but I knew it could prove my point. "The lower the sync, the worse the visions, Heero."

"Bad hallucinations aren't productive for either of us. Zero would rather lower the interaction than generate faulty results. It's not like I need him to tell me how to love you, anyway. When I'm with you, Duo, my focus is on you, and nothing else."

Zero sent a zing of a smirk in my direction. I told him to stay out of it in return. I wasn't lying. I just wasn't bringing my argument to the logical conclusion. I was usually quite focused when I was being 'personal' with Duo. The two of them were in no way mutually exclusive. My sync could be perfectly fine when we were together. We were just fortunate that Zero would rather run self-diagnostics and keep a watchful eye on our surroundings than be subjected to the madness that was the human mating ritual.

Duo studied me with care, evaluating my sincerity. I waited patiently, confident that he would see my side, until I was finally rewarded with an answer. "So. Strong emotion drives Zero away?"

"Sort of."

"And you assure me that Zero knows when to find somewhere else to be?"

I nodded encouragingly. "Yes. It's like they used to say in school, about how, if you have a girl over, you should hang a tie or something on the doorknob so your roommate knows not to go in. It's the same thing, in a sense. Sure, your roommate knows you're having sex. Or a romantic dinner or something. Maybe he even hears the thumping of the bed against the wall. But that's not nearly the same as him actually being there in the room with you."

He raised an eyebrow at me, but didn't comment. I was pretty sure he'd heard of the tradition before. "So... what you're saying is... The more mind-blowing sex I have with you, the more of you I'll have, yeah?"

::He's just kidding,:: I soothed my somewhat alarmed roommate. At least, I was pretty sure he was, judging from his hesitant smile. I smiled back, but corrected him all the same. "You've always had all of me, Duo. So you'll probably just get less of him."

He considered that, and unglued himself from the wall. "You think that, if I'd stuck with the school thing a little longer, I'd be more ready to accept the fact that my boyfriend has an annoying roommate that I can't stand?"

"I hope not. I never had a roommate in school, annoying or not, and I hope you weren't talking about someone else."

He stepped forward enough to standing an arms length away from me. "You're really stuck on me, huh?"

"Irrevocably."

One of his hands twitched toward me, but it fell back to his side before it got anywhere. "What's your sync right now?"

I reached out and took his hand instead. "Don't think about him."

He sighed. "This would be a lot easier if it weren't a 'him', you know."

"I'll try."

"Don't bother. I know it's just a matter of vocabulary to you. Doesn't change the fact that it's sentient enough to have a personality to you. I still find it creepy."

I knew it wouldn't help things in the slightest to tell him that I wished he could know Zero as I did. "This is about you and me, Duo. Just you and me."

He looked like he wanted to be convinced, but just couldn't help himself. "You can't turn him off."

I took his other hand and brought the two together in front of us. "I know you think you're hot, Duo," I told him solemnly. "But Zero has absolutely no interest in watching us have sex."

He stared at me blankly before laughing, eventually closing the distance between us and leaning against me. "God, Heero, I must be crazy."

"Oh?" With our hands now at his sides, I found myself rubbing my thumbs across his palms.

"I don't know... I don't know why I... how I... I can look at you, and wonder about the stuff that I fell in love in. About how much of that was you, and how much was..." He couldn't force himself to finish the sentence.

I didn't really want to hear it, anyway. "Duo... did you fall in love with me because I can calculate a square root without a calculator?"

He muffled a chuckle against my shoulder. "As sexy as that is... no." He went still. "...Oh. Crap. I just called it 'sexy', didn't I?"

"You were joking," I soothed.

"It's still creepy." He shuddered, then pulled away from me. My heart was just about to lodge itself in the vicinity of my stomach when he lifted our hands again, tightening his grip. He looked at me briefly, but after struggling with the contact, he dropped his eyes to focus on our hands. It didn't help. The words kept clogging in his throat.

"What is it, Duo?" I asked, trying to sound gentle and understanding while I was really just hoping he wasn't about to reveal some irreconcilable difference.

He tried a few more times to say it. Finally, he moved our hands and leaned against me again. "I... God, I don't even know how to say it."

Not very promising. I closed my eyes, concentrated on being calm, and when I was ready, I came back to the conversation. "Say what, Duo?"

"You... You said..." He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "Zero stays out of our business, right?"

"That's right." I didn't know how many more ways I could say it.

"But our business is... everything. Not just sex, but... everything. And... and it's always there, watching or not, and... and it's this tactical machine, and... and it finds and exploits weaknesses, and it... it uses the best weapon for the job. And... and..."

I tried hard to understand what he was saying, but it eluded me. That frustrated me. I knew that I didn't have to understand everything, that even the most human of humans didn't have perfect empathy with others, but it still frustrated me. Especially since this was Duo. I felt like I fell short for him. "What is it, Duo? What's wrong?"

It took another long tense silence before he could start again. His voice fell to a rasping whisper. "Do you... What if you... God, I know you wouldn't. You wouldn't. I know it."

"I wouldn't what?" I asked, probably as desperate to hear his answer now as he seemed desperate to say it.

His voice dropped another notch. "You wouldn't... use it. Against me."

I would have been more horrified, if Zero hadn't offered his suggestions in those sorts of situations before. As it was, I was just scared. Scared that he wouldn't believe me. Scared that one day, I could give in to the temptation. Or worse, that I wouldn't even notice it if I did. I tried to release his hands so I could wrap my arms around him, but he held on tightly, so I squeezed back, as hard as I could without hurting him. "I wouldn't, Duo," I breathed, trying to make it a promise I believed in so deeply that it would make it into every last one of Zero's subroutines. "I wouldn't ever use it against you. I wouldn't."

"What if... what if you didn't know?" he asked in a very small voice, as if he didn't want Zero to hear. "It... it does that..."

"Then it'd be--" I started fiercely, but cut myself off quickly after I realized that my phrasing had been vague and misleading. The last thing I wanted was for another misunderstanding to happen. "Zero and I have ground rules. We respect those ground rules, or else it's over. No more playing nice with each other. One of my rules is that, if Zero has something to say to me, he says it to me. No sneaking in thoughts and pretending they're mine."

"And... you trust it?"

"Our partnership would be meaningless if we both thought the same way, had the same limitations. I trust it. Besides," I added, attempting to inject a mote of levity. "How often have I gotten my way with you?"

He choked off a small laugh. "That's true." The grip on my hands loosened a little. "If you could do that, we wouldn't be standing here right now." His cooldown lasted only a moment before the tension overtook it again. "No, if it were in control, it'd probably try to get rid of me, wouldn't it? It doesn't like me."

"Ground rule number two, Maxwell," I murmured into his ear. "I like you, and that's all that matters."

*****

I was already out of the office and near the stairwell by the time I heard footsteps behind me. I stopped and waited, and before long, Duo showed up. "Hey, mind if I come with?"

He'd visited my desk a hundred times before, and I'd thought we were done with the talking for the day. I looked at him inquiringly, but when he didn't volunteer an answer, I just shrugged and gestured toward the stairs.

We fell in step as we made quick progress down the nine flights to the TSRU. There was still a short walk to the department once we emerged from the stairwell, and wanting to spend just a little more time in Duo's company, I slowed my usual brisk pace to a comfortable stroll.

He walked with his hands in his pockets, eyes catching on the various flyers, announcements, and motivational posters that decorated almost every hallway in HQ. He settled down as the door to the departmental office came within sight. "Hey. Is it... you know. Hard? I know you've got a hell of a lot more patience and tolerance than I do, of course, but... It's still gotta be rough, right? That, uh, I've got all my shit going on, and I don't like Zero, and Zero doesn't like me, and hell, let's just throw your buddy Trix and the whole kit and caboodle in there while I'm at it. That leaves you kinda stuck between one thing and the next, doesn't it?"

I wasn't about to deny it, so I shrugged.

He shifted his balance from one foot to the next as I unlocked and opened the door to the office. He preceded me, scanned the area for the company of others, and then stepped out of the way. "I, uh... sorry about that," he muttered as I passed him.

I squeezed his shoulder reassuringly. "It's..." What, okay? Not really. It was exhausting having to play the peacekeeper, sometimes, but it wasn't that much different from daily life. I had great sympathy for Relena. "...not your fault. Everyone's entitled to their opinions."

His hands were shoved more deeply into his pockets. "Yeah, but... we don't have to give you shit about it. You're just the poor guy caught in the middle, I guess. Don't shoot the messenger and all that."

"Oh, well." I got just as much shit about my own opinions as I did about everyone else's. I took a quick peek into all the cubes as I proceeded to the rear of the office, where my desk was hidden. All empty, as I'd expected. I wouldn't have felt comfortable coming down here, otherwise. Zero had reminded me of something I'd needed to do. I studied the layout of my desk after I got there, marking the position of each object. My survey produced a frown. "Someone's been through my things." It was more than Trix just borrowing my stapler.

Duo's expression went from mildly uncomfortable to business-like. "Did you keep anything important in there?"

I wasn't one of those people that thought personal things belonged in the workplace, so there was none of that. Everything else was mostly files and paperwork for the cases I'd worked on. Except for one thing. I opened the second drawer on the right, dug underneath a pile of discs, and pulled out a pouch. Still there, and still full of what I'd put in there, judging from the weight and feel. I opened it anyway, found what I was looking for, and sighed in relief.

"What is that?" Duo asked.

"A..." A second thought about telling him hit me, but I brushed it aside. "Something of a personal project. Something I tinker with in my free time, mostly when I'm here on call. It's... a neural interface device."

He watched warily as I pulled it out of its bag to show him. "That? Doesn't look like one."

For which I was glad. It looked like any other small piece of personal electronics these days. "Probably why they didn't take it." It wasn't very incriminating, as evidence went, but it still would have been relevant to the IAB's investigation if they'd recognized it for what it was. I didn't really know what else they would have been looking for. A written agenda for taking over the world? What would have proven my alleged instability to them? I set the interface down on the tabletop and went through the rest of my drawers.

Duo stared at it, but didn't touch it. "Does it work?"

"Mm-hm. I know it's not very pretty to look at, but it's just a prototype. It's designed for portability and compatibility."

"And, uh, any particular reason why you'd be building something like that?"

Satisfied that nothing seemed to be out of order, I shut the last drawer and turned on my computer to check it out. While it was booting, I leaned against the desk to give Duo my full attention. "No particular reason. Well, now that I've 'come out', it might see some use, but a few weeks ago, it was just something I did to see where I could go with it."

He fidgeted with my stapler, tweaking its position until it was precisely aligned with the edge of the table. "Your other little buddy. RJ. He does research in this stuff, yeah?"

"Yeah. He never knew about Zero, or what I was doing with this." I waved my hand at the interface. "But we discussed some ideas. One of the only people I've come across that has been interested in the possibilities on a purely academic level."

"Oh." Done with the stapler, he moved on to repositioning two pens on the desktop. "Just a tale of two geeks, then, huh?"

"He was never my accomplice in anything, Duo." I pulled my chair out and took a seat. The IT department had administrator access to all of these machines, so I also kept my computer clean of personal items, but it was still healthy to look into it.

"You were using him, then?" he suggested neutrally, straightening up a small stack of reports.

"We bounced ideas off each other. We were both researchers in the area. Duo." I put a hand on top of his wrist as he reached out to the small whiteboard I had hanging on the cubicle wall. "Stop touching my stuff."

He started guiltily before jamming his hands back in his pockets. "Oh. Sorry."

"What are you thinking, Duo? That I had a whole second life -- third life? fourth life? -- revolving around all of this? I didn't. We were just two people with a common hobby. I just happened to have the means by which to test my theories. Outside of this, there's nothing else."

"Oh," he said again dully, looking antsy now that I had forbidden him to play with my things. "So. I guess maybe he'll be even more interested in what you've got to say now, you being like the living embodiment of all his interests."

I sighed. Someone else to use me? At least he was well-acquainted with the discretion that needed to be wrapped around the Zero system. He had the security clearance for it, still active from the time he was supposed to do research on it, but hopefully it would be enough to keep his curiosity about it confined to small, quiet chunks. "I need to pay him a visit. Apologize for getting him involved. Thank him for coming forward when they started asking him questions. Without him..."

"We wouldn't have known," Duo finished. "Guess I can't really hold a grudge against the guy for that. He's obviously a pretty loyal friend. You... have loyal friends, Heero."

The computer seemed untouched since the last time I had logged on. I shut it down and spared him a curious glance.

He shrugged, trying for nonchalance. "I... maybe I should get to know them better. That's all."

I smiled. "I'd like that." I put the interface back into its bag, tucked it into one of the inner pockets of my jacket for safekeeping, and stood. "I'm done here. Everything looks fine. Shall we?"

His eyes flickered nervously at where I'd just stowed the device, but he mustered up a small tilt of his lips as he nodded.

*****

When Monday came, I dragged Duo into the office early. He stopped his grumbled protests when I told him I didn't feel comfortable with walking through populated halls yet. Zero was still a top security issue, and news of my 'rogue' status wouldn't have made the rounds. Defectors were bad for morale. That information would have been distributed only to the relevant parties, and even so, news of my 'undercover mission' would have followed thereafter. There was no reason for me to feel uneasy walking through HQ. But I knew I would. No one would be regarding me any differently than they had before, unless perhaps they had noticed my two week absence, but I would see them differently. Until I worked it out of my system, I would feel twitchy, evaluating each person that came near as a potential enemy. That wasn't a good feeling.

I had a whole morning of peace, following leads with the others and then getting lunch in the office before I was summoned before our overlord for a personal report on our team's progress. That was the official reason, at least.

When I got to Une's office, I was granted an immediate audience, which made me glad that her office wasn't that far from our workspace. The upper floors of the building weren't heavily trafficked, sparing my nerves some. Meeting with Une was actually calming in a way. I knew what to expect out of her.

She watched me closely as I seated myself on the other side of her desk, and continued to do so after I had myself settled. I waited the scrutiny out, knowing that it was a part of the game. When she was at last satisfied with what she saw, she spoke. "Report."

Official business before unofficial business. I did as I was told, and briefed her on our findings to date. All of the terrorists from ZenNet had been processed. We had successfully identified the one who was the actual building engineer for ZenNet, who had arranged for the place to be used as their temporary headquarters for their operations in the city. Though it was knowledge after the fact, I felt vindicated in my decision to head directly to the building rather than try to bull my way through all the levels of red tape to get ZenNet's cooperation. That avenue would only have led straight to the building engineer's door, and he would no doubt have stonewalled us until it was too late.

Of the others, we had successfully taken into custody two known nationalist leaders, and five agitators on record. The other dozen of them had been locals or henchmen. Since they were all people passionate enough about their cause to set bombs, cause major damage to government infrastructure, and consider innocent deaths to be mere collateral damage, even Quatre hadn't broken any of them yet. But we had hope. They weren't fanatical to the point of willing martyrdom, given the desperation with which they had fought me in an attempt to win their freedom from the ZenNet building after I'd locked us all in. Most of the bruises I'd acquired from the encounter were still fading.

Despite the lack of cooperation, our captives were able to provide us with useful information. We were still in the process of looking up the backgrounds and connections of each of them. We'd dug up a lot of information, but nothing had centralized into a cohesive whole yet. It would take time, given the non-localized nature of the rebellion, but they'd gathered once for a concerted terrorist effort. We had every reason to believe they would do so again.

Following the report of our current progress, Une transitioned smoothly to an inquiry into my 'undercover mission'. I recounted the details of my initial interrogation and subsequent arrest, glossing over the severity of my disability while incarcerated and skipping straight to the escape. From her grimly amused smile, I could only guess that my story didn't quite match up with what she had heard from the IAB officials involved.

I paused in my report as she leaned back in her chair and studied me some more. "You didn't seriously injure any of your fellow Preventers," she told me. "Nothing out of the ordinary for a 'faked' escape. Off the record, however, I know that your actions were taken out of self-defense. You need not worry about repercussions."

I bowed my head slightly in respectful gratitude. She'd just spared me one more headache. "What about their actions?"

"On the record, they were merely participating in an undercover operation. Off the record... They were just doing their jobs, pursuing whom they thought was a security risk. There can't be many repercussions for that." She smiled again. "But I'm sure they'll soon find it in their best interests to request transfers. It wouldn't be wise for any of them to linger long where there are so many high-ranking people that are displeased with them. In that case, we'll certainly be able to find them new positions fit for their talents. I'm afraid I must apologize for their initiative, and for allowing this matter to slip my attention for so long. If I'd known, I would have put an end to their investigation immediately."

I'd gotten the details of their motivation from Quatre, so I didn't waste time pursuing it with her. I also knew how busy the government had kept her with their nonsense. There were other questions I had for her. "You disagreed with their actions."

"Of course," she answered serenely. "If I'd wanted you imprisoned, I'd have done it myself."

"Is it a matter of keeping your enemies close?"

She leaned forward to meet my gaze intently. "You're a valuable member of this organization, Agent Yuy. I hope you continue your work here. Your talents shouldn't go to waste."

I tried to evaluate the threat level in her words, but didn't come to any solid conclusions. "I look forward to returning to my post, Director."

"I was hoping you might consider another position, Agent."

"You've hoped that for several years now, Director. I've never taken you up on that offer." Une had always been much more graceful about it than Duo had been. Perhaps she felt that time was on her side. Or maybe the difference that permanence would make meant little to her. I was already at her disposal on special ops, ready and willing to drop everything and work the important cases. She could make do for the rest.

Unsurprisingly, she decided to up the ante this time. "I've been unintentionally limiting your choices. Having you in the field would be a great boon, yes, but perhaps your... 'talents' might serve a better purpose in, say, tactical analysis."

I decided not to argue the merits of one position over the other and cut to the heart of what was motivating the renewal of this topic. "If you want to use me in a capacity of your own choosing, then why would you have ordered my release? Why not just keep me in that box?" Friend or foe? The question kept bouncing around in my head. Friend or foe?

She nodded in acknowledgment of the point, but afterwards took her time in answering. "I don't believe you would be able to perform to your greatest potential if you were kept locked in a box," she said finally.

I noted the way she was absently rubbing the top of her paperweight, fingers tracing the grooves of the rose engraved upon its surface. That moved her assurance beyond all doubt. She was on my side about this. I should have expected it. Thusly reassured, I settled down to discuss the matter of my appointment in earnest. I was sure we'd be able to work something out that we could both find agreeable.

*****

It took five assurances that I was just fine, two apologies for worrying her, three solemn oaths that Duo and I were committed to working things out, and two 'none of your business's before Relena finally seemed satisfied with my account of the last couple of weeks. From the trial, I could determine that it had been the right decision to pay her a visit now rather than later, despite Duo's good-natured jibes about how busy my social calendar for the week had been since getting back, considering it was only Tuesday. And Trowa's sly comments about how Duo was lucky he didn't have to go traipsing all over Europe to visit people. Funny, I don't remember Trowa complaining about it at the time.

I spent the trip home mulling over what I had finally gotten out of Relena after her intense questioning, information about the current political situation. The big picture coalesced slowly in my mind, hints and guesses and calculations coming together to give me a direction. I heard voices coming from the inside of the apartment before I opened the door. By habit, I stopped to identify them before entering. Duo and Wufei.

I'd gone to Relena's for dinner. Duo had responded vaguely about how he planned to spend his evening. I wondered if he'd intended to give Wufei a call, or if being left alone with his thoughts had driven him to it. Either way, I unlocked the door and went in.

Duo sat in the corner of the sofa, pillow caught loosely in the circle of his arms. Wufei was seated in the armchair, nursing a cup of tea. The silence as I entered was not particularly awkward. "Hey," I greeted them, a nod for Wufei, an almost hesitant smile for Duo.

"Hey," Duo answered back. The one word was comfortable, but not upbeat. "How'd it go?"

"Makes me glad I don't have a girlfriend."

He muffled a dry snort. "Yeah, she was pretty worried about you."

IAB had contacted her during my absence, asking that she inform them immediately if I contacted her, but they hadn't given her much in the way of details. The others told her what they could, but they'd had little time for reassurances as they continued their investigation. Relena had taken the wait patiently enough, but once I was in her clutches, she demanded the comfort she'd been denied. Women were definitely different creatures from men. The menfolk knew how to keep their worries in check... which stirred in me a moment of doubt, that they simply hadn't been worried at all. With a shake of my head, I chased the errant wisp of insecurity away, along with its companion, the faintest scent of betrayal. "I think she should be set for a while now."

Wufei stood. "I should probably be going now."

"A moment, if you would," I said, forestalling him with an upraised hand as I pulled off my shoes and took a seat on the sofa. We'd long since gotten rid of the tiny one I'd had in college. "What do you think about the colonies?"

He took his seat again slowly. "The colonies?"

"I think the next attack will come from the colonies."

It took him only a second to switch mental gears to work. "Why?"

"We've spent the last few days following up on all of the men from ZenNet. All of them have been from one of the Earth nations. And yet the colonies also support the nationalist movement."

"Yeah," Duo inserted, flexing his hands around his pillow. "But they've never really been one hundred percent on board with it, have they? As in, they sympathize with the cause, but it's not like it's really personal with them. Right?"

I nodded. "Yes. I was discussing this a little with Relena. They support the nationalist cause because the net result will be a decrease in government presence on the colonies. For them, it's never been about a 'national' culture. They don't like the new global system because of the demands and restrictions it imposes upon them. But they do like the term 'nationalist'. It sounds less objectionable than something like 'separatist'."

"Ugh." Duo flopped his head against the back of the sofa cushions in disgust. "That. I hate that party line of theirs. Yeah, they've worked soooo hard to finally rid themselves of the Federation's yoke and all they get in the end is another Earth-based government. Yeah, as if those bastards ever lifted a damn finger in that war."

Absently, I reached out and patted him soothingly on his thigh. "The more self-righteous they are, the more likely it is that they're going to do something."

Wufei hummed thoughtfully. "So you think they're going to make the next move, then?"

"I think they've already made their move. Comm lines to the colonies have been spotty lately. Anti-government media report it as another sign that ESUN is incapable of maintaining its infrastructure, but the timing seems suspect to me. I've been wanting to do more research into the MinFa attack, this time from a colonial angle, but it's been difficult to investigate very far with the data transfer being so unreliable."

"Why a colonial angle?"

"We questioned those men from ZenNet. Two of them seemed completely baffled about what we were talking about when we mentioned the simultaneous hack. Some of them seemed to be aware of it, but weren't familiar with the details. They sound like they were two separate operations. Coordinated, yes, but separate."

"Why the colonies? Why not another branch of the nationalist movement? Relena was e-mailed that warning from a techie member of their group."

I made a wry noise. "Tech geeks are everywhere, Wufei. I was thinking about ZenNet, too. About the man they had on the inside, who had the routers patched to let the attacks through. It seemed unnecessary to me. There are plenty of ways to get around the security measures in place for that situation that don't involve having an inside contact. I would have thought it to be a good part of the MinFa challenge. Unless you need to overcome the latency that comes in from the StC chain. You can do it, but it's a much harder hack to pull off from space."

Duo toyed absently with a corner of his pillow while he thought it over. "Hm, seems kind of, I dunno, unnecessary, don't you think? Bringing in a bunch of people, and then voluntarily dealing with the lag."

"But it fits their MO. The hacking part, I mean. Colonists don't set bombs, because what kind of idiot sets a bomb on a colony? There have been protests before, even violence, but when it comes to large-scale trashing of government or military property, colonists have usually resorted to higher forms of terrorism, like sabotage, theft, hacking. The nationalists on Earth were more traditional. They stuck with the tried-and-true bombing approach. It doesn't seem to fit in that they would mount a hacking attempt as well."

"Hate to break it to you, Heero, but as colony tactics go, I'd have to classify us more as 'bombs' than 'hackery'."

"We were sent to do work on Earth. And after that, in space. When we entered the colonies, it was without our Gundams."

"What would they gain from an attack here? Just a show of support for their little Earth buddies? Or were you thinking an exploratory, recon sort of thing?"

"Possibly even a distraction." I shrugged. "I don't know for sure. I just think it's a good next direction."

"So they want to be rid of the United Sphere government," Wufei mused. "'United' or not, the bulk of the ESUN government is Earth-based. The nations here would have greater pull with the Senate. The colonists may well have been content to sit back and let the nationalists do all the hard work."

"But now that they've failed," I finished. "They may be interested in taking matters into their own hands. Relena mentioned that some of the colony representatives are already starting to distance themselves from the nationalist movement. They don't seem interested in supporting that cause any more, but I doubt it's because they've decided they're happy with the way things are, all of a sudden."

We spent a few minutes more discussing the possibilities before we decided the rest could wait for the morning, when all five of us had convened.

"Let me walk you out," I offered Wufei as he got ready to leave.

I turned to get my keys, fairly certain that behind me, he and Duo were exchanging a look. When I turned back, Wufei gestured me toward the door.

"Be right back," I murmured unnecessarily to Duo. It served as proxy to kissing his cheek.

We went down the stairs in companionable, if expectant, silence. Once we had regained level ground on the way to the visitor parking, I spoke. "I can't tell you what a relief it is, knowing that Duo has someone he can turn to for wise counsel when he needs it." I tried to toss that out there casually, but I probably failed.

A meditative pause passed before he answered. "Wise counsel? Can any of us truly be wise in the ways of the heart?"

I felt he was being deliberately evasive, so I bulled forward. "I truly think that, had he not been able to turn to you, I might have lost him rather quickly."

"You might have lost him, all the same. My 'wise counsel' was not given so that he would stay with you."

"I know. Had he chosen against me... I would have grieved. But I would still be glad that he had someone to help him make that decision. That's what makes your words so wise. That you would not counsel him in one direction or another, according to your own biases, but that you would help him to understand what direction he wants to choose. ...I fear we may yet require your aid in the coming times."

"You have more bad news for him?"

"No. But we're far from done with this last batch. There's still much to be said." I sighed. "It would be nice to have reached this point some other way, but I'm still glad, in a way, that all this has happened. It'll give us a chance to really work things out, I hope."

He looked thoughtful, considering his words carefully before he spoke. "How much of that work is yours, do you think?"

I swished the question around in my head, pondering its significance. There seemed to be a specific reference to quantity that eluded my comprehension. "I'm not sure I know what you mean."

We came to a stop next to his car. He fingered his keys slowly, playing more than fidgeting with them. "Maxwell has identified the areas on which he needs to work. Have you done the same?"

I still wasn't sure what he was talking about. Logically, I knew that I was far from perfect, but no examples relating to the present discussion came to mind. As Wufei's silence grew more expectant, I tried harder, and eventually came up with something. "I've discovered a few lingering insecurities in my head that I may have to deal with."

My lengthy pause did not go unnoticed, but he was kind enough to remark upon it only obliquely. "It would no doubt be easier for the both of you if you were on equal footing."

I'd thought so for a long time now, but not as it related to this. And all the thinking in the world hadn't made it so. Yes, I would have to be careful to make sure I did not imply that Duo bore the sole duty of introspection and change. Would it be only an implication? Wasn't it one of the matters at the heart of our discontent that I had done so much of my introspection already, and he had not? "I... don't know what I can do for him," I admitted reluctantly. "The last few years have been a flop. Though maybe now that he's more receptive..."

"And you, Yuy?"

He was trying to tell me something important. Something finally clicked. Duo had more than his own fair share of insecurities. I would have to own up to mine, for more reason than simply because it would make Duo more comfortable. It wasn't just fair. It was right. It couldn't be about presuming a position of moral superiority and showing him the way. I was not without fault. Maybe I didn't misrepresent myself to him, but if nothing else, then I still had my obviously miserable comprehension of my fellow man to answer for. I was just as responsible as he was for letting us get to this state, from complacence or incompetence or foolish optimism or resignation. I didn't know what I had to change, but whatever it was, it would have to be done if I wanted us to ever have a healthy relationship.

"I'm not sure yet, Wufei," I said finally. "I hope we won't have to go through something else like this before I figure it out, though."

He seemed with satisfied the answer. "He's had a rough couple of weeks, Yuy. Don't forget that."

"I know. I wish... Well, it could have gone better, anyway. I'm... amazed, really. How far things went. And how far we've come. I think that, if I weren't busy being so damn relieved that he decided to stay, I might start feeling... really damn lucky."

"I thought you didn't believe in luck, Yuy."

"Not when it comes to things that are the result of an observable chain of events. But this whole love thing? Certainly doesn't fall under that category. There's no explanation for it, really. I'm just really damn lucky that he decided that I was worth the time and effort to be with."

"You are indeed, Yuy." He shifted his weight, not quite uncomfortable, but not quite at ease, either. "You are lucky, but it isn't luck that's gotten you this. Maxwell has done a lot of hard soul-searching to get here."

"I know. I won't let that go unappreciated." I paused for a brief smile. "I know it's not my place to feel gratitude, but... I need to say at least once to you that I th--"

He held up his hand to forestall me. "No, you needn't say it. I accept the sentiment, but you are right. It is not your place to feel gratitude, and I certainly won't think any less of you if you let that go unsaid."

"As long as you know that, if I said it, it wouldn't be because I was thinking any less of you than you deserve."

"As I said, Yuy. Things could easily have not gone in your favor. I admit... I had my doubts."

I winced. It was no surprise, and I'd certainly had my own doubts, but that didn't mean I really wanted to hear it. "Do you, still?"

"I'll stay cautiously optimistic on this one. Though by 'doubts', I meant not simply your relationship, but also... about you."

"You doubt Zero's influence over me as well?"

"It's not so simple as all that. Were you any man other than Heero Yuy, I would question your strength of character. How weak would you have to be to seek comfort in a mechanical enhancement? How would you have ruined yourself by giving yourself permanently to a crutch?" He shrugged slightly. "But we're not talking about any other man. We're talking about you. And I know you're not that weak. It makes for an interesting puzzle."

That was a welcome change. "If you need any hints, feel free to ask."

"I shall keep that in mind." He smiled. "Now go back upstairs and tell Duo what a lucky man you are."

"I will. And.... thank you," I said in the end, putting everything into those two words that I never would again, willing him to hear how much was encompassed by them, for both Duo and myself.

He nodded, then got into his car with a simple, "Good night."

I could hardly wait for him to pull out of the parking space and get underway before I went back inside to bound up the stairs and back into the apartment. Duo was in the kitchen, cleaning up some of the dinner dishes, when he turned after hearing my entrance. "Hey," he greeted me once more.

I answered back in kind, feeling a little giddy for no particular reason.

"So, uh..."

He wanted to ask what we had talked about, but he was too circumspect to do so. I gave him a clue. "You're lucky you have such a good friend, Duo."

"Eh?" He dried his hands on a towel and turned to face me fully. "He's your friend, too, you know."

"I know. And I'm really lucky I have such a good friend, too. But those two things are separate. I'm just so glad you have someone to talk to, someone to stay with when you don't want to go home."

He rolled his eyes with exasperation. "You're being weird again, Yuy."

That put a damper on my good spirits. "I am?"

"Yes! I mean, sheesh, you're glad I had someone to stay with? Come on, Yuy. Most people would be getting paranoid that I was out cheating on them or something."

I blinked. "Really?"

"Yes, really! If you'd gone to stay with Relena, or even Trix, now, I know that you and Relena don't have a thing going, and you've assured me a bajillion times that Trix isn't interested in you, and hell, I even know you're gay! But it would still cross my mind at least once that something fishy was going on. Even if I thought nothing fishy was going on, but that you were just trying to make me jealous or something, which is pretty fishy by itself."

"You... weren't trying to make me jealous, were you?"

"No, of course not!"

"Just checking," I said immediately. I didn't want him to think I was accusing him of anything, all of a sudden. "I have to do that, once in a while, you know? I miss these things sometimes."

He muffled a chortle. "Yeah, you could say that. Now, I'm not saying I think you'd be out cheating, either, but the collective consciousness of today would force the thought at least once." He huffed one last time, and then his amusement faded. "When we were, you know, 'on the outs'.... you didn't stay here?"

I shook my head. It probably would have been obvious, once he'd come back. Nothing much would have changed since the day we left.

"So..." He wrapped his arms comfortably around his middle, then let one fall, and eventually dropped them both back to his side. "Were you... sleeping at the office the whole time?"

I nodded just once, not feeling blasEenough about it to say it aloud.

"Aw, hell, Yuy," he muttered, sounding sorry at first, but then something about his demeanor firmed up as he decided it wasn't his fault. And then it deflated a little when he started feeling bad for thinking that.

"It's fine," I said, interrupting the progression. "It just... felt more comfortable there." Maybe that wasn't the most helpful thing to say, but it was said.

"Yeah, but... well. I just should have known, I guess. I know how you are about your work, especially when you've got other stuff you'd rather not deal with. So... that day. When IAB went after you. Last thing I said to you. Probably unfair. Last thing you said to me..." He ran his fingers through his bangs. "I found a lot of ways to finish that sentence."

"I'm sorry."

"What for?" he asked, a little cautious.

"For... leaving you hanging like that."

He snorted. "You won't apologize for not friggin' telling me, and yet you'll apologize for things that were totally beyond your control?" He flapped his hand at me, telling me to save my incipient protests. "Meh, I don't really expect you to apologize for that. Not anymore. I mean, yeah, I'm still not exactly happy with that, but I can see it's not something that even computes with you, so forget it. Moving on."

"Duo--"

"Don't want to hear it."

"But--"

"Doesn't matter. Whatever you say, it's just not going to be something I want to hear, so... don't even bother."

I stared at my feet for a while. "What do you want to hear?"

He looked irritable, though more at the situation in general than at me in particular. "I don't know, Yuy. I don't think anything would really work. I'm willing to accept that old man Murphy's got some ugly stepsister that just fucked us over with that one, okay? So let's just drop it."

"...Okay."

*****

When we got the group back together the next day, I brought up my colony idea again. We looked into that angle further, found more reasons to support it, and then one day later, Duo, Trowa and I were on a shuttle bound for Moon Base. Quatre and Wufei stayed behind to tie things up, mostly to do with farming out the rest of our leads to other jurisdictions, and if we continued to find the colonies a promising next venue, they would join us.

Our initial objective was to connect with the Preventers station at Moon Base to get a briefing on the situation. From there, we'd see what there was to see. I was also planning on looking further into the results of the MinFa challenge. After the hack, all activity had become 'by invitation only', one earned through participation and proven skills, I assumed. I'd missed my chance to get in legitimately, so now I had a lot more legwork in front of me.

Surface to space travel wasn't so simple, despite our great advances in technology. There were only so many launch sites, with the schedules being strictly observed, so we were flown up on a commercial shuttle flight. With a majority of Moon Base devoted to government facilities, its port was used by passengers most commonly as a jump point to the other colonies. We separated ourselves from the herd of civilians and were met by a local Preventer.

We allowed him to give us the inane tour-guide speech as we strode down the corridors of the shuttle port. As we passed through one of the waiting areas, we saw the usual monitors displaying ETAs and news broadcasts. It was obvious which shows were local and which were being received from Earth, based simply on the amount of interference in the signals. Because of their placement, the sound was muted, but the words were subtitled. In theory. The automated captioner spit out almost nothing but gibberish.

"How long have the comms been like this?" Trowa asked our guide.

He shrugged, indicating that he thought nothing of it. "It's been pretty bad starting this last week, but it's not like the connection's ever been super. It goes in and out regularly. It could be poor maintenance, as they say. It could also be solar flares or some ship doing a flyby that dumped its waste between one end of the line and the other."

Duo engaged him in conversation casually, disguising an interest in finding out what the troops on the ground thought about the current anti-government atmosphere. Our guide seemed young and chatty. "I don't remember the colonies ever being dependent on the groundbounders for their maintenance."

"You from the colonies?" the agent asked, perking up a little. He was obviously a native.

"Yup. All of us are, actually. And we'd have all been dead long ago if we had to rely on people to come up from Earth to take care of things."

"Well, obviously, we can take care of colony maintenance by ourselves, just as we always have. It really bugs me to watch Earth media sometimes, the conservative reports, you know? When they blame all of this stuff on us, like we aren't worth our independence or something." He glared at a monitor relaying a signal from Earth. "We should be glad the reception's so poor, anyway. They were really pissing some people off."

"So what's causing all this stuff, really?"

"It's a simple matter of resources, if you ask me. We only have so many qualified engineers, and they're always busy. Everyone used to take care of their own stuff, but once Earth started claiming stuff up here, they just started expecting us to take care of all of it for them. We don't have the manpower to take care of our stuff and their stuff, and they haven't figured out that they need to hire more guys, and naturally, colony maintenance is going to be higher priority than some comsat, so..." He shrugged. "There you go."

"Global community and all that, right? Seems kinda janky, don't you think?"

"Tell me about it. Share and share alike? Seems like they're taking a lot more than they're giving, if you know what I mean. They get technology and resources, and what do we get?"

"Higher taxes?"

"Yay." We stepped onto the moving walkway that would take us to our ride to local Preventers HQ. "Anyway, if you look out this window, you can still see the scorch marks on the side of the silo..."

*****

The young agent's attitude was a reflection of the base on which he worked. He spoke freely, with barely moderate discretion, without fear of reprimand. That told us that his ideas were not uncommon here. Our contact, the assistant director of Moon Base operations, confirmed that for us when we met with him. It seemed clear that he and his cohorts were at least somewhat sympathetic toward the pseudo-nationalist cause. They didn't butt heads with Une because no one butted heads with Une without a very good reason and a healthy disregard for one's life and liberty, even if she was on Earth and they were in space. All the same, the officials on Moon Base would clearly be happier if ESUN would stay out of colony affairs.

They weren't traitors, though. They believed in running a tight ship to minimize planetside interference, which was probably why Une tolerated their sympathies. Nevertheless, there was a failure to communicate that was inexcusable. After being told many times that the colonies could take care of themselves, we excused ourselves and decided to seek out the records on our own. There were a large number of incidents that Moon Base had not reported to HQ, on the grounds that they were 'internal matters'. Had we found out about them earlier, we would have come up here far sooner.

For the last few weeks, ESUN operations in space had been experiencing disruptions of various magnitudes. A few government computer systems had been hacked and vandalized. Government property had been defaced with separatist remarks. Two projects had been sabotaged, setting their progress back by months. Local broadcast frequencies had been hijacked for the distribution of anti-government rhetoric.

Those were the obvious incidents. We dug further to create a folder of possibly related incidents. Two weeks ago, an ESUN observation satellite overheated when its internal monitoring equipment became faulty. The explosion of its core propulsion systems had destroyed its functionality, rendering it just another piece of space junk. At least there hadn't been any crew on board, which was not the case of the mining asteroid, MO-17. Its environmental filtration systems failed for some 'undetermined' reason, causing eleven people employed by the government to be hospitalized for severe respiratory distress.

Duo threw himself back in his chair in disgust. "How could they have thought this stuff wasn't important enough to report?"

"Colony business is colony business," I reminded him. "Earth business is Earth business. It probably doesn't occur to them that there could be a connection between the two."

"And what," he answered disdainfully. "They thought they could deal with this all by themselves? What were they planning to do? It's an Earth-based movement, so it's not like you can ignore the whole Earth side of things here. If you're just going to deal with the symptoms, then you're screwed. Not like they want to go back to Fed-like martial law or something."

"I wouldn't think about it too hard, if I were you. This whole situation would have blown up on them, sooner or later."

"It already has, Yuy. We've got, what, twenty-four people now that we think have been harmed by their stunts, and that's just physically. Once the comms level out, I'm so calling Une and delivering the news personally. I want a front row seat for when the eviscerations start."

"She's had a tough week, Duo," Trowa commented mildly. "Don't go handing her more trouble."

"She's had a tough week, Trowa," he mimicked. "Don't you think she might enjoy a little evisceratin'?"

"Let's see if we can put a stop to this first, shall we?" I interrupted. "These attacks have escalated. We need to get a handle on the situation on the ground before we can determine if there's a central authority running the show, and if we can stop it."

"I have contacts," Trowa volunteered. "I can start talking to them."

Duo stifled a yawn. "You were going to hunt down the hacker angle, right?"

I resisted the urge to echo his action. "Yes. The intercolonial network still seems to be working, so I should be able to plug in and poke around."

"You don't have anyone you can contact?" Trowa asked.

Just because he traveled around everywhere and talked to lots of people, didn't mean everyone did. I shook my head. "Not for this."

"You never did find out who sent that e-mail to Relena, right?"

"No." When would I have had the time to, anyway? "But it was sent planetside."

"I read your friend's report. What about her contact, the one that was helping her into the MinFa trials?"

I coughed awkwardly. "No help there. That was me."

An eyebrow rose. "'BeingGreen'?"

"Long story. From a long time ago."

Duo laughed suddenly. "I think I remember that story. Do I? God, yeah, I think I do." He laughed again. "Whatever happened to that guitar?"

"One of the strings broke. Didn't seem worth it to replace."

"Ah. Pity."

A nostalgic smile. I hadn't thought I'd see one of those again. I dropped my eyes to the screen in front of me to hide the tilt of my own lips.

We let the comfortable silence stretch for a bit before turning in for the night. We couldn't talk to any contacts until morning. Quarters had been assigned to us on base, so we headed on out to the dorms and paused outside our rooms, each of us looking at our respective doors.

"Well," Trowa remarked. "This is awkward. I'll see you two in the morning."

We both blinked at him as he entered his own room as if he hadn't a care in the world, leaving us to stand uncomfortably in the hall. "Is it just me," Duo asked slowly. "Or does he seem not quite right in the head sometimes?"

I just snorted, and left it at that.

We continued to linger uncertainly in the hall, counting the seconds as they ticked by without resolution. Finally, Duo shook his head impatiently, ran his key card through the scanner, and moved as soon as the door was clear. He reached out, snagged my wrist, and pulled me in after him. "This is stupid," he muttered. "I'm not going to get any sleep anyway, knowing you're on the other side of the wall, so you might as well be on this side of the wall, where I can get slightly less no-sleep."

At the time, I couldn't have cared less what his reasoning was. I was just glad he was choosing to keep me with him. We'd been sharing our bed back in our apartment, but the beds in the dorms were a snug fit for two. Of course, we'd done it before, but the air had been clearer between us before, too.

I put my duffle down by the door and tried not to make things stranger than they already were. I didn't have many options, so I looked around the room. It seemed oddly familiar, though I knew I'd never been there before. All of the Preventers' dorm rooms looked just about the same. There was a desk built into the wall, a chair, a side table, a sink, and a bed. It was a small room, and somehow we managed to stand so far apart. One of us could have volunteered to sleep on some other piece of furniture, but there wasn't much to work with.

Duo sighed ruefully. "History sure does like to repeat itself, doesn't it?"

He was no doubt thinking the same things that I was. "Does it?" I asked, following the memories all the way through. He hadn't knocked on my door this time, but here we were anyway. Would we talk? Would we kiss? Would we fall asleep, comforted by each other's presence? When I saw those thoughts reflected in his expression, I shook my head apologetically. "Sorry. I didn't mean to..."

"...to what, Heero?" he asked softly.

"To..." I shrugged, not knowing the end of that sentence for sure. "Push?"

He closed the distance between us, the Moon's gravity allowing him to cross the gulf with a few light bounds, distorting my perception of it. "I could have slammed the door in your face, you know."

He'd been holding on to my hand at the time. That wouldn't have been comfortable. "As you said, Duo.... That's not your style."

"Oh? You mean I like creating difficult situations for myself?"

"No, not at all. I..." I trailed off as I caught the amused, self-deprecating look on his face. My hand rose, possessed by the urge to touch his face. I stifled that instinct halfway to completion, and as my hand fell back to my side, it brushed down the length of his arm.

We stared at our hands for a little while, before he sighed lightly. "About your handle, Heero..."

I found somewhere else to look. "What about it?"

He hesitated, then pushed forward. "I... I don't remember the lyrics, really. I remember it being kind of depressing. And... I remember thinking that for some reason, it made me uncomfortable."

"You teased me about it," I noted softly. "Didn't stop for two weeks."

"Yeah, I..." The small smile that had bloomed briefly on his lips faded into a shame-faced look. "I was probably just being an ass again. I mean, you said you really liked the song, and it sounded like you meant it, and there I went, teasing you for it, just to cover up--"

I put a finger on his lips and shook my head. "It was a strange, obscure song choice. There's no denying that. It was very tease-worthy. There's nothing wrong with banter. Banter is healthy."

He crossed his eyes for a second, as if he could see my finger on his lips, but gave up the effort shortly thereafter to stare at some random point near my elbow. When he parted his lips to speak, he found my finger still there, quite reluctant to move. Closing his mouth created an impromptu kiss that stole my attention for a few heartbeats. When it returned, I remembered where my finger was and let it drop. It resisted, slowing its descent to trail down his chin until at last the contact was broken.

It took a pregnant pause for him to put his thoughts back into order. "I remember it ending different than how it started. Kinda zen, kinda... you. I guess...." He smiled tentatively. "Maybe when we've got some time, I'll look up those lyrics again. See if... see if they mean something different to me now."

"I'm sure I have them on the computer at home," I offered neutrally.

::Lyrics: It's not--::

::Hush, you.:: Yes, I was sure Zero could dig the lyrics out of my brain easily, but I didn't want to press them upon Duo.

"Yeah...." His eyes went distant for a few seconds. "You... you had three monitors hooked up to your computer, back when you were in school, right?"

"Yeah." I still did.

"I always thought... that was kind of ADD for you. But I guess if you had them back then, then that's just you, and..."

Not Zero. I smiled for him. "I'm not ADD. I just like maximizing my work space."

::The ability to efficiently multitask should not be confused with a psychological disorder.::

::Go away.::

"Maximizing your work space," Duo echoed wryly. "Yeah. Sure. Well... I guess it's not really that different from our Gundams, with all the different displays."

"Aa."

He sighed again, one of those heart-heavy sighs that I wished had no reason for being. "Kinda wish we could go back to those times, sometimes. Not the whole war thing, of course, but, you know... things were just simpler back then. You fight, you survive. None of this happiness, personal fulfillment crap. Never had to worry about any of this."

"I found it a refreshing change, actually," I admitted. "You know I don't like things that are outside of my control. I thought it was sort of nice to have this thing that I was responsible for, and the only person that would really be affected by it was me, and the only person that could really affect it was me. I... don't really run into that sort of thing very often."

"Guess that's why you... Zero wasn't under your control at first," he ended up saying, startling me with his sudden change in direction. "...Was it?"

"No," I answered immediately, not wanting him to think for even a second that I had volunteered to have Zero in my head. After I had established that, I slowed down to consider my answer more carefully. I realized that I had never really given anyone a full accounting of my time at Olin Base. No one had ever really asked. They'd all focused on the simple fact that Zero had gotten into me. "You know... when I first woke up in that room at Olin, and I realized what had happened... I didn't like it. Of course I didn't like it. And I couldn't do a damn thing about it. I fought it at first. Went over that room, over and over, trying to find a way out. Argued long and hard with the voice inside my head, trying to convince it that this wasn't the right path to take. If you think I'm stubborn, you should try arguing with Zero sometime."

"You should have more sympathy for me, then," he joked softly.

"Yeah. I do. Got kind of batty, after a while. Got a little bit better, after I convinced it to pipe its output through the speaker system, a little bit less like I was going crazy, but... then it was just a disembodied voice, and it wasn't that much better. Sometimes, it felt like the voice of God... making an executive decision and forcing me into the Rapture or something. I started losing time when Zero went through my memories. And then you called, and Zero answered, and... and I think after that, it... it became clear that I wouldn't be able to do anything to stop it. I thought it was kind of like hell, actually, being trapped like that, unable to do anything useful."

He reached out to take my hand, squeezing gently. "God? Hell? People really do get religious when they think it's the end, don't they?"

I made a quiet sound resembling a shadow of a laugh, squeezing back. "It got even worse, actually, after you came for me. I was happy, of course. Relieved. Whatever. I knew you'd be able to find me. But then I couldn't even watch your progress through the base. I wanted to see you so badly, to help you, but I couldn't, because if I paid any attention to what you were doing, I would start thinking about what you must have been planning, and then Zero would pick up on it and use it against you. Yeah, that was hell right there. Not just knowing that I couldn't do anything to help you, but knowing that I couldn't even try. If I saw Zero doing something, I could work against those things, but other than that... about all I could do was hope and... well, pray, sort of... that all of you would get through the base safely."

"You gave up on us finding you?" he asked, tightening his grip on my hand again as he read between the lines.

I knew they would find me. I just thought they wouldn't be able to save me. "It stopped mattering. It just didn't matter, so long as you all could get back out safely. I put you in that situation."

"You're such a damn fool, Yuy."

"I have my priorities straight. I don't know if it worked or not, if I wanted it enough to get factored in to Zero's calculations, but... well, you all made it through safely. That's all that matters."

"You've... never mentioned this before."

"Everyone made it out alright. That's all that matters."

He tugged my hand angrily. "Dammit, Yuy, you weren't alright...!"

"Yes, I was. Granted, I was... still suffering some side effects from my incarceration..."

"Side effects," he repeated flatly.

"But I made it out. You made it out. Everyone made it out."

"Even Zero."

"...Even Zero."

"Stockholm syndrome?" he asked hopefully.

I couldn't help it. The idea was absurd, and I chuckled. "You know I had a soft spot for Zero, even before..."

"Dammit, Yuy...," he sighed. "Here I was, kinda ready to just give up on this whole thing and accept the fact that you're just out of your mind, and here you go, bringing it up again..."

That certainly hadn't been my intention. And I could wish it wasn't his, either. If I had to be 'out of my mind' for him to accept me, I'd take it. He was just that important to me. But I didn't want it to be that way.

::I also accept your persisting instances of irrationality when it comes to your mate. There is no explanation for humanity's illogical, aberrant behaviors. It is simply a flaw in your programming.::

Interesting point, I conceded ruefully. Maybe my expectations were too high. "I just wanted to tell you what happened. I want to try to not 'fail to mention' things."

He made a wry sound. "Well, yeah, okay, as full disclosure goes... I appreciate that. I know I asked you this before, though. I followed up with you on this... didn't I?"

"Yes." My brow furrowed as I thought about it some more. "I think you did. Sorry, my memories from then are a little bit fuzzy. I think you did. I don't think I really answered you, though. My capacity for stringing together complete sentences was rather limited for a while, and all that really mattered to me was that you were safe, I was out, and... I got to be with you."

A small half-smile snuck its way onto his face. "Yeah, I remember. You kinda kept repeating something along those lines, and you were so spacy, and... like you said, I was just so glad you woke up, so... I let it drop."

"That was probably the right thing to do, anyway. I don't think I would have known what you were asking, if you'd asked me then. Not because my brain was scrambled, but because... well, now we've gone through all of this, and I know better what I'm missing."

"So you're coherent now... and you know what you're talking about now... so..." His fingers shifted around mine nervously, reminding me that we were still holding hands. "Why did you take off after Zero on your own? Five years ago, you said, 'Sorry, just happened,' and I let it go. Even though it was a pretty crappy answer. Why didn't you wait? Let somebody know where you were off to?"

The question caught me off-guard. Again, it was just another one of those things that I hadn't thought about much at all. Another one of those things that he needed to understand if he wanted to be able to accept my decisions. A lengthy silence passed before I gathered the words for something resembling an answer. "I... It did just sort of... happen."

He snorted.

I made an apologetic sound. "I was out for a walk at the time, just to clear my head, when I got that text message. When I figured out that it was from Zero, and that it was telling me to go to Olin, I went. I was half-way to the car before I remembered that I was a part of a team."

"And then you just kept on going."

"I..." Well, it was true. What could I say to that? "I can give you the normal reasons. That I wasn't sure if anything would pan out, so I'd just go and check it out quickly, call for backup if I needed it. But... it just seemed... right. That it be settled between me, Zero, and..." I paused for an ironic chuckle. "...and whoever was behind Zero. I guess I was too close to things to see what was obvious in hindsight."

Duo blinked at me. "You so did not just give me some sort of cosmic destiny excuse. That's even more crappy than 'it just happened'."

"Ah. Sorry." It was true, though. I'd always seen Zero as 'mine' to deal with, even though Quatre had been the one to reconstruct the system, and all of us had used it at one point or another. That was one illogical little quirk of mine that Zero never turned his nose up at. At least Zero had the numbers to explain why he thought I was 'his'. I just had empathy and sympathy on my side. "Maybe... I was just being selfish. Let's face it: you all wanted to stop Zero. I wanted to save it. So maybe it was a variation on, if you want something done right, you do it yourself."

His hand twitched as if to run itself through his bangs irritably, only to find that it was still engaged with my own. He lifted the two, studying them intently before uncurling my fingers to run his thumb over calluses long faded. "Damn those Gundam pilots for being such annoyingly independent, bull-headed, full-of-themselves people, anyway."

I felt lighter, and I didn't know if it was because I found his assessment amusing, or if I was just relieved that I just maybe had couched it in terms he understood. We'd all done things like that in the past. Some of those instances had just been more spectacular than others. "Well, you said something about the good ol' days. This is just my way of bringing you back to those times."

He chuckled. "Gee, thanks. You're just an eager-to-please little puppy, aren't you?"

"Sure am."

The hand holding mine shifted, then withdrew, leaving me hanging. He made it clear that we weren't done yet, though, by the reminiscing look on his face. "Heh, you remember this one time? Nah, you probably don't. But I was over at your place, back when we were 'dating', and after a nice long session of after-dinner sofa-snuggling, I said I was in the mood for some dessert, and you half get up and say, 'Oh, I've got a pint of ice cream in the freezer. If you don't mind that I've eaten out of the carton.'"

I laughed. I wish I could say that I'd been new to those things, but even now, I had my lapses. I just had fewer of them. "Yeah, I remember."

He tried to suppress a helpless grin, but wasn't quite successful. Failing that, he hid it by turning his face down. "I thought you were the cutest, most clueless little puppy there ever was."

There were far worse things to be in this world. "At least I figured it out after a few seconds."

"Yeah, only after I stared at you for a few long, loooong seconds."

"I figured out the spoon part."

"Yeah, because I warned you ahead of time that I was only going to get one spoon, and no, that wasn't a mistake."

"At least I..." I hesitated, crossed my fingers, and hoped I wouldn't ruin the mood. "I figured out what you meant. Zero was way off."

"Oh?" he responded after a very deliberate pause. "It tried to figure it out, too?"

"I was trying to figure it out. Zero likes to try to help me figure things out. That's what it does." It was an eager-to-please little puppy, it was.

"Ah. And, um, what did it figure?"

"Zero figured that, uh, we were licking the insides of each other's mouth regularly, so sharing ice cream probably wasn't much of a concern."

He covered his face with his hand for a few moments. "You two..."

"Hey, I figured it out."

"Yay. You're better than a computer, then."

I winced when he hit that nerve, but he didn't see it. "I am. I'm much, much better than a computer. When it comes to this stuff." Our exchange trailed off into silence, each of us probably contemplating very, very different things. "Am I really that robotic, Duo?"

"Wha--?" It took half a second for his brain to catch up to his mouth. His expression slowly slipped from confused to morose. "I... I was being hurtful, Heero."

"And now you're dodging the question."

His eyes narrowed slightly at the accusation, but he didn't deny it. The sour look remained while he considered his answer, easing into something uncomfortable. "...No. No, you're not robotic. You... get really focused on things sometimes. And you seem to like pushing the limits of human endurance for fun. But that's not being robotic... because you do that stuff because you're so... so... not-robotic. So... passionate about what you do. It's one hundred percent for you -- one hundred ten percent. You don't do things half-assedly. Sometimes... that may come off as... inhuman in some way. But it's not. I should know better than that."

I stared down at my toes for a while. "I know I don't get things sometimes, pick up on things that other people would..."

"That's just being clueless. And even that's just... no, not robotic, but sometimes, Heero... sometimes I swear, you live in a different world than the rest of us."

"Oh, 'alien', then." I looked up with a twist to my lips that skirted the edge of bitterness. "'Alien's better than 'robotic', right?"

He punched my arm lightly, not really giving me a clear answer on what he thought about the matter. "Sometimes, I think your world's not a bad place to be. It's gotta be a much tidier place than this one, that's for sure."

"But this is the 'real' world, Duo. And this is where we operate." I'd never been an advocate for ignoring reality.

"So? People can live in one place and work in another, right?"

I nodded slowly. "Yeah..." I liked that notion. It grew on me. "Move in with me, Duo."

He blinked. "Huh?"

"Move in with me. There's plenty of room here for two."

"Move in with you? Heero..." His fingers grazed my cheek, somehow telling me that he wanted to say yes. "...I barely even know you."

"Fair enough. But it's a big place. Enough for us to each have our own space. Or if my place is too weird for you, we can find somewhere in between. Hm, though maybe that's not the best idea. My place is frustrating, and your place is depressing, and I'm guessing we don't really want to live somewhere that's half-depressing and half-frustrating."

"Yeah..." The response sounded automatic. He still looked a little shell-shocked, but eventually he overcame it with a lopsided smile. "Heh, I hear it's nice in Wufei's neighborhood."

"Yeah? We'll have to look into that."

"Yeah... Yeah, we will."

*****

When I woke, the unexpected feeling of low grav caused me to snap my eyes open immediately. It took only a fraction of a second for Zero to remind me where I was. After I realized that there was no cause for alarm, I noticed that I had caught Duo lying on his side next to me, watching me as I slept. I blinked at him.

He started off looking a little guilty, as if he was trying to find a reasonable excuse for his behavior, but it didn't take him long to resign himself to just going with it. "Mornin'," he greeted me.

I blinked again, completed my orientation, and answered back. "Good morning."

His hand lay atop my arm. His thumb rubbed over the bump of my elbow. He was not-looking at me too studiously to be casual. I waited him out, taking the excuse to steal a few seconds of indulgence before getting started on the day. At length, he put his head back down on his pillow and snuggled in a bit. "You're twitchy when you sleep."

That sounded familiar. "What do you mean, twitchy?"

"You usually look like you're dreaming or something. With the eyeballs twitching back and forth, you know?"

"They don't call it rapid eye movement for nothing."

"But people don't go straight from REM to being awake. Not without being all groggy and confused. Which, of course, you never are. I remember you being twitchy... 'before'. But is there... stuff going on in there these days, while you're sleeping?"

Ah. Another one of these questions. Who knew there would be so many of them? I turned my head to face him more comfortably. "You got me on this one."

"I do?" He looked proud for just a heartbeat, before he realized what it implied. "What do you mean?"

"Zero doesn't always sleep when I do. It's not always 'awake', though. It's acknowledged the human need for natural, undisturbed dreaming. But when that's out of the way, Zero may use the free cycles for diagnostics, maintenance, post-processing, things of that nature."

"Oh." He spent a few seconds dwelling on that. "But your dreams are your own?"

"Yes. Given the generally illogical nature of most dreams, I'm sure Zero is more than happy to stay far, far away from them."

::Dreams are a mass of incomprehensible brain activity that not even the human mind can interpret coherently.::

I smiled and summed up. "Yes, Zero has no interest in human dreaming."

"But you... you get enough sleep and all?"

"Am I twitchy all of the time?" I asked, curious as to what physical effects were triggered by Zero's extracurricular activities. I didn't keep close tabs on what he did while I was sleeping. Zero responded by showing me where I could access that data, and claimed that the eye movements were a human reflex not of his conjuring.

"No," Duo admitted. "Not all of the time. Just occasionally. More so when... when you've got a lot of stuff going on. A lot of stuff to think about right now, I guess. Think up anything interesting?"

"I'm worried," I told him, knowing he didn't expect an answer. "I think the situation in the colonies is far more precarious than the one on Earth, despite the movement being born on Earth. Things will escalate quickly, given the history of the colonies."

"Their history makes them out to be a bunch of fence-sitting chickens."

"The people in charge of the colonies, perhaps. But this isn't an official political action. The people rebelling now are those in the younger generation, people old enough to remember Federation rule, but young enough to rebel. Maybe they didn't get their chance the first time, and they see this as their opportunity to redeem themselves."

"God, I hate kids. Why didn't they rebel ten years ago, when everyone else was rebelling? Wasn't cool enough for them or something? Coulda done some good then." The sour expression on his face was enough to make me want to kiss it away, but he was in the middle of a good rant. I let him be. "I'm not the biggest fan of ESUN myself, but there's a huge difference between ESUN and the Federation or OZ. The Feds were a military complex. They didn't pussyfoot around the issue of annexing the colonies. None of this 'economic encroachment' crap. They saw what they wanted, and they took it, and they killed anyone that stood up to them. The only way to fight that was with the kinds of stuff that we did. But ten years later -- hell, ten years ago, before I got too old for this crap? No way in hell I would ever have joined the cause because of 'economic encroachment'. Would you have?"

He had a point. I mulled over it for a few seconds, my fingers itching to twiddle with the end of his braid. "No, probably not. Who says people don't learn from the past? We taught the colonists that an effective way to achieve a change in government was through acts of violence. They finally figured out in the end that they had to take a stand, or else their suffering would never stop. And that's what they're doing right now. With no more weapons of mass destruction in their hands, they turn to other means, but the impetus behind their actions remains the same as ever."

His finger prodded me ungently in the shoulder. "Don't even go there, man. Don't even go there." He sighed, poked me once more, then pushed the blanket aside. "Time to get started on the day."

*****

Security in the colonies was typically better than it was on Earth. They didn't have as many legacy systems to deal with. That also meant the technocratic underground was more advanced. There were hints here and there of who was responsible for what, of something deep and powerful rippling underneath the surface of the nets.

I got distracted before I could really dig in deep, however. There was a pattern to the holes in the network. I started pinging satellites and got confirmation of my theories. "Comm lines to Earth are down."

"Huh?" Duo looked up from his terminal, where he'd been going over the morning reports. "I'm up and running over here. Granted, the connection's about as crappy as it could get today, but it's running."

"They are still a couple of relays up, trying to deal with all of the traffic on their own. Just enough to make it seem like the system is still running. But other than that, none of the waypoints are responding."

"Suspicious," Trowa remarked with his usual blandness. When we'd met him in the hall outside of our rooms this morning, his face had betrayed no reaction to our choice of sleeping arrangements. He was probably amused.

"Can you debug it?" Duo asked.

I shook my head. "They've already been routed around. None of my direct attempts to contact them have received any response."

"Well, I know what we'll be looking at this morning." He didn't seemed dismayed by that. It was probably more interesting than reading reports. "Though maybe your contacts might know something about it, Trowa?"

Trowa shrugged. "Maybe. I can start my rounds. You two can deal with this."

"How long will it take you to circulate?"

"As long as it takes. We don't think this is urgent, right?"

Duo looked to me for confirmation before answering. "I doubt anyone cut off the comms because they're about to attack us. They would have attacked right after, and the comms went down...?"

"Six hours ago," I filled in.

"Kind of defeats the purpose behind the whole 'surprise attack' notion," he continued smoothly. "Besides, not like it would really matter. We all agree that Earth doesn't have much power up here to get things done, and their response time sucks even when they've got a working comm, so..."

I picked up the threat assessment where he left off. "The other options would be that they were planning something against Earth, and they wouldn't want us to find out about it and warn them, or they were already attacking Earth, and they wouldn't want us to find out and stop them. They don't have the resources for a physical assault, which we would have been able to detect by now anyway, and a tech attack requires them to have a working network connection as well."

Trowa indicated his agreement with a nod. "Given their goals, it wouldn't surprise me if this was an end, not a means. They just want Earth out of here, after all. I'll check it out in the field."

We worked out the details, made the arrangements, and then headed out to the shuttle port. We saw him off at the commuter terminals, then went on to the Preventer's docks and continued our attempts to wrangle the use of a small shuttle from them. It took longer than we had expected, and we finally won ourselves a ride and headed on out to the closest comsat in the Earth-space relay.

"Looks pretty dead," Duo observed, staring at the dim satellite in front of us. It looked old and abandoned, even though it had been functional just the other day. From our visual inspection of the exterior, we found nothing that would have explained its outage.

"At least it's intact, and right where we expected it to be."

He snorted. "We'll have to deploy beacons, at least, if we can't fix this sucker, just so no one runs into it out here."

"I'm sure we have a few in the emergency kits."

He located the hangar bay and began maneuvering our craft inside. "Were you totally bullshitting your way past the paper-pushers when you said you knew about comsats?"

"I've dealt with them before." I transmitted the proper codes to the comsat, and was rewarded by the faint glow of lights embedded in the walls of the bay. "It still has at least minimal power."

"That'll make things easier," he muttered to himself, keeping a close eye on the sensors to help guide him into the hold. "Blowing them up, you mean?"

"Well, yes. But you can't sabotage a system effectively if you aren't familiar with its details."

"Yeah. Right. Well, I guess we're the most qualified, anyway. Kinda sad when we're the closest they've got to a repair crew on Moon Base right now, though."

With the shortage of trained maintenance personnel, we could expect it to be quite a while before the official engineers made their way to the satellite. We couldn't wait that long. Even if there wasn't anything tremendously fishy going on, we needed to get the comsat up and running well enough to at least contact Quatre on the ground and give him an update. We'd taken a copy of the specs with us. It would have to do. "It helped us get here, didn't it? I'll go pull the suits."

We got ourselves outfitted with little difficulty. The ability to shimmy into an EV suit in short order was not a skill that was quickly forgotten by anyone raised in the colonies. Disembarking into the zero-g environment outside prompted a nostalgic sigh from Duo. "Ah, I missed this."

Now was probably a completely inappropriate time to bring this up, but we didn't have anything else to do as we drifted through the long hallways to the central control room. "Maybe.... when this is over... Maybe we ought to consider a change of venue."

"Huh?" He turned his head in my direction, but the helmets severely limited peripheral vision.

"I like our place," I was quick to reassure him. "But... we didn't really choose it, you know? I joined up, you chose a nearby school. After we got together, we found a place that was sort of in between both. Then you joined up, and we moved closer and, well... I don't know. Maybe that isn't where we want to be."

There was a long pause before he answered. "I thought you weren't going to quit?"

I had more than enough reason to, but even more reason not to. "I don't have to work out of the capital. We've got offices all over the world and the colonies."

There was an even longer pause, during which we brushed the dust off a wall sign and followed the arrow in the direction of our destination, before he answered next. "What makes you bring this up, all of a sudden?"

"We were talking about moving last night. Metaphorically, anyway. But also... guilt, maybe," I admitted. "I chose to join the Preventers. That's where I felt I needed to be. You... I don't presume to know what you were thinking at the time. But you decided to try school out for a while, and you chose a school that was near the capital, and... I hope I didn't influence your decision, Duo."

"Of course you influenced my decision, Heero," he answered softly, but with an edge. "I wanted to be near you, near someone familiar. It was good, knowing there was someone there that could give me some pointers if I needed them."

"But you didn't really enjoy your time there, at the college."

"Sure I did," he retorted, a little more sharply.

"You dropped out."

"I was done."

There was a problem right there. There wasn't really a 'done' in this situation. "I thought maybe... you might not have been 'done' so early if you'd found a school that was a better fit for you. That maybe I somehow limited your choices."

"I swear to friggin' god, Yuy. You find the most ridiculous things to feel guilty about."

And he found the ridiculous things to be stubborn about. Fortunately, our debate was cut short by our arrival in the control room. Environmental controls were still in working order. While we waited for the small room to be pressurized and oxygenated, we did what we could with our bulky gloves on. Things went significantly faster after we could remove our helmets and peel ourselves out of the tops of our EV suits. The air was musty, but breathable. We confirmed power in the system and activated the satellite. It turned on, but the computer systems encountered numerous errors as it attempted to boot up.

"Hacked?" Duo asked.

"Looks like it." I broke into the boot routine, bypassed the satellite's high-level functionality in favor of gaining simple access to its core, and triggered some diagnostics. After a minute, the preliminary results came back. "Hardware all still looks good."

"How many of these comsats were there again? A lot, in any case. And someone hacked them all? Shit, that must have been some piece of coordinated work to do that."

"Maybe. Maybe not. Once you gain access to one comsat in the network, the rest of them aren't that difficult to access as well."

He stuck his tongue out in distaste. "Global system?"

"Global system."

"Global system sucks sometimes."

"Yes, it kind of does." Next time I wrote a security report for Une, I would be sure to underline this fact several times.

Duo scanned the data I was pulling up. "Can't blame this one on the groundbounders, though. The comsats have always been like this, haven't they?"

"Yes. It's a network relay, after all. It wouldn't make as much sense for all of them to be separate. If the software needs upgrading, you don't want to be doing it one satellite at a time, for instance. Communications would be disrupted for days."

"How hard is it to gain access to one?"

"It could have been very simple, if we assume it was like ZenNet. It's quite possible they had someone on the inside to give them that access. If not, it's still possible. They've had plenty of time to work on it. It'd take less time if someone planted some hardware on one of the satellites to intercept the signals. That would take half of the work out of it right there."

"It's the comms themselves that have the strong security, isn't it?"

"Yes. Priority was given to encryption of the messages. The relay was built robustly enough to handle the disabling of a few satellites on the network, but it takes just one weak point in the line for important communiqués to be intercepted and decrypted."

"So the next best thing is just to take the comm lines down altogether. Why wouldn't someone think of that?"

"But what nefarious soul could possibly want to do that?" I asked dryly. "And if I remember my history correctly, this whole comm relay sprang up pretty quickly in response to a sudden demand. Back in a day when Earth and space were at peace."

"And something's gotta give. Something's always gotta give."

I hummed an absent agreement. Nothing seemed incredibly broken about the satellite. The first step to getting it back up again was to restore the system defaults. After it was running, then we could see what sorts of problems they were. "We need to reset some of these devices. Look here..."

*****

Zero-g was really quite the blessing sometimes. Communications satellites had come a long way from their single antenna ancestors. Working our way from one end of the multi-array to the other and back again several times over as we put the system back together was tedious enough without actually having to walk and climb and crawl everywhere.

"Well, Heero," Duo drawled as we waited for the results of our most recent quest. "Maybe I'm not one hundred percent certain where I want to be in this life, but I do know this: I don't want to be a comsat engineer."

"Good. I wouldn't like that anyway."

"Is that so?"

"Comsat engineers are always out in the field, always on the move, always on call. And..." I watched the progress bar on the screen struggle the final few pixels to completion. "...we're live."

Duo let out a puff of breath into his bangs. "'Bout damn time. Heh, free long distance, eh?" he joked, watching me patch directly into the line and dial out to Quatre.

"Field test," I answered mildly.

"Think we should reserve the use of this comsat for ourselves? If we put it back into the network, it's just going to get bogged down. I wouldn't mind a lag-free, static-free line to work with."

"Well, we did pay for the repairs, after all..."

"Winner." The tinny voice made it through the speakers with a crackle and a whine before the background noise settled into a low level buzz.

"Yuy and Maxwell here," I answered, adjusting the signal clarity. "Almost all of the comm lines to Earth have been disabled. We just got the comsat closest to Moon Base up and running again."

The speakers popped one last time before deciding to be obedient. "Ah. Yeah, we noticed a dramatic falloff in traffic. Deliberate?"

"Yes. Remote hacking. No physical damage done."

"I see. The situation is still stable down here on the ground. No attacks, no ill effects, but we have uncovered a new cell. We should be able to take them down in a day or two, and then maybe we can head on up. What have you found out so far?"

I slid my chair back a little to let Duo report. He raised an eyebrow at me, but did as requested, with the occasional input from me. When we were done, Quatre gave us his read on the situation, agreeing with our conclusions about the current threat levels. While it may not have been a violent move, the disabling of the surface to space comm lines was definitely a part of their protest action, on a much more significant scale than their attacks against lone mining asteroids and building walls. We needed to step up our investigation.

The next day, they stepped up their operations. Trowa was still in the field, but he reported making progress into tracking down the ways the rebels were coordinating with each other. His success on the ground complemented my research into the online angle while Duo worked on following up on leads from the cases that the Moon Base Preventers had investigated regarding the other recent attacks against the government.

In the middle of the afternoon, Duo came to my workstation, his face grim. "All that work, for nothing."

"What's gone wrong?"

"The comsat's down again."

"How?"

"Bit of a hardware failure this time, I'd call it."

"I guess they didn't like our fixes." While we'd been there, we had increased its software security.

"Yeah. You could say that. Sure stopped us from fixing it again, anyway."

I stopped what I was doing and gave him my full attention. "Excuse me?"

He sat down at the terminal next to me and pulled up the report. "Gone. Kerblooie. Toast. No coming back from that one."

I absorbed the data quickly, and though the damage to the satellite was significant, I was glad to see it was more than just a debris field. Not long after the 'hardware failure', HQ received word from L2-X1-Alpha, indicating that their colony defense system had been overrun by an external source on the network. Operating under an unknown user's control, two missiles had been launched at the comsat. Once the explosion of the target had been confirmed, the user had relinquished the system back to colony personnel and vanished. Officials were attempting to track down the hacker, but so far, with no success.

"That's not good," I remarked blandly. Someone had to take over Trowa's job while he was out.

Duo snorted. "Do you know how many defense systems there are out here? How many weapons caches? Old arms storage facilities? Defunct bases? For fuck's sake, there's even some colonies on the outer fringe that have anti-extraterrestrial-attack systems! We could secure the biggies, but it would be a drop in the bucket."

"So your official conclusion is, we're screwed?"

"Kinda, yeah."

"Would you like to report that to Une?"

"Uh, no thanks. Why don't you? She likes you better."

I thought she liked Trowa best. Maybe we could let him pass along the news. "Or maybe we should just try not to let things go that far?"

"Hm. That's a novel idea."

*****

On the plus side, Moon Base HQ finally decided that the rebels had just taken the last step into terrorism. We now had a lot more resources on our side, with other agents available to assist in coordinating the hunt. Unfortunately, it was still a little fuzzy just what we were hunting for. As it had been on Earth, the movement was very widespread. Both Trowa and I had already found evidence that there were multiple cells in action, each operating autonomously, if not separately. Others confirmed it.

Two more days, and no new, serious incidents of anti-government violence occurred until campus police at a university in the L4 cluster found a man using the computer labs without a valid school ID. With all authorities notified to be on alert, the tension quickly escalated out of control, and the man was subdued by force. Several people on the periphery had also gotten themselves involved, and we were lucky things stopped before it became a riot.

The damage was done, though. Despite the findings of the investigative panel supporting the officers' actions, the civilian population had something new to be riled up about, and the underground population had someone new to hold up as a martyr.

As the unrest grew stronger, we had a new angle to work with. The school had conducted a quick study on computer lab usage, and found that unauthorized use of their facilities had been on the rise lately. We took the logical leap to public libraries, net cafés, anywhere with an easily accessible cluster of computers. Those were ideal jump points for illegal activities on the network.

We convinced local authorities to stake out likely locations within their jurisdictions, taking some of the burden off of the Preventers resources. We were lucky to get that done before Moon Base somehow got itself removed from all of the routing tables in the intracolony comm network. I tried to re-insert it, but there was a hard lock against my code sticking.

With public network communications down, we were left with private lines and relaying our messages through shortwave to agents on the outside, who could then pass the reports along. Our choices were limited since very few private organizations were willing to associate their holdings with us. It didn't take long for the traffic stations and port systems to become unstable, which was just as well. It gave us a good, unalarming reason to clear out the base's transient civilian population, though it was concerning as well. We guessed the rebels also wanted us to clear out the base. They were probably planning direct action against HQ, and wanted no 'innocents' to get in the way.

Trowa had stayed out in the field to maintain his mobility. Duo and I had both taken our turns on the ground, checking up with agents, getting messages out, following up on leads, but came back to Moon Base occasionally to check in. We both happened to be on base at the same time when Trowa gave us a call from his shuttle. It was easier to report using the onboard comm systems than it was to land blind and report in person.

"Officials on Kendall Seven and Nine have imposed some strict limitations on anti-government speech."

Duo smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand. "You've gotta be kidding me. They think that will help at a time like this?"

"If they did, they've been finding out that it doesn't. The people's reactions are about what you'd expect. But they're too far in to back down now."

"Man, I can't decide if the colonists have the right idea and we should decentralize the government more, or if we should centralize it more so that more stupid stuff like this doesn't keep happening. I bet if Relena were still queen of the known universe, we wouldn't be having these kinds of problems. Hell, throw Quatre in there as her prime minister or something, and we'd be set."

"Luckily, Kendall Prime is smart enough to at least try to contain the damage. We're keeping an eye on the sector, but it looks like they've got things localized so far."

It was good to know that not all of the smart people had defected to the rebel side. "I'm sure Kendall isn't the only side doing that sort of thing."

"Halliburton has gone witch-hunting."

"Great. Have we put a stop to anything lately, or have we just been making more enemies for ourselves?"

"We caught a couple of ambitious souls this morning trying to patch some loggers onto an access conduit on the grounds of a government credit union."

It was a small scrap of triumph, but Duo winced dramatically and gave it its full due. "Ooh. Right where it hurts. I hope that made it personal. Nothing like money to do that."

"Maybe we should have caught them a few hours too late?" Trowa suggested wryly. "But this is L4. There are a lot of government contracts here, and this little rebellion is bad for business. It's already personal. The people here are pretty keen on stopping things."

"Were they useful?" I asked. "These two from this morning."

"I'm no Quatre, but we did confirm our impression that there is no one behind the scenes calling the shots. This definitely sounded like it was their own idea, but it was a decision made in light of a larger picture."

Duo scratched the side of his nose idly. "Kinda like the five of us, I guess? Kinda on the same side and doing the same sort of stuff, but not really together?"

"Kind of," he agreed amiably. He sent some data over the line to us. "Here's some more information for you. Word on a gathering that someone's organizing out in L2. Five officials that have taken bribes recently. The latest security reports from the private sector. We're still following up on leads from those two guys. If we get anything interesting, I'll pass that along as well."

I pulled up the packet and glanced over it. "Lenkey? She's on the committee for--"

"We've got incoming," he broke in, his attention diverted to one of his monitors. "Mobile mines, it looks like."

"Time to get out of there, Trowa," Duo advised, punching up the external scans on the terminal next to mine. Our sensors had limited range, but they could tell us something. "What the hell, man? These guys are getting serious."

"ESUN has a cache of old mines on MO-18," I noted, watching the blip of Trowa's shuttle move away slowly from the base. The swarm of mines was closing in, but they weren't built for speed or maneuverability. Their release could have been done remotely without anyone knowing immediately. The asteroid didn't have an active crew.

"Obviously, they're still active. Shit, MO-18? It'd take them, I dunno, at least hours to get here. And that's not even in the direction that Trowa was coming from, so they can't be aiming at him."

I opened another window and accessed a data feed with more detailed information about the mines' approach. "They're aiming at us."

"What?"

"It's not enough to do significant damage against this base... but it would be enough to destroy a shuttle. They're locking us down."

"Dammit." Duo punched me in the shoulder.

I jumped slightly. "What did I do?"

He frowned grumpily at me. "You said we should listen to that stupid agent and agree to his meeting request to work out the deployment details. If you'd just let me blow him off to get some real work done, I wouldn't have to be stuck here."

I stared at him for a full three seconds before I made the decision to ignore that frustrated little outburst. "Trowa, are you still with us?"

"There was another shuttle inbound," he responded. "I've alerted them. Confirming your estimates now. How big would you say that cache was? There seem to be quite a few of them out here. Enough density to keep you pinned down."

"I recall it being a regional dump, so yes, that's about what I would expect." I checked in quickly with the port to make sure we didn't have any outbound flights in progress. No one seemed to be in any immediate danger.

Duo beat out an annoyed rhythm on the surface in front of him. "Well, at least we know why they wanted to clear the base of civilians, then. God forbid any of the innocents get locked up with the evil commies."

"'Evil commies'?" Trowa repeated, one eyebrow raised in question.

"Dated movie reference," I told him. One picked up interesting things from Duo's B-movie selections.

"Destination confirmed. Complete deployment in four. Plan?"

"Keep up what you're doing. Check in as you can. Try to get a report down to Quatre. Make sure someone notices our situation. After that, they can take care of digging us out somehow. You're needed in other capacities."

Duo pounded the tabletop lightly. "Who the hell builds a Moon Base and doesn't build a big ol' gun to go with it?"

"The base was officially decommissioned and disarmed in one-ninety-seven." I was glad the self-destruct mechanisms had also been disabled at that time, or else we could have been in some real trouble. "We store some munitions here, as well, but it may not help. We'll have to look. We'll also need to make contact with some of the other large weapons depots. They assured us that their security was tight. I don't feel like taking their word for it anymore."

"Why do I get the feeling we're losing this war? I liked it a lot more when we were the hard-to-catch rebels pinning down the bad guys."

"We're sort of the bad guys this time around, Duo."

"I don't like being a bad guy. Can we... Incoming message," he finished instead, responding to the alert displayed on his monitor. "Text only. Imperialist pigs... Arrogant government, blahblah. Stay put... Stay out of our business... Go home... blahblah. And blah. Signed, your loving rebels. How sweet of them."

I was already tapping away at my keyboard. "Tracking them now. Though I doubt they left me anything to trace. They're good."

"I also found some hints regarding the hive mind," Trowa mentioned, continuing his report for earlier. "It looks like most of the activity is still spread out on the public or near-public networks, spread through all five clusters, despite our efforts. A little bit less on L3, and then L2. This coherent pattern of escalation confirms that there must be one driving force behind the attacks."

"Duo, can you pull the data from the comms and the traffic systems? I need to cross-reference some things."

"Sure," he answered, shortly before he snorted. "Oh look, now they're putting the base on yellow alert. Bit slow on the pickup, aren't they?"

"If we didn't stop it before it happened, then so were we."

*****

I lost the coin toss and had to deal with the rest of the Preventers base regarding this matter. I think I was understandably grumpy when I returned to his side an hour and a half later. "People suck."

"Yup, sure do," he answered amiably. "They running around in circles up there, or are they actually doing something productive?"

"There was some running done." I sat down heavily in the chair next to him. "I think they were running formations or something, even. I found a level head or two to start talking plans. We set up a broadcast signal, half distress, half warning. Don't want anyone accidentally wandering into the mine field. We have agents checking in with us regularly, so we should be able to continue our communications with the outside world. The mines aren't accepting external input anymore, so we can't just send them away. This has definitely gone beyond a 'colony problem', so word will probably trickle down to Une eventually. If all else fails, she can get some equipment up here to take care of this cleanly, or else we'll start shooting debris up there and hope for the best."

"So we're locked down here for a while. We still helping the people out there?"

"Yes. Data is still coming in around the clock. No more interviewing people for leads, though, so it seems we're back to trying to assemble the big picture to help guide the other agents."

"Well, yeah, we can do that, between doing this." I leaned to look when he pointed at his screen. "Yup, weapons are a no-go around here, but we do have these babies."

"'Babies'? I thought Tauruses were beneath your dignity. Since when do they rate as 'babies'?"

"Well, you know, babies, as opposed to the manly men that were the Gundams."

"Ah. Condition?"

"From what I've been able to dig up... uh... well, we'll have to see. Not very good, I'm sure. Leftover from ten years ago, after all. But there are six of them, and we only need two at most, one at least, so we can start cannibalizing the other guys for parts. You're good at that, aren't you?"

I ignored his pointed jibe. He could hold a grudge with the best of them. "Just what do you think we'll able to do with these suits?"

"Fly outta here, at least. We're good enough to work our way through a mine field. I'm not so sure that this is it, and I'm not gonna sit around twiddling my thumbs, waiting to find out too late that there's more."

I agreed. "It can never hurt to have a mobile suit on hand, in case of emergency. Though you should know that they're forming an official task force to try to figure out what to do with the mine field. They might decide our restoration project falls under their jurisdiction."

"Bleh. Guess it would be un-agently of us to not tell them. What's everyone else doing, then?"

"Same thing they've been doing for the past few days. No one else on base right now has really been mobile except for us, so for them, nothing much has really changed."

"That's good. That means they don't really need us, right?"

"For the most part... yes."

"Cool."

We paid a visit to the suits in the hangar. They weren't much to look at, but if that was what we had to work with, then that was what we were going to work with. We spent a couple of hours doing shallow inspections, then complete diagnostics on the two most likely candidates. Our official conclusion was that we were certain we could get one up and running effectively. A second one was a possibility, but it would most likely be at the cost of the first. It was less than we had expected, but it was sufficient. We decided to work on both for a while, and make a final determination as we got further along in the project.

The rest of our day was spent with the suits. We went back to our desk jobs as part of the night shift, accepting reports from inbound agents, updating them with a collation of the data we gathered, and pointing them toward their next stop. We had agents out there investigating, securing possible targets against attack, and talking to leaders and other government agents about what we could do to curb the growing violence. One of the first things on the agenda was to convince the various government officials that using violence against the people would only incite more violence from the mob, but that simple chain of logic had little effect on people on the front lines. We knew that from personal experience.

*****

After the night shift was over, there were few enough hours left for sleep that we didn't waste any of them being awkward with each other. We went to bed, shut ourselves down for as long as we were allowed, and then got back up again. And if I woke feeling warm and snuggled, well, it just made it that much easier to face the day.

Duo volunteered to fetch some food from the cafeteria for us while I continued calibrating the Taurus's beam field parameters. Moon Base was central enough that it had a decently supplied kitchen, although its population of on-site residents was relatively small. The base was also a distribution center of sorts for many of the Preventers satellite installations. I was sure we had crates full of military rations, if it came to that. If it was the rebels' intent to starve concessions out of us, they would be waiting a long time.

"How's it going?" Duo asked, setting a tray of food down on a table next to me before sitting on the table himself.

"The stability isn't one hundred percent yet, but it's nearly there."

"I talked to Brahms. He said we might as well just stay down here and not bother with the night shift. These suits might come in handy, and there's nothing we can do up there anyway."

I finished setting up the latest test of the field strength and took advantage of the lull to poke at one of the sandwiches Duo had brought. "Is that a good sign or a bad sign?"

He slapped my finger away. "Trust me, it looked better than the leftover macaroni casserole. Just eat it already." He took the initiative and pushed the ham sandwich in my direction. "We don't have the authority to browbeat anyone into submission up here, so... I don't know what it is, I guess. We got plenty of other bad signs, though. Leto Two-Thirteen's decided to take the lead in getting all martial-law-sy on their people. A couple of crackdowns later, and we've got a shitload of angry, net-savvy people going amok again."

"Leto..." I pried my sandwich apart to inspect its innards. It was more than an hour past lunch, and the sandwiches were looking a little wilted. "That's L3, right? Can we hope that we didn't just make the people that were already angry more angry?"

"After mass confiscations and stuff? Not likely. You geeks hate it when people touch your stuff." He took a bite of his tuna salad without hesitation. "Nice job on the BZC, by the way."

"I don't know what you're talking about." The sandwich seemed harmless enough, and filling one's mouth with food was a good way to appear nonchalant.

He snorted, but tilted his head in acceptance of my protest of innocence.

I didn't think my little hackjob would have made it onto his radar, nor did I remember Quatre mentioning it as a part of my 'undercover' story. Had Duo actually been listening when I'd noted how sad its file system was? "You don't like people touching your stuff, either."

After a brief pause, he realized he couldn't deny that in any particularly graceful way, so he conceded the point with another nod and moved on. "So Une knows our situation now. They're gonna try and get some people up here -- lord knows what they think they're gonna be able to do -- but they're playing things way too cautious. Seems like there are too many sensors and weapons on the lookout for shuttles exiting the atmosphere. I think if we get these guys up and running, we'll be sent out on escort duty or something."

"There are still surface to space commercial flights flying out to the colonies, aren't there?"

"Yeah. They just don't want the government. Naturally they don't mind the commerce." He made a sour face. "'Course, I guess there's people with family and stuff, too. They're not gonna piss their own people off. So yeah, they're flying some people up on commercial shuttles -near- some of the hot spots, but that's about as far as that can go. A lot of the carriers are restricting their flights these days, of course, and I think there were a couple of colonies in the reports that had sealed up their docks. Or have had their docks sealed up from the inside. I dunno, man, this whole thing's going all to hell."

"Well, then." I patted his knee congenially. "Be glad that you're stuck in here, then, playing around with some mobile suits."

"Heh, yeah. Makes me nervous, not being out on the front lines, but yeah, I keep feeling kinda guilty walking around up there since all those guys are running around like the sky is falling, and here I am, thinking to myself, 'Hey, you guys brought this upon yourselves...'"

"We're government agents, too." He liked to forget that whenever it was convenient. Sometimes, I did, too.

"Yeah, but hey, you warned them about an infrastructure collapse and all the network vulnerabilities months and months ago, and I've always thought that the government should stop trying to stick its nose where it don't belong." He paused only for a sip from his drink bottle. "And let's not forget that the guys upstairs thought it would be a smart idea not to let the guys dirtside know how bad things were getting up here. Maybe the Senate would have done some legislating, or maybe Relena would have smiled pretty at them and none of this would have gone this far."

A large part of me was being cynical. The Senate knew all the facts about the nationalist's cause, and they did nothing. And I didn't think it was fair to make Relena go in and clean up their mess. "It's impossible to say for sure."

He waved his sandwich at me dismissively. "I know. I'm not saying it for sure. I'm just saying that things turned out this way for a reason, and I'm not going to run around panicking and whining about it."

"You're not going to panic, Duo, because that's not what we do."

"Well, yeah, there's that, too, 'cuz it's kinda like, big deal, the world went all to hell, what, say, twelve years ago? Been there, done that, have the flight suit to prove it. Kinda wish I was on the other side of this little war, but hey, what can you do?"

"We win this little war. And then we take the time to sympathize with their cause afterward. That's when we can do something about it. They're not going to accomplish anything with this in the end. You know that."

"Yeah, I know. Doesn't seem like a forever ago that I did think that, though. Guess the princess has gotten it through my head. The other day, when you were waxing angsty about how they all learned to rebel from watching us? Too bad they didn't learn the other part, the part that came after with all the politicians and people that sat down and really made the change stuff happen."

"Maybe they'll learn it this time around."

"After we kick their butts, right?"

"Right. Humility is good for the soul." My workstation beeped, and I looked over in confirmation. "Calibration complete."

He wadded up the wrapper of his sandwich and tossed it into the trash bin. "Score. Nothing like talking politics during a working lunch to get me all fired up and ready to go. You never finished telling me what you thought about this guy's pump system."

I looked over at the other suit. "I don't think it's worth it, not unless we decide we really need two suits. Otherwise, I think it'd be more unreliable than I'd like. Take a look at it. Particularly at the dorsal converter."

"Will do." He disappeared behind the suit while I cleaned up our lunch, tossed it, and then went to disconnect the diagnostic equipment from our primary suit's regulators. We'd been aiming for two pilotable suits, one for each of us, but as of yet, there hadn't proven a need for two. If we decided not to go with the second suit, we could scavenge a couple of its gyros from it that would come in handy in our repairs. We hadn't expected the suits stored at Moon Base to be in such sorry condition, but they had likely participated in the final battle of the war of 'ninety-five. They had been spaceworthy enough for their pilots to limp back to their docks, but more than ten years of corrosion and no maintenance had taken their toll.

"You're right." Duo's voice preceded him around the suit as he returned. "It would take too long to get that thing back to a state where I'd be willing to stake my life on it. Guess we should just concentrate on this one here, then, save that one as an emergency backup or something."

I nodded. "I'm going to pull some insulation from the other suits..."

*****

My turn came to head upstairs. I reported our progress to the AD, got an update on our situation, grabbed two late dinners to go, and headed back to our quiet hangar with a sigh. The tension upstairs was palpable. That was where what limited action there was to be found on this base was, but I was still happier being down here. I would have felt as disconnected from it all as Duo had said he did.

"Hey," I said, announcing myself loudly enough for him to hear.

"Hey!" His answer was muffled, but clear. "Anything fun happening outside?"

"Nothing compared to the fun we must be having."

"What fun would that be?"

"You tell me. You're the one with your head in a robot's crotch."

"Ow! Dammit, Yuy! Don't make me laugh!" He pulled his upper body out from behind a piece of armor plating, rubbing the back of his head and trying to overrule his grin with a pout. "Not my fault that's the easiest access point to the bithermic valve."

"Never said it was."

"Though you gotta wonder why these things need such heavy duty codpieces, yanno? Heh, all of the external sensors happen to be located on the suit's head, but wouldn't it be funny if they were all hidden behind this thing?" He smacked the suit's pelvic plate. "Then we'd all go around aiming at each other's crotches, and damn, I bet there'd be more chick pilots, if that were the case."

"You know the interference from the core would kill the sensor readings."

"'If', man, I said 'if'. Anyway. What's the news now? Any colonies fall yet?"

"We've got probably half a dozen of them, ready to fall at a moment's notice. They've been like dominoes. The situation gets tense on one colony, and then the government steps in to try to control the situation, and then some other colony hears about it and starts causing trouble, and then the government steps in to try to control the situation..." I shook my head. "News of the various 'injustices' travels through the nets almost as quickly as they happen."

"So, uh, we get any victories at all?"

"They've located three cells and put them out. A variety of lesser offenders have been apprehended. But the news definitely travels more quickly than we do. We're losing ground. We've got four more colonies in complete lockdown, only one of which was at the decision of the local government. There's a nice conspiracy theory going around, a rather popular one, actually, saying that this is all a part of an ESUN agenda that's been years in the planning. They've even got names for it. 'Operation Sunset' is my favorite."

"'Daybreak' sounded way cooler."

"Well, OZ got to name the operation themselves, so they got the nice, positive name, and we get stuck with the mirrored, oppressive name."

"If we've been planning this for so many years, then damn, ESUN is really bad at this whole oppression thing, 'cuz they're getting their asses handed to them. Can't take speed alone and call it an 'planned operation'. A little organization would be far better proof."

"Hardly matters. It's a powerful rallying cry, whether or not it makes any sense, and if this pre-meditated action of ours is failing, they like to think it's only because they have so much strength and power when they band together for a righteous cause."

"Well... it's true."

"It's more like they're taking advantage of the very system they denounce in order to show us the righteousness of their cause. I like the irony of it all." Their side probably called it 'poetic justice'.

He threw up his hands in defeat. "Well, I'm convinced. Are you?"

"I was convinced months and months ago, remember?"

"No one likes a person that says 'I told you so.'"

I did us both a favor and ignored the fact that I was just saying what he himself had said not twelve hours ago. "Brahms wants us out in the field tomorrow, if we can manage it."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure we can do that. Has Trowa made contact today?"

"I don't know. I think he might have his fingers in something big, though. There's some mumbling about the ridiculous speed of all this. Our analysts have come up with a counter-conspiracy theory. They're thinking that things couldn't have escalated this quickly on their own. ESUN can't have messed things up this badly. They're pretty sure that we weren't responsible for some of the 'evil offenses' attributed to us."

"Yeah, sounds like something Trowa would be involved in. Damn him."

"Thought you didn't mind being stuck in here with the suits?"

"Well, I don't 'mind', but... dammit, he's gonna get all the bragging rights when this is over."

"Well, if we get this thing out the door, we'll be allowed to destroy illegally seized government property in the name of defending the poor, innocent shuttles that ESUN's trying to send up here."

"Ooh, really? I could go for some of that."

*****

I looked him steadily in the eye as we shook our fists at each other, trying to gauge his intent. On the count of three, we looked down. He had opened his fist. I hadn't.

He wrapped his hand around my fist triumphantly and gave me a victory shake. "Ha! Paper beats rock! Yeah, baby, I'll take you on a ride you'll never forget."

By now, his words were directed entirely at the Taurus. Of course, I preferred winning to losing, but I didn't mind it so much this time. I'd kind of wanted Duo to win, anyway. He seemed much more enthusiastic than I was about wrapping his fingers around the controls of a suit again. As glad as we were that that chapter of our lives was over, it hadn't been entirely without its bright spots.

He had, with some sweet talking, managed to convince the higher-ups that both of us should be out in the suit. They had already confirmed that we served no particular purpose while on base that no one else could fill, and if something came up in the field, then we would both be on hand to deal with it. The arrangements of stuffing the both of us into a cockpit meant for one were left to us.

It was possible. It just wasn't comfortable. But then, we'd been sharing an unspacious bed for the last few nights, so we weren't unfamiliar with close quarters. I waited for Duo to seat himself and strap in before grabbing onto the overhead bar and pulling myself in.

"You sure you know what you're doing?" he asked as I arranged myself over and around his seat.

"Of course. It's my first time, though." Thank goodness for zero-g. I kept one hand on the bar, planted another on the top of his head rest, and wriggled around until my legs found somewhere secure to rest. I leaned over the top of his head and smiled at him upside down. "Be gentle."

He flicked the top of my helmet. "Ha ha. Think this thing will protect you?"

"I can swing around into your lap if something comes up, but I'd rather not get in your way if I don't have to." I might not have hesitated, had this been Deathscythe, but the layout of the controls in this suit was different. We wouldn't be able to reach out blindly and know we'd hit our mark. "Besides, I've got a thick skull, remember?"

"Tell me about it. Okay, then. Let's rock." He flipped the switch to close the hatch, opened the bay doors, and maneuvered us carefully out of the hangar. Once out in open space, we took a good look around us, using the suit's sensors to gather the data on the mines that were blanketing the area. "Well. This oughta be fun."

I reached down, extended the small keyboard plug-in up as far as it could go, resecured my position, and input the course I had already charted with Zero. Our projections overlaid the displays. "There. That should be the best route through, given this suit's limitations."

He let out a low whistle. "Yeah.... yeah, okay, that works." He studied it a few seconds longer to fix its patterns into his mind before powering up our main thrusters. "You good?"

"Good."

"Then let's get the hell outta here."

The acceleration of our takeoff rocked me back, but my positioning proved solid, leaving me in an adequate place to continue my careful scrutiny of the sensor readouts. We had cleared almost twenty percent of our flight plan when the blips of the mines on the monitors began to move. "On it," I muttered, reaching out to the keyboard with one hand again. I left the fine course adjustments to Duo and re-plotted our overall path, taking into consideration the probable pursuit arcs of the mines as we flew by and sent ripples through their network.

We rolled sharply, and I had to pause what I was doing to throw a hand out and stop myself from slamming into the cockpit wall. "Sorry 'bout that," Duo said, his words curt and intense as he concentrated on evading the incoming mines.

"Don't worry about me," I answered similarly, already back to completing our route. The sudden move hadn't surprised me. It had been the best way out of the space we had occupied. I'd just waited until the last moment to steady myself. I finished my input and got both hands back on the bars just as explosions rocked the suit around us. Two mines had collided, setting each other off and taking six more along with them in a chain reaction. We jetted away from them and continued our course. I leaned into each turn as it came, and when we finally got far enough away from the mines' set position, they stopped their pursuit.

Duo let out a loud breath. "Well. That was fun. You still okay?"

I relaxed my grip on the hand holds and worked on convincing the rest of my body to stand down. "Yeah. Mind if I sit down for a while?"

He moved his arm out of the way as an invitation, which I took him up on gladly, settling myself across his lap with a soft sigh. Raising the face plate, I let my helmet knock lightly against his. "Nice flying."

His face plate also came up, and suddenly it felt like we were breathing the same air. So close, and yet unable to touch. "Nice navigating."

I smiled and let my eyes close for a few moments, easing back from Zero's embrace. ::Come on, you think he did a nice job, too.::

::There were no significant errors in his piloting. He did not deviate from our calculated path.::

Duo shifted, activating the comm and notifying command of our status. They made the customary congratulations, which Duo handled with his usual good grace, and then directed us to our rendezvous point with two shuttles coming up from Earth. Our mission was to make sure nothing got in the way of a safe arrival.

It was an easy flight out. Duo got us going in the right direction, and then leaned back to wait. He didn't ask me to move, and I didn't volunteer. One of the side displays still showed the data from our trip through the mine field. He looked at it one last time before shaking his head and clearing it screen. "Heero..."

"Hm?"

It took him a while to answer. "Back at ZenNet... in that control room. Hell, all over that building. You took all those people out, yeah?"

"Yeah." Not all of them, and not permanently, but close enough.

"Barely a scratch, you."

"Aa."

"I..." He fiddled with a sensor reading. "Guess it's good for something, after all."

It was the closest he would ever get to thanking Zero for keeping me safe. I curled a little more snugly against him and let his statement pass into comfortable silence before it could become awkward.

*****

Our mission of protection went off without a hitch. A defense system looked at us menacingly, but we fired off enough countermeasures and decoys to keep it sufficiently distracted as the shuttles left Earth's atmosphere. After they aligned themselves with standard flight routes, they were able to continue on their journey safely. Intercolonial transports were still active, so the main lines were left undisturbed by rebel activities.

Quatre and Wufei had been onboard one of the shuttles. 'It was about damn time,' as Duo had said. After the loose ends had been tied up on the Earth side of our investigation, the shuttle routes had closed up. Although Preventers had sent a few agents up on commercial flights, it probably would not have been economical to send the two special agents up in such a roundabout manner. Quatre and Wufei needed to be where the action was, not commuting from colony to colony, making it out to some satellite installation.

We exchanged a few words with them, then communicated our mission success to base and stood by for further orders, taking the opportunity to patch in to external transmissions and listen in on the newswires. The situation in the colonies seemed to have stabilized at a low point, but it was better than continuing to degrade. A number of colonies were under something resembling martial law. Three local governments had lost control of their people and were hunkered down against assault. Four more comsats had been destroyed. Two mining asteroids had been 'reclaimed'. Six government databases had been hacked and vandalized.

Nine colonists and fifteen government employees had been killed in the last thirty-six hours. Many more had been wounded.

"Shit," Duo muttered. "Trowa out there twiddling his thumbs or something? No way in hell we suck this much on our own."

We couldn't gain access to the Preventers channels from here, but from the last updated report that we had gotten before leaving base, we knew that our people had zoomed in on what sounded like a corner of the widespread conspiracy against the government. From there, it was just a matter of painstakingly following the thread back to its origin. The most important factor now was time. "Trowa's a good man to lead the investigation. He isn't fazed by deadlines."

"Man, he's not even fazed by Quatre in full-scale rant mode. That guy just isn't right in the head."

"Maybe." Weren't we all? "But he'll get the job done."

"Eventually," he answered darkly. Duo didn't get fazed by deadlines, but he did feel them.

"Everything's done remotely these days up here," I justified, as if that could make things better. "It's hard to track down."

"Would someone please just tell me whose ass I have to kick? I want my vacation. You and me. Now." His foot tapped impatiently against the pedals for all of two seconds before he got twitchy enough to pull the keyboard back out and start running through our accumulated data. "Lessee, if I were a terrorist, what would I do next...? Correction, if I were -still- a terrorist..."

My position across his lap was making his typing difficult. I nudged his hands out of the way and took care of the information access for him. "Correction. Freedom fighter. Resistance. Self-image is a key factor in our decision making processes."

"Okay. Fine." With his hands freed, one curled up along my back and settled on my shoulder. The other sat on my knee. "So we've got this escalation thing going. They want ESUN out of here. They're forcing the timeline forward, despite the negative effects on their on people. Why? They're willing to sacrifice their freedoms in the short-term, if it gets ESUN out of here even one day sooner. If ESUN's taking too long to get all hard-core uber-mean government on them, or if they're not heading that way, then these guys are going to make 'em that way, or make 'em look that way, because... they're planning some hard-core stuff, but they can't do it unless ESUN threatens 'em first. Bad PR if they're the aggressors... Whoa, slow down there, buddy." He touched the edge of the keyboard. "Not all of us can read... that..."

I didn't slow down for him, but I did lean against him briefly. "Sorry." The apology was both for the rate at which I was moving through the data, and for what had him trailing off before he could finish his sentence. He had no doubt realized that Zero was helping me speed things along. "I think I can put something together..."

His hand slipped off the keyboard, to land tentatively on my knee again. "Well... way to make a guy feel obsolete here."

"No, keep talking. I'd like to hear your ideas on the matter. It helps me think." When his silence stretched for a few seconds, I requested a few seconds of my own from Zero. After he decided that he could spare a few, I turned to give Duo my full attention. "Really, Duo. I'm fast when it comes to crunching the data. Doesn't mean anything if I'm not even looking at the right data. You have good ideas. You understand people. You have a certain flexibility of thought. Help me narrow things down."

He shrugged a little uncomfortably. "I'm just thinking out loud, Heero... Just..."

"Even better. Then I can see how you got from A to Z. Gives me more to work with."

"Well..." He fought some internal battle in the space of several heartbeats before he started up again. "Bad PR, was it? So... I guess from there... they've already got Moon Base nailed down. It's kind of unlikely that they'd be able to boot every last groundbounder out, and I don't think that's their goal anyway..."

I factored in his evolving theories as I worked my way through the data, identifying our points of weakness and correlating them with the resources the 'resistance' had on hand. What would they likely do? What could they do? What did they want to do? When I needed more information, I asked Duo to find it for me. Zero happily chewed his way through our newly expanded list of possibilities, and branch by branch our search tree was pruned as the three of us worked together.

"...stupid history, always repeating itself, and are you sure you're listening to me, Heero?"

"Yes," I answered promptly, closing in on a final conclusion. "In fact... I have the terrible feeling history is trying to do just that... There."

He inspected my side of the monitors as I finally took a moment to work the kinks out of my hands. After a puzzled silence, his fingers started to fly over his keys, and ten seconds later, he confirmed my findings. "You're fucking kidding me. It didn't work last time. It didn't work the time before that, either. And if history really, really repeats itself, it's not going to work this time, too. What the hell?"

"Third time's the charm?" I proposed, charting the satellite's trajectory through space. I pointed to a spot on its arc. "We should intercept it here."

"What? Why us?" He complained, but he was already turning our suit in the necessary direction.

"We're comsat engineers, remember?" I answered wryly. "If we don't know how to stop a satellite in its tracks, who does?"

Our new acceleration vector pushed me into him. "Not just comsat experts, but 'stopping large objects from crashing into other large objects' experts, too, huh?"

"Makes us perfect for the job, don't you think?"

"Not to mention that we're 'have no problems with boarding said large objects despite the fact that they're on a collision course with other said large objects' people, too, right?"

"Right. Though we'll get there with plenty of time to spare. We should alert Moon Base, though."

"Heh, sooo tempted to say, 'What they don't know can't hurt them.'"

"Brahms or someone would find out afterwards. If that happens, -you- can be the one to deal with them."

"'What!?'" he shouted, his voice lowered in imitation of the AD, with the faint L5 accent. "'Someone's dropping a comsat on us!?' Bleh, reaction's gonna be about the same, before or after."

"Fine, I'll tell them." I left the driving to Duo and contacted base. I broke the news to them gently, starting with the fact that there was plenty of time until they were in actual danger and that we were well on our way to dealing with it before letting them in on the fact that there was a satellite heading their way. It wasn't large enough to decimate the entire base. Preventers HQ would just be rather unuseful afterwards. We gave the rebels enough benefit of the doubt to suggest that perhaps they would allow the occupants of the base time to escape before wreaking havoc. That made the most sense. Earth would never leave them alone if they decided to kill everyone on base. Command handled the news gracefully enough, gave us another update, and then left us to our business.

It would be another twenty minutes before we reached the comsat in question. The one closest to the Moon Base had already been destroyed by the insurgents. This one was next in line. Trowa and the others had tracked down the next link in the rebel plans, but even once they were found and the greatest violence halted, the underlying problems would still be in effect. Hopefully Relena and her allies in the Senate could step in then and take care of the rest.

"You're good at that," Duo said to me, a peculiar smile on his face. "When did you learn to stop being so blunt?"

"I'm still blunt," I answered almost defensively. "I don't believe in pulling my punches. I still say what needs saying, regardless of whether or not someone thinks I ought to. I just... I've just learned that sometimes people get irrational after I get blunt, and then they don't listen to anything else I have to say. So doesn't it just make the most sense to start out with all of the things they wouldn't hear otherwise, and then hit them with the big ones?"

He rubbed at a smudge on one of the consoles. "It's... smart, I guess. I know I... I probably wouldn't even be here if you hadn't done that with me."

"I think I'll keep putting in the effort to do it that way, then." I bent my attention to checking our long-range scanners. "I'm sorry it didn't turn out better."

"Yeah, well..." He started clearing out some of the data we had been sorting through. "I appreciate the effort. Just a, uh... unfortunate combination of circumstances, that's all."

"Yeah." The union of his neuroses and my neuroses had proven volatile indeed. "I want my vacation, too."

"Good." I heard the smile in his voice. "Glad we're on the same page about something."

*****

The satellite was right where we had projected it to be. Its layout was identical to that of the first comsat we had visited, so there were no surprises as we landed in the hangar and disembarked. We found our way to the control room and tapped into the satellite's propulsion systems. Before we could fix the problem, we had to determine what the hackers had done to throw the comsat off-course to begin with. I found the hole in the security while Duo tracked down the affected systems.

"So," he started, making some conversation to pass the time. "This is what you do down in tech support all day?"

"Sometimes," I answered. "Minus the dropping-a-satellite part."

"But that's the fun part, isn't it?"

"There are other fun parts. What was the last deployment I had before this? That weapons sting? That was interesting."

"Oh, wow..." He sighed nostalgically. "This case kind of started out with black market weapons, didn't it? Trippy."

The weapons had stayed mostly on Earth, to the best of our determinations. That was something small we could be grateful for. Of course, that was because the colonists preferred to hijack our weapons and use them against us. "Une thought I should join the tactical analysis group."

There was a brief pause in his typing. "Yeah? Not field work anymore? You taking her up on that?"

"We decided that there was no reason for me to be making any decisions right away. I don't see the point, really. She's always had me on field work and tactical analysis on the side, on a case by case basis. I don't see what difference it would make if I were permanently assigned to those units."

"Don't let her bully you into leaving a job you love, Heero."

"I would never bend for Une. She doesn't mean that much to me."

"Don't let anyone bully you into leaving a job you love, Heero."

"I don't let anyone bully me into anything."

"Don't bend for--"

"Duo." I asked Zero to hold that last thought and crossed the small room to Duo's side. When he didn't turn, I embraced him from behind. The bulk of the EV suits around our waists from where we had peeled ourselves out of the upper half made it awkward, but the simple fact that it was a hug removed any discomfort from the action. "I may take strange things into account that no one else would when I make my decisions, Duo, but they're always my decisions." I pressed my lips chastely to the point right under his ear. It wasn't a real kiss; we hadn't had one of those since I'd fallen off that damn ladder. "I appreciate your concern, though."

"Heero..."

::Memory address overwrite at 0x32DA8270 likely caused by overflow of command buffer at--::

::Thank you. I'll get back to the console in a few seconds. Tell me again then.::

I squeezed Duo once, and then let go. He turned around finally, but I was already stepping back to my work. I threw him a wink over my shoulder. "I'll still let you bend me over, though."

His eyes widened before he took a small lunge forward to try a swat at my butt. He missed, leaving him only to shake his head. "Dammit, Heero... Here I am, trying to be considerate..."

"And here I am, trying to give you one less thing to worry about. So, who's going to win this one?"

He held out a fist. "Rock, paper, scissors?"

I chuckled. "You won the last game. Why don't we just give this round to me, and we'll call it even?"

"Hmpf. I'll think about it."

I got back to my buffer overflows, and he got back to the stabilization system. Zero's deduction was correct, and I patched the hole. While I was going over what else the hackers may have tampered with via that exploit, I found some other things that they had left behind. "Stop what you're doing for a sec, Duo."

"Hm? What's up?" He appeared by my side a second later.

"They left some alerts in the system. They're monitoring the satellite's progress."

"Well, yeah, makes sense. If your crazy theory about them actually allowing Moon Base to evacuate is right, then they'll need to know when to call off the mines. I don't see where the problem is in letting them know that their plans have been foiled."

"They've also left some of the ports into this comsat open. They've been routing communiqués through here. When the comsat is destroyed, they won't have to worry about anyone tracing their messages back to the source. They're all encrypted, of course. Standard protocols, but that still means we can't crack them without a significant investment of time."

"Can you pull anything out of them?"

I skimmed the rest of the log quickly, stopping when I found a data attachment. They weren't typically encrypted with the same level of security as the text. It was forwarded in several different instances. I broke them out and pried what I could of them open, assembling pieces from each into a broken whole. It was in an unknown binary format, so most of it wasn't human-readable, but we could pick out a few string fragments here and there.

Duo scanned the encrypted lines of data until he jabbed his finger to one in particular. "What are these, addresses?"

They were in the proper format. I ran them through the comsat's tables to get a general idea of what sector they were in. "They're all public institutions. I can't tell which ones, though, not from here."

"Well, we should write those guys down, then."

"I got it."

There was a brief silence on his part, presumably as he waited for me to take some action. And then it dawned. "Shit. You're even more eidetic-memory than you were before, aren't you?"

"Um... it means I'll always carry a picture of you with me, wherever I go?" I grinned with a false brightness.

He elbowed me for my troubles. "Whatever. Hey, does that mean we could hook you up to a printer and never have to use a camera again? That's just wrong, man."

"You were the one that just came up with it."

He ignored me blithely. "Those look like timestamps, don't they?" he asked, pointing at another section of the file.

"Those look... like... they're very soon." I glared at the files until I pulled enough content out of them for Zero to work with. "This is a distraction. The satellite's not going to hit for some time. Too much time for things to go wrong, considering this is probably the capstone in their grand campaign. They're going to distract the government from noticing that the satellite is off-track until it's too late, and they'll do it by making a concerted push against these points. It'll be more than just for show, too. They'll make a real effort to disable ESUN operations in space."

"When you say 'they'..." He scratched the side of his nose thoughtfully. "We're talking a lot of people. Spread out all over. It's not just going to be these guys in charge of making the government look like a bunch of screwballs. This is going to be anyone they can recruit. The guys from your little hacker contest thingie?"

"Rumor did have it that they would be taking largescale action against the government. This certainly fits the bill."

"Whee. We should probably call this in-- But not from here, right?"

"Yes. They could be monitoring anything that comes in and out of here."

"Let's finish up with the collision course thing, then, get back to the suit, call the bosses, and oh yeah, there are also some explosives on the outer wings that we'll need to deal with."

They would give the satellite a little extra push to get it up to speed. I nodded. "Anyone pretending to be a repair crew could have been buzzing around these satellites. No one would have asked any questions."

Duo snorted. "Maybe they really were the repair crew. We don't know whose side those guys would be on."

*****

I made sure I got what I needed out of the data before joining Duo and watching him finish up resetting the system.

"What?" he muttered, tying up the last loose ends.

"Nothing." I hid my smile by freeing the sleeves of my suit and getting ready to leave. ::He does nice work, don't you think?::

Zero didn't think there was anything particularly remarkable about the way Duo's fingers danced lightly across the keyboard.

We were standing in the airlock waiting for it to cycle when the room went dark for a second. When the lights came back on, they were red and strobing slowly. We exchanged quick glances before heading back toward the door to the control room. Through the small window, I looked hard at the consoles for some information, Zero compensating for distance and angle. It wasn't too difficult to find what we needed. It was flashing in large red letters. "Core meltdown," I announced.

"Shit. Did we set something off? That sucks." He glanced back to our exit. "How much time do we have?"

"Judging from the warning levels, we should have about ten minutes."

He immediately stopped bouncing on his toes. "Time enough to clear out of here, then."

"Emergency lockdown will probably commence in two or so. The alarm was probably delayed."

"Oh. Standard lockdown procedures, I hope?"

"I believe so." That meant the doors were designed as seals, not locks. If the doors closed before we got through them, it would just slow us down a little, not condemn us to our deaths.

"Cool." The airlock signaled its readiness, and Duo punched the button to open the door. "Let's get out of here, then."

We bounded down the hallways confidently, performing advanced maneuvers that we usually had little reason to exercise. Zero did not think there was anything particularly remarkable about the way Duo glided precisely to each waypoint, or the way he took each corner smoothly without losing much speed. I disagreed with Zero's bland assessment, and got him to admit at least that Duo was doing very well for the irrational human he was. I kept the more subjective adjectives for myself.

The doors started closing at around the halfway mark. One closed behind us with a safe margin. The next door also closed behind us, this time not so long after we passed through it. The door after that began its procedures just as we were crossing its threshold. And it was right about then that the things Zero and I had been thinking about -- things other than Duo -- resolved into a solid course of action.

I found myself turning at the next handhold and hurling myself back through the seal just as it was about to close. The realization that I was about to piss Duo off was, unfortunately, a bit belated. "Um, Duo..."

"Yeah?" I'd let Duo take a slight lead, so he wouldn't have noticed my abrupt departure.

"Don't get mad."

"What?" I assume he took the time to look around. "Shit, Yuy, where the hell did you go? Oh, fuck no! Tell me you did NOT just go back inside!"

I winced. "I have an idea."

"The words 'core meltdown' mean anything to you?!"

"I figured out how to stop it." Zero and I had reviewed the specs and the methods available to the hackers. There were only one or two ways they could have triggered a meltdown. It wouldn't be that difficult to stop the sequence and stabilize the core.

"There are still explosives attached to this bucket, you know!"

They weren't intended to go off until the communications array got closer to its target, but it wouldn't be unreasonable for the rebels to detonate them once they found their plans had gone awry. "You're going to need to get rid of those. So keep moving."

"Arrgh!!" The feedback that came through the comm was unpleasant, but I could only guess that he did as he was told. "There are days I really fucking hate you, Yuy."

"Sorry," I said, trying to make it sound as heartfelt as possible. I really meant it. I got to the first door that had closed behind us, opened up a panel, and started bypassing. "I really didn't think. I just reacted. I had an idea. They're taking advantage of this comsat's destruction to use it as a cost-free relay. After we stop this thing from exploding, I can ride the signals out of here and locate a lot of sources, I think."

"What, like one? Two? It won't help, Yuy! Get out of there."

It was probably too late for that now. The door opened and I flew through it. "More than that. A lot more. And this is a communications satellite. XG-9900 series. It's old, and it's unstable, but it's also overpowered. Typical L2 construction."

"Compensators," he muttered, completing the old joke. "So, what, you're going to mount some sort of counterhack campaign? All by yourself? Just you and this damn comsat?"

"And Zero, too," I reminded him. "I can do a lot more good in here than I can out there."

"Zero? Come on, Heero! You can only type so fast. Unless you can download it onto the computer or something. In which case, feel more than free to leave it behind and get the hell out of there!"

I smiled mirthlessly. I couldn't download Zero, no, but I could download and upload a little something. "I'm wearing my jacket underneath this suit, Duo." EV suits were bulky, and it got cold out in space.

"Big fucking deal!" From the change in his breathing, I surmised he had gotten back to the Taurus and was strapping himself in. "I know where the hell you are, and I want you out of there."

A sweet sentiment, but not my point at the moment. "It's been busy these last few days. I haven't had time to clean out my pockets. Which means I still have my interface on me." I got back to the control room and waited impatiently for the airlock to cycle. Luckily, we hadn't bothered to depressurize the control room on our way out. That would save me some time.

"That thing couldn't possibly be compatible with this old thing!"

"I was working on a driver for the device that should make it very compatible, actually." I didn't guarantee full compatibility, but I could probably get enough out of it to finish the programming on the fly.

"Do you do this just to annoy me?"

"I'm hoping I can annoy some of the rebels, too."

He made another sound of utter frustration. "I'm out. Heading out to G Ring now. Tell me again why I ought to save your stupid ass?"

The airlock finally finished its routine and let me back into the control room. I wasted no time in stripping off the top of my suit and putting a stop to the meltdown. "I'm in. Because you can't punch me in the gut if I'm dead?"

I heard a puff of breath into the mic, but otherwise there was no response as I halted the overload. There was still a good minute and a half to go. I let Duo know my status immediately. "Clear."

He still didn't answer me. I checked the satellite's communications readiness with one hand while pulling the interface out of my pocket with the other. I'd never thought I'd have the opportunity to field test it. I found a port, plugged it in, and as I waited for it to gather the necessary data from the system, I tried the comm again. "Duo?"

"I see 'em," he muttered, referring to the explosives. "I'll take care of 'em."

I sighed and put the interface on, trying to clear my mind of doubts as I carefully put the electrodes in place. Zero spit out some user stats, and I adjusted the fit accordingly. ::Status?::

::Operating at ninety-four percent peak efficiency.::

Good enough for me.

I could ill afford distractions as I tested the interface, but as much of a distraction as Duo was, it was even more distracting to not be able to know what he was thinking. "Duo...."

"Yeah, yeah," he answered irritably. "You're just being your usual bastard of a self. I get it."

"Duo... I'm sorry. Can't help it." It wasn't much of an apology, but there it was.

"I know it," he sighed, some of the annoyance bled out of his tone. "Don't worry. No matter how much of an idiot you are, I'm still a bigger one for sticking with you."

::Connection complete. Adapting driver...::

I laughed, just audibly enough for Duo to hear. "You know... I didn't get around to telling you the other night. Telling you how lucky I am."

"Damn straight," he retorted. "Got another one. Shit, there's, what, four more of these things?"

"What are you doing with them?"

"Disarmed a few of them. I'll have to chuck the rest of them into space and hope there's nothing flying around out here."

::Operation complete. Sync ratio: sixty-eight percent.::

"I'm good to go," I told Duo.

"You're sure you stopped this thing from blowing its top off?"

"I'm sure." I even re-checked the core levels as a test run with the interface, just in case the hackers had left any other surprises. I didn't find anything. After familiarizing myself with my medium, I re-arranged things the way I liked them. I isolated my comms and my life support, in case someone tried to hack the satellite again, then locked its place in the network routing tables. I wouldn't give them the chance to write me out of the loop.

"Heero..."

"Yes?"

"They're going to figure it out, won't they? These hacker people. I know you're good, but they'll see you."

"And they'll fight me. That's fine. The more attention they turn toward me, the less damage they can deal against some other facility. You're done, right?"

"Yeah. No worries. Nothing's blowing you up on my watch."

"You need to update ops on our situation."

"In a second. They've got a shitload of weapons at their disposal, Heero. It would be nothing for them to just shoot a few of them this way to put a stop to you. And that satellite doesn't have crap in the way of defenses."

"I know. I was sort of hoping you'd stick around for a little while to watch my back."

Not for the first time, I wished I had a visual feed into his cockpit. I couldn't tell if his silences were motivated by some business he was taking care of, or if he was just brooding over my words. "So... that means you weren't planning on martyring yourself, or anything else stupid like that?"

"No, I wasn't. We... still have a lot of things we need to say to each other, Duo. I intend to stick around until I've said them all. If you're willing to listen," I added, my voice betraying my hesitance with that last bit.

"I intend to stick around, too," he assured me. "Whether or not you're interested in listening."

I settled more comfortably into my chair, preparing for a long battle. I needed to wait for them to make the first move before I could do anything. "I know, Duo. There are some things that I need to work on, too."

"Do tell."

"You should update ops, now." I formatted the network addresses we had pulled from the data attachment into a standard file layout to send along. "I'm passing you the intel we found onboard."

"We're not done," he growled irritably. He recognized where our duty lay, though. "I'll be right back. Don't do anything stupid while I'm gone."

I smiled. "I'll be here." I closed my eyes and double-checked all the items on my to-do list.

He came back sooner than I expected. "So spill."

"No one started running around in circles?"

"Nah, I got a hold of Quatre. We're covered. He'll get back to me after he issues his preliminary orders, so start talking. I want to hear about this thing you need to work on."

It was good that we had our priorities straight. "I've decided that I need to stop being so willing to let you go."

"Huh? Really. What does that mean?"

There was a nervous feeling inside my chest, but at the same time, it felt really good. I decided that meant I was taking a positive step. "You know me. I'm pretty damn accepting of whatever happens to me. If circumstances dictate that we should be parted, well, I've always been willing to accept that. If I had to leave you to make sure you could be happy, then I was willing to accept that. Maybe it's the noble thing to do, but... I think you deserve someone that's willing to fight for you. Someone that won't accept our separation as an answer. Someone who's not willing to accept that maybe this is just the way things were meant to be. No. I think I don't want to leave you. I think you can be perfectly happy with me. And I'm going to make sure it happens."

I heard a strained chuckle on the other end of the line. "Dammit, Yuy. You've just shot my theories all to hell, then."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. See, I've never really known you. Not because you've been hiding stuff from me, but because I've been hiding stuff from me. But I really don't like that notion. You're... I can count on you to be you, you know? You're reliable like that. I know I can lean on you and you're not just gonna fall over. But I can't do that if I don't know a damn thing about you. How can you be reliable to me when I don't even get what motivates you? But that's not true, 'cuz I do know some stuff about you. I've boiled it down to a couple of simple, basic little things that I know for a fact are you, just you, and have always been you. Helps me sleep at night. Number one was the fact that you're a self-sacrificing son of a bitch."

Ah. I chuckled. "Oh, don't worry. I'm still that person. After all, I just want you to be happy, right? And as I said, I think you deserve someone that's willing to fight for you, and that's all about your happiness in the end. I'm sacrificing my martyr complex to you, Duo."

He let out a low whistle. "Whoa. That's a really, really big thing, Heero. You sure?"

"Well, it's really more like just a corner of it."

"Heh, yeah, 'cuz you've got plenty to spread around, that's for sure. Yeah, okay, I'll buy that." He fell silent for a moment. "So... that's who you are. I get that. Well, I don't understand it, really, but I know it. So... don't go not doing this stupid stuff anymore, Yuy. Then I'd be wrong, and that would make me pissy."

I smiled where there was no one to witness it. "Will do." I'd still apologize for it after, though. "So... what was number two?"

"You need to ask? That you're a stubborn bastard." He was right. I should have known.

"Hang on," I told him, putting our conversation on hold. "A ping's just come through."

"Is it them?"

I pulled myself back out of the network. "It came from the L4 cluster, I think. It..." A second ping came back, looking for information. I fed it what it wanted, with some judicious editing to hide our activities out here. "L4, subnet twenty-two-charlie. Checking up on the comsat's fall. If they're smart, they'll confirm the data independently with external satellite scans and figure out this comsat's been compromised."

"So we've got a few minutes, maybe. I'll inform Winner."

Sensors indicated the explosions outside while Duo was reporting. I took that to mean that the rebels had given up the satellite. The array rocked from the impact, but they were far enough away that nothing was damaged. I automatically checked and adjusted the satellite's course to compensate. Another ping came into the system. I absorbed it without feedback to hide for a little while that the satellite had not been destroyed.

Duo's voice came back on the line. "You okay in there?"

"Yes. Winner?"

"Prepped. They confirm a large, coordinated attack. Barton's hot on the trail of something, but we don't know how long it'll take to get wrapped up. That'll be the leader, maybe, but there's all these flunkies spread out doing most of the work that also need to be dealt with. The subnet you zoomed in on should help narrow things down for at least one pod. How many more you think you can get?"

"As many as they'll give me." Several more queries had entered the system as he spoke. I'd dealt with each of them, but because I wasn't sending anything back, I hadn't yet made any more progress. "I'll send what I get along to you as I get them."

"Okay. I'll take care of communicating that along to base."

"How's the minefield?" Though the explosives were not enough to devastate Moon Base, the rebels could still choose to bombard the facility and disrupt operations.

"They brought some stuff up with them that'll help, but it's slow going."

Traffic picked up on the network. They'd set themselves up to be routed through this gateway. With the comsat's supposed destruction, they would expect their signals to be re-directed to other ports. It would take them a little while to notice that that was not the case. "They're starting." I began tracking the ends, middles, and beginnings of each strand.

"Okay, then. I'll leave you to it." He hesitated briefly. "Keep me posted, yeah?"

"Will do. Yuy out."

The signals were scattered at first, but they quickly coalesced into a pattern of attacks against various government institutions. I listened in on the packets, intercepting some of the ones going to particularly sensitive locations and sending them back with bogus data while I attempted to ferret out their sources. The destinations were easy to determine. As each one made itself known, I sent it along to Duo for relay. There would be a slight delay with the middleman, but I didn't want to waste the resources to take care of it personally.

I had four minutes of undisturbed play before someone finally got suspicious. Inquiries were delivered to me, but eventually this data was also compared against sources outside of my control and discovered to be faked. Then there was a pause in the requests coming into my end. Planning their next move? I could do it for them. They would take a look at their options and initiate an alternate attack against Moon Base. That was their primary objective. After those events had been set in motion, they would come back to me, trying to figure out what had gone wrong. I had approximately one minute, twenty-two seconds before someone inevitably noticed my interference in the other hacks that were continuing against the secondary targets. Four minutes, eighteen seconds until they traced it back to my address. Six minutes, thirteen seconds until they figured out the source of the interference was the communications array they thought they'd sabotaged. Things would start getting interesting around the two minute mark.

I'd hunted down the addresses of five unique locations and nineteen computers. There were at least three others I had yet to track. I made the most of my time and got working on them, but decided I could spare a few seconds to check in with my partner. "Duo. Status?"

"Antsy. Other than that? They've got the physical addresses for three of your places. They're making the calls to the local guys now. It's gonna take time, though. Time to round up a posse, get out there, and shut them down. Quatre said he had us beat, though. Already found out that schools and public libraries and stuff were going to be the source of the attacks. Just didn't know which."

"Schools and public libraries, hm?" Easy access to computers that couldn't be traced back to the individuals. A convenient place where groups could meet up and work in the same room. Wasn't a bad idea. We had suspected as much from previous evidence, but hadn't had the opportunity to pursue the matter further. "That will help me pinpoint their locations better."

"Good. How are you holding up?"

"Not bad, considering." I sort of hoped HQ never really found out the details of this little adventure. I didn't want to spend the rest of my life hooked up to a computer, monitoring the world for any signs of trouble. Une had said that she had no interest in using my talents in that way, but given a choice, I would prefer to avoid the confrontation altogether rather than tempt fate.

Network traffic started up again. I ran after it, trying to see where it would go before it got there. "Cassandra Station," I muttered, tangling with their signals.

"Cassandra?" Duo echoed. "Passing it on."

It was a waystation between L1 and the Moon, used traditionally for refueling and restocking on armaments. Officially, it was out of commission, but the rumor had been for several months now that it had been taken over by smugglers. Nothing had ever been substantiated by the authorities.

Regardless of their intent, I did what I had to in order to cut off their signals and otherwise block them from their destination. Network communications through space weren't instantaneous. There was plenty of lag to be had, and my comsat wasn't in the most strategic of positions. It became a tricky game of trying to predict their moves ahead of time and counter them before they made them.

They would be trying something else right about now, but what? Three of the signals broke off from the pack, joined by five others. They went for the port at Moon Base, but I'd tightened up security a little since the last time they'd been there, and thrown out a couple of the bugs and backdoors they'd left as well. Apparently I missed one. They got in, I threw them out, and I had to wonder if I'd done it quickly enough to stop them from getting what they wanted.

My attention split back in the direction of the others. One more line had gotten sloppy, and I tracked them down, transmitted the source to Duo, and put a stop to their efforts to kill the connections between one of the databases on Earth that was linked with the L1 cluster's network. A chain of media satellites beaming Earth television signals in the direction of L5 went down. I let that one go. Lives didn't depend on it, even when they started to replace the broadcast with their own message. I didn't have the attention to spare, but it did put me on alert. What would happen if it didn't work out so nicely next time?

I wasn't alone in this battle. Zero could multitask far more efficiently than I could, so I slipped another notch further into sync with him to give him the access he needed to start working with partial autonomy.

::Sync ratio: seventy-eight percent.::

Signals started to come in, aimed at me this time. Someone had traced me. I bent my attention to keeping my lines open, noticed more users zinging by me while I was occupied to reach into systems beyond my current sphere of protection. That just wouldn't do.

::Sync ratio: seventy-nine percent.::

They figured out my physical location and started going after my satellite's systems, but I'd safeguarded them already. Upping the ante, they tried to mobilize the mines surrounding Moon Base. I had been prepared for that move and diverted their signals, but the escalation was worrisome. Could Trowa and the others cut the attacks off at their source before they became furious enough to try more terrible actions? The rebels didn't strike me as inherent killers, but it would be easy for them to fall into the trap of putting lives in danger. Their remote hacking removed them from the consequences as surely as OZ's mobile dolls did. If they had to learn lessons from history, why couldn't they learn any of the good stuff?

"Shit," Duo said into my comm, splitting my attention yet again. "There's an emergency signal coming from a shuttle full of agents heading back to Moon Base to report. They've lost control of their craft."

Against the insides of my eyelids, I saw the shuttle being pointed in entirely the wrong direction. With controls locked out, gravity would takes its course, pulling it into the mine field. Did they see the agents onboard the shuttle as anything more than a number on a screen? "ID?"

"Uh... XGR724B."

"On it." There went another sliver of my attention. This one took first priority. Zero took up the rest.

::Warning. Sync ratio at eighty percent.::

I felt justified in ignoring the 'recommended' thresholds in a situation like this. "Duo."

"Yo."

The words came slowly to my mind. They were on the bottom of my list of things to do. "They pulled more tracking mines from MO-18 to target this comsat. Backup explosives, I guess. I'm letting them through. Deal with them."

He bit back a curse, his initial reaction probably being to demand I stop making life so difficult for him. His next reaction would have been realization of how stressed my resources were. The reaction after that would have been a smug 'I told you so,' no matter that I had been the one to request he stay and watch my back in the first place. He'd take the threat to me as if I had decided to play the stupid martyr. "You got it, babe," he answered, his focused game voice coming out to play.

I knew he would take care of it, so I went back to my own concerns. I unscrambled the shuttle's signals. It would be up to them to get it back on course. After that was the L2 outer self-defense circle. Their 'extra-terrestrial anti-invasion' net went on-line, but not for long. A reactor in L2 had its safeties disabled. I put them back on. Zero tracked down another two sources, twenty-one users. Total so far: fourteen sites, ninety-eight hackers. I passed the new information along to Duo and refrained from keeping score. I didn't know how many attacks I was missing, but I was doing what I could.

The satellite shuddered around me. Explosions, but not close enough to damage. Duo was doing his job.

Almost all malicious signals stopped coming out of the XRS975d routing satellite. It dealt with the signals of one of the first locations I'd traced. The local authorities must have gotten there. Deciding that any leftover packets were coming from automatic sources, I cut them off so I wouldn't have to think about them anymore, and redirected my attention elsewhere.

::Sync ratio: eighty-two percent.::

I was going to have a doozie of a headache when I disconnected from the system. But that was later. This was now. Not all of the threats were on the active network. Scanners detected a swarm of enthusiastic anti-missile drones heading toward a nearby penal asteroid. Their beams were relatively low-power, but more than enough to do some damage if applied creatively. Their source was seven hours away. The strike must have been planned ahead to coincide with the rest of the attacks. Kept on minimal power as they first set out, most sensors would have dismissed them as space debris. How many other plans had been set into motion before I had connected to the network? How many out there were slipping past my notice because they weren't generating the same kind of traffic that the others were? The asteroid was full of criminals shipped up from Earth to serve hard time. I recalled the propaganda saying something about ESUN littering space with trash, and it was sort of true, but people were people. I tried to disable the devices, but it didn't work. About half of them, I could alter their directives and make them attack each other. The other half consisted of a different model. I diverted those instead. "Duo."

"Yeah?" I heard his breathing coming out in little puffs. He was working hard, but he had things under control.

"Incoming ACMs. ETA, three minutes."

He made some comments about their parentage, then acknowledged the warning.

Duo had taken care of Mercurius and Vayeate when they'd been installed with advanced AIs. I settled back to other business, confident in the fact that these ACMs wouldn't last long, especially when he was feeling irritable.

The network of signals was getting larger. Was it more people joining the effort, or was I just locating more and more of them? Either way, we weren't shutting down enough of them to keep up with demand. When would this end? They could keep this up for as long as it took for the local authorities to find them all and arrest them. I might have problems holding out that long.

::Sync ratio: eighty-four percent.::

Couldn't stop now. We had too much work to do. They'd wised up, concentrating their efforts on a few of their primary objectives rather than trading them in for a collection of widespread, minor triumphs. A group of them concentrated on blockading me. The rest of them worked on accomplishing their goals. That wasn't any fun at all.

::Eighty-five percent.::

::I know. Enough already.:: What else could I do? My intimacy with their aims and techniques gave me the impression of familiarity with them. I followed their thought processes, watching them become less and less concerned with the consequences of their actions, more and more absorbed into the impersonal world of bitstreams and dataflows. Every action I blocked increased their anger with the government, and they found new ways to vent their frustration. Old ways, perhaps. Thanks to the wonders of globalization, of homogeneous, standardized systems, once they figured out how to gain access to one system, it didn't take long for them to gain access to the next.

I saw them trying to get their hands on access to reactor cores, self-destruct mechanisms, life support, and what else could I do? I let them sever computer systems, so long as they just wanted to break the exchange of information and not damage the information itself. They wanted to mess with the ports to stop the flow of people? I was willing to let them get a certain distance with that. Outright trashing of the data was somewhat alright. Sneaky manipulation of the details so that no one noticed things were bad until it was too late? Not so good. I didn't care too much if someone wasn't going to be home for dinner. I certainly wasn't going to be home for dinner. They could just deal with it.

Three more sources fell out of the connection. Twenty-eight fewer people to deal with. More impacts outside. Duo pinging me to make sure I was alright. I sent him a signal that was rather meaningless, I guess, except to say that I was still alive and conscious. I couldn't spare the processing power for anything more.

They gathered for a final push at a point riddled with vulnerabilities. One last hurrah before the authorities came for them, one last chance to get something big done before they had to flee.

One last push from me. One last attempt to be everywhere at once. One last time spreading myself thin, depending on Zero's speed and insight to help me protect the people that needed protecting. Depending on Duo to take care of protecting me.

And then it was over. Done. Defeated. Overcome. Time to go home.

If only I could figure out where home was.

::Ninety-two percent.::

::Well, shit. Duo's going to kill me, isn't he?::

::Unlikely.::

Oh, well if Zero thought it was unlikely, then it had to be true, right?

Right?

*****

Déjà vu. Floating in a golden stew, inputs scrambled, thoughts flittering around restlessly like a hummingbird on drugs. Not so good, now that I didn't have much to focus on.

My body. Where was my body?

Zero soothed me back into a state of calm. ::It's still there.::

Ah. Company. Not alone in here. ::Still alive, am I?::

::Affirmative.::

::Time?::

::Unable to determine.::

Things must have been really fragged, then. ::Do you know where I am?::

::Negative::

Okay. I could deal with that. I remembered the last attack. It was a giant blur of frenzied defensive ploys and counters, but I remembered it had happened. Afterwards, I hadn't come back out again.

Shit. Duo. I'd told him we still had a lot of things to talk about. I'd told him I didn't have any plans to martyr myself. And I didn't. I really, really didn't. It'd just sort of become... unavoidable. Ol' man Murphy had it in for me, as Duo would say.

This really, really sucked. I hoped he would forgive me. He had to understand that I hadn't planned this. I hadn't lied to him. I hadn't abandoned him. I wanted to come back to him. I wore my jacket so he could know where I was, but what good was it when I was right here, but just... not quite?

::Cease your agitation.::

Easier said than done. ::Sync?::

::Ninety-one percent.::

Oh, so it'd gone down? Promising. Yes, promising. ::So, think I'll be able to get it down far enough to disconnect?::

::Eighty-three percent chance of success.::

That was pretty good. I just had to get under eighty or so, and then it'd be safe. ::About how long do you think that will take?::

::Unable to determine.::

::But you're working on it, right?::

::Affirmative.::

This sounded unpleasantly like what Zero had said when he'd been trying to install himself in me the first time. He'd thought he'd be able to find some way to download all of that data into me, no problem. It'd just take a little time for him to figure it out. But hey, that little episode had turned out okay in the end, right?

Zero was right. Duo wasn't going to kill me. Because I needed to be alive for him to punch me in the gut. Screaming at me about what an idiot I was would be pointless if I wasn't around to hear it.

Oh, no. Duo was going to be the one to find me, wasn't he? He probably already had. He'd probably tried to call me on the comm, and when I didn't answer, he would have gotten scared. He'd have flown back to that hangar as quickly as that Taurus could get him there, and then he'd have flung himself through the corridors of the comsat at a breakneck speed. The impatience would have eaten him alive while he stood in the airlock, waiting for the damn thing to cycle. He'd be able to see me through the small window. He'd pound the door a few times. I wouldn't be responsive. And then he'd jump in, and he'd find me... not quite there. Just like five years ago. And shit. He still had the occasional bad dream about that. This wasn't going to help things one bit.

::Cease your agitation. I cannot work on parts of your brain while you are using them.::

He had a point. I tried to calm down. Kind of hard to do when all I could do was take a metaphorical deep breath. I tried focusing on the procedures Zero was carrying out. Ninety-two percent was nothing to laugh at, considering eighty was the recommended max. I should be glad I was still coherent, even if it was just inside my own head. Human brains weren't meant to work so closely with a machine. How much of my mind had been reorganized to gain that level of efficiency?

Output had gone first. I remembered Duo calling me, and me being unable to answer back. Unable to find the words because they'd been relocated. That section of the brain had a good cache speed, so it had been put to better use. Input had also been displaced. Neither of these things were necessary in the digital realm.

But at least they hadn't been -misplaced-. Everything was still in there somewhere. Right?

::Some unnecessary data was dumped to accommodate the reorganization.::

Oh. Well, okay, but everything important was still in there. Somewhere. So now it was just a matter of finding it all and putting it back where it belonged. And then I could open my eyes and Duo could bitch at me, and I'd probably be lucky enough not to understand most of it at first, but at least he'd know I was alive and still here and still intending to have those long talks with him.

Provided no one gave up on me.

I'd told Duo that, once a person reached this level of synchrony, he was pretty much lost, hadn't I? If I was lucky, I was probably in an infirmary somewhere, in what probably looked like a persistent vegetative state at best, a rather brain-damaged coma at worst, with catheters, feeding tubes, and the rest of it.

Duo knew I would accept my death without complaints, that I would prefer it over using artificial means to support a frail existence.

Dammit. ::What can I do to help?::

*****

Eighty-eight percent.

My whole life centered around that number. I served as Zero's gopher, trying to help him find things, double-checking his work to make sure that nothing got lost in the shuffle. I was getting some sensory input back. I felt cold. Occasionally I'd catch sound going on around me, but I couldn't yet force meaning upon what I heard. At least there people around, though. That meant people were still interested in checking up on me.

I wanted to imagine that I could feel Duo's hand around mine. I didn't have any evidence to the contrary, right? He would be here, by my side, I told myself. Because he was going to be pissed as hell and wanted first dibs on shouting at me. He'd be here. And he held a grudge like nobody's business. He wouldn't give up on me that easily.

At eighty-six percent, I got a little something back. I heard snippets of conversations around me. They still lacked meaning, but something told me that one of those voices was Duo's, some deeply embedded recognition that was some place important enough that it hadn't been tampered with during my impromptu descent into the machine. There was volume behind that voice. Was he angry? Was he scared?

At eighty-five percent, Zero told me I was pushing myself too hard. I'd gone through a long period of nothing. Maybe it was night time. Maybe people were sleeping. Maybe Duo was sleeping on a cot right next to me. Yeah, that was possible, right?

At eighty-four percent, there was meaning. It bounced in and out, and got garbled once in a while, but I heard words. Eighty. How long. Duo. Shut up. Won't. Can't. Sleep.

At eighty-three, there was more. Duo's voice, soft, close by. Warmth from somewhere. "I swear to fucking god, Yuy, if you don't wake up soon, I'm going to... to... Oh god, Heero. Please. Just please. Dammit, Heero. You said you'd come back. You said you weren't going to do anything stupid. You said you'd give up your damn martyr fixation and come back to me. You said you didn't lie to me. I've got your fucking jacket right here, dammit, so where the hell are you?"

::Dammit, Zero, can't I do something?:: I reached out with all my might to twitch a finger, wrinkle my nose, something, anything to tell him that I was still here.

::That is not recommended at this time.::

But not impossible. Sure, I'd have to take some dirty shortcuts to hack access to things in an unhealthy way, but there wouldn't be any permanent damage.

::That is not recommended.::

::Come on! He's right here, and he's waiting for me!::

::Doing so would be a setback.::

::How much of a setback?::

::That is not recommended at this time.::

I listened to the quiet edge to Duo's voice. He'd moved on to cursing Zero, demanding that Zero give me back, with the occasional plea that Zero help me find my way home. He needed me. And I needed to be there. ::I'm doing it, Zero. Now, are you going to help me so I don't screw things up, or aren't you?::

Not much of a choice. We short-circuited a thing or two, wired a few things together temporarily, and then I poured all of my willpower into communicating to Duo somehow that I was here.

And then things went blank for a little while.

I was still at eighty-three the next time I recognized the voices around me. Loud, again. Duo? One of our friends. I couldn't figure out who. A stranger. I lost some of the meaning again. No change. How long. Imagination. Fuck off. Duo. No, you. It wasn't.

::I've been at eighty-three for a while now, haven't I?::

::Affirmative.::

::Sorry about that.::

::Your sync ratio obviously has no direct correlation to your irrationality when it comes to your mate.::

That made me feel better for some reason.

Eighty-two. So close. Please Duo, just a little while longer.

Eighty-one. Duo was pleading at my bedside again. Chastised and warned, I cautiously convinced one of my eyelids to crack open. I saw, but didn't recognize. A ceiling, maybe? That was far from informative.

"Heero? Oh my god, Heero?!" A hand on my cheek drew my head to one side, and there he was. How well could my muscles respond to my purely instinctive need to smile at him? "Heero? Are you awake? Heero?"

I was pretty sure I got my lips to move just a little, judging from the way his eyes seemed to be staring fixedly at my mouth, but I'm sure I wasn't forming any coherent syllables. Could it be enough for him to understand that I was responding to him?

"Heero?" A sense of urgency filled his tone. Both hands cupped my face now. My eyes lost focus as he consumed my field of vision, but a Duo-shaped blur was better than nothing. "Come on, baby, stay with me. Heero, you have to listen to me. Heero. Is it safe to unplug you yet? Heero? Come on, Heero. Your sync's down to eighty-one now. Can you tell me if it's safe to disconnect you yet?"

All of that made sense, and yet it didn't. I lost my connection to my body before I could piece it together.

The next time I gathered myself into a coherent thoughtmass, I queried Zero. ::He knew what my sync was. How did he know that?:: There weren't any diagnostic tools that I knew of that could figure it out. If there was one, I would have been the one to write it.

::Your sync ratio is being output to a terminal for display.::

::You failed to mention that.:: I had another one of those moments where I felt I could almost imagine how annoyed Duo got at me when I failed to mention this thing or another. So, there was a terminal, was there? Safe to disconnect? Unplug? Was I still in that damn comsat? What was one of those last thoughts I'd had? Wanting to talk to Duo. Wanting to leave him a message, maybe? The last time this had happened, I'd managed to squeeze out one last "I'm sorry" before I faded out. Maybe this time, I'd left a number for him to read?

As last messages went, "I'm sorry" was significantly more meaningful. But maybe the number had served its purpose. Did he remember the ranges I'd given him? Had I been left where I was, for fear that that terminal was the only link between me and the outside world? Had Duo been sitting here, staring at that number, just as I had been, willing it to go down? He'd gotten things a little confused about what was safe and what was not -- I could have been removed from the comsat at any time. The number was my sync with Zero, not the satellite's computer. But if it had kept him with me this entire time, then I wasn't going to complain.

I felt optimistic for the first time in a long time. ::Hey, next time for real, okay?::

::Affirmative.::

*****

At twenty-one hundred hours on a Friday night, I didn't have to worry about attracting any unwanted attention as I hobbled down the hall to my office. I walked a straight line in the company of others, but now that no one was watching, I tried to do it without having to concentrate so hard. My course wasn't exactly steady, but it was still an improvement over the previous week's effort.

I stared at my feet as I took the final step, deciding to align my toes with the line of the tile on the floor before proceeding. They came to rest confidently, right where I had directed them. This was good. With my last self-appointed trial overcome, I opened the door to Tech Support, and blinked blankly at a room gone suddenly quiet.

"Heero!" Trix squealed. She ran around a desk and skidded to a halt in front of me. "Long time no see! You come to party with us?"

I scanned the room, noting the faces of the other members of the TSRU coming toward me, calling out their own greetings. I recognized all but one of them. Was he new, or had he just fallen through my mental cracks? A glance at his badge reassured me that he had joined during my absence. "What... day is it?" I asked, turning back to Trix.

She barely blinked, so I assumed I successfully kept all signs of confusion out of my voice. "Everyone was busy first Friday, so we rescheduled this month's shindig for the second."

"Hey, Yuy!" My head turned to the right, needing to match a face to the voice. Frasier. "You still work here, man?"

Trix punched him in the arm. "Meanie."

I shook my head just slightly, not to answer 'no', but to tell him that the joke was understood to be well-intended. "No one's told me otherwise."

"Wicked cool cane, dude." Joel, I identified.

Two weeks spent just recouping enough physical and mental strength to interact constructively with others. Four amusing weeks of aphasia, during which Duo and I learned to communicate non-verbally while I painstakingly rebuilt my mental dictionary. Speaking in tongues had been fun while it lasted, though, even if I had creeped Duo out with how well he'd been able to understand my gibberish by the end. Four weeks of physical therapy as well, working to reconfirm my motor pathways. The cane was more of a back-up system than a crutch these days, and it was much better by far compared to the walker I'd been tottering along with two weeks ago. I was out of active rehab, but I still had a long way to go.

I hit the release on the head of the cane, twisted, and showed off five centimeters of blade hidden within.

Joel made an appropriately wide-eyed and awestruck sign. "No way. Sword canes? They actually make those?"

"Apparently." It had been a somewhat tongue-in-cheek gift from Quatre. By the time I was done needing the cane, I probably still wouldn't be able to wield the sword without skewering something unintentionally, but it was a nice touch. I slid the blade back into its sheath and relocked it.

"So what -are- you doing here, Heero?" Trix asked, bumping her elbow lightly against mine. I'd last seen her three weeks ago. She didn't know the details of my exploits, but she did know that I wasn't expected back at work any time soon.

It took me a moment to recall my purpose in coming here tonight. "Bamboo." I gestured at the others with my cane to clear my path to my desk. "Just remembered my bamboo tonight. I'm sure it's dead by now."

"Like I'd let that happen." She put a hand on my shoulder and swiveled me in the direction of her desk. "I bamboo-napped it. I think it likes it better on my desk."

Frasier laughed. "See what happens when you're gone so long, Yuy? We start scavenging your desk."

I turned back toward my cubicle with a feigned scowl. "You better not have taken my chair."

"Screw your chair," Joel put in jovially. "I was in there the other day, hoping you'd have some notes on where I could find the whatzit case. Hope you don't mind, but it's been driving me nuts."

Glad I didn't store anything personal in there. "The which case?"

"Do you remember? I think it had something to do with the Polaski scam ring. And, uh, can't for the life of me remember, but I think one of the suspects had a orchid tat on his... or her? shoulder. Got a new case, same tat. I think. But where the hell do I look it up? You remember?"

I felt the weight of his expectations heavily. I'd always been able to look up the facts of obscure cases in my mental filing cabinet quite quickly, but that information was slow in coming back. I didn't exactly use it every day. "An orchid tat, hm?" I repeated, stalling for time as I flipped through my files.

"Hey," Duo's voice piped up suddenly from behind the crowd surrounding me. It automatically adjusted itself to accommodate him. "What's going on here?"

I smiled at him. Only he would see the faintly rueful edge to it. "Monthly bonding activity."

"Ah." With an idle flick of his fingers, he asked if I was alright. I nodded fractionally. I would never have come out here if I'd known the office would be occupied, but I could handle it. "Well, I, uh, hate to rain on the parade here, but... we're done upstairs."

I caught the discreet wiggles of his fingers that told me he was providing me with cover. I asked him to buy me time, instead. It would be easy to flee in the face of a difficult question to answer, but I wanted to figure this out. "Let me check out my desk, first, since I'm here."

"No prob." He slipped casually through the group and put himself between them and me, giving me a little space.

"Not staying?" Trix asked.

"Sorry," he answered for me. "We kind of have plans for tonight. Maybe next time, yeah?"

The sniping edge had fallen out of their interactions with each other. This pleased me. They weren't exactly 'friends', but they'd advanced past only 'playing nice', so it was a good start.

Duo went on to call out the new guy and introduce himself, distracting them while I made my way to my desk, half concentrating on making my movements smooth and steady, and half concentrating on my look-up. The Polaski case from two years ago had involved a lot of people. I suspected Joel was referring to one of the fences. Because the scam had touched a lot of circles, much of the information had been cross-referenced to other files.

I continued to dwell on this after reaching my goal. I surveyed my old domain to make sure there wasn't anything else I'd forgotten about. The cleaning crew was keeping my desk dust-free. I still had my chair. There was an old get-well card from the crew. Other than that, there wasn't much else I could see that might have slipped my attention. I stood for a few seconds longer, connecting more dots in the complicated web that was the Polaski scam.

"Yuy!"

"Sir!" I called out automatically, reflex kicking in more quickly than my mind could work, naming my CO for me.

I was a little startled to see his head appear over my cubicle wall. We went to him, not the other way around. "A word with you?"

"Of course." I brushed a hand against Duo's arm as we passed by, letting him know things were alright. We settled into Schafer's office and closed the door behind us.

Schafer eyed me critically before starting. "You're still on medical leave."

I nodded.

"What can you tell me? When will you be back?"

My situation was a little open-ended. It wasn't as if we had anyone to compare my progress against. There were, in fact, plenty of people that believed that I would never make a full recovery. I disagreed strongly with that opinion. So did Duo. So did Zero, but he agreed that it would be wise to let everyone believe that he wouldn't be returning to full strength. Everyone except for Duo, of course, who was now kept fully in the loop on these matters. "If you need to make room in the office for someone else, you don't need to hold my desk for me." There were plenty of other positions in the organization that were available to me.

Schafer dismissed my concerns with an irritable wave of his hand. "The desk is yours, Yuy. You're a good man to have onboard. Unless there's somewhere else you'd rather be, of course."

I shook my head. "I appreciate that." Une and I had amiably agreed that we wouldn't discuss any more transfers for a while. "But it has been almost three months since I last worked in the department. I understand if you need to take on someone else in my place."

"When will you be back?" he repeated, blithely ignoring everything I'd just said.

Rule number one: I was a self-sacrificing son of a bitch. Now that I'd made the compulsory motions in that direction, I was free to be eager to get back to my job. Especially since I knew Duo was thinking about taking a short sabbatical from his job. He hadn't wanted to while I wasn't working. He seemed more at peace with himself now than he had been a few months ago, but it was time I got back on my feet and gave him a chance to take some time for himself and finish re-centering himself. "I should be cleared for light duty in a week or two."

"Anything I ought to know?"

"Nothing that isn't clear in the phrase 'light duty'." My stamina was still low, and my concentration was still spotty, but I hadn't developed any debilitating ailments that would necessitate a permanent change in my role in the department.

He snorted. "Good. Now get out of here."

"Yes, sir."

Duo was still chatting easily with the others when I emerged from the office. Our eyes met and I nodded slightly, telling him I was ready to leave. He finished what he was saying, then I broke in to let the others know we were done here. Before they could get very far in their protests, I let Joel know that he was looking for section three of the Palmerson file. I tried not to sound too proud of myself that I'd successfully found the information I'd been looking for. Joel pumped his fist in triumph a few times, then declared that he couldn't wait for me to get my butt back in my chair. I echoed the sentiment, and then we headed out.

Before the door closed entirely behind us, I heard the new guy, Agent Hill, comment to the others. "That's the great Agent Yuy? I thought he'd be, I dunno, geekier or something."

Duo snickered. "Man, only in Tech Support..."

Again, no underlying bitterness anymore. I pecked him on the cheek, then used his arm for support, even though I didn't need to.

OWARI

 

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