Title: Alternate Dualities
Author: WingNut
Archive: http://www.fanworkrecs.com
Disclaimers: I don't own the characters from Gundam Wing, I just play with them for non-profit fun until they run screaming back to their creators.
Warnings: AU - AAAAAAAAAAAU. Some yaoi, lemon, violence, language. You should be a legal adult to read this. Open-mindedness helps, too.
Pairings: all over the map; Duo-centric. yaoi and het.
Author's Notes: A huge helping of "suspension of disbelief" would be appropriate before you read this. I'm sure J or G could explain the science behind it, but they're kinda dead right now...
Part 6 ~ Mess (cont'd)
For a moment Wheat's eyes blazed with fury, and Duo wondered if his ploy would backfire. If Wheat thought he had been made to look foolish in front of his gang...
"Sir! We've tracked the thief to the garage!" came an excited voice over the comlink.
Duo couldn't help it - he laughed.
The reaction was instantaneous - every other person save Trowa and his keeper drew a weapon. The air nearly sang with tension.
"Hey," Duo said directly to Wheat, keeping an easygoing smile on his face, "you wanted a clever sneak thief. If I couldn't even get by your gang, I wouldn't be any good to you."
Wheat snorted slightly, but he reholstered his gun and jerked his head towards the pod. "Let's go," he ordered the others.
Duo was frisked, divested of Sticksy's gun and comlink, and pushed to the center of the middle seat, away from the windows. Trowa was thrown roughly on the floor in the back, his captor sitting on the rear seat and resting his feet on the Preventer's back.
Duo's mind raced as the pod started up the exit ramp. He would only have a few moments to signal the Preventers. It would not be easy from his position in the middle of the pod, especially if he didn't want to make his message obvious to the gang.
But Heero was out there, and he had worked with Heero so often...
He leaned back and yawned widely as the pod left the garage. He brought his hands up to the nape of his neck and pulled his braid out from behind his back as he stretched his arms up as far as he could. Still stretching, he split his hands apart and brought them down on either side to rest along the back of seat. The hand holding the tip of his braid relaxed beside the window, three fingers extended and the thumb pointing down.
Three is down.
C'mon Heero, be there, be watching! Recognize the braid. Get the message. Order a raid. Stop this damned pod.
But his urgent thoughts had no effect. There was no sudden assault. The pod glided quietly to a private embarkation pad in the launch bay. There were no witnesses to see the crew board the shuttle, dragging a groggy undercover Preventer to his eventual death.
The ship was a standard shuttle, with a set of seats for passengers, and an open area for cargo farther forward. Wheat had done some customizing - there were vidscreens and cushy seats, and even a small food prep area.
Trowa was pushed into the open area. One goon grabbed his wrist and brought up a manacle. Trowa, who had been dazed and docile, suddenly seemed to realize that this was his last chance at freedom. He twisted his arm, breaking the hold, and staggered for the still-open hatch.
Duo bit his lip and made a split-second decision. There was no way Trowa was going to escape, even with Duo's assistance. There were simply too many people, and they were both too shaky and slow.
Duo sat tight in his seat, sweating, praying he was making the right choice.
The guard brought the stunner up and delivered a jolt to Trowa's midsection as he stumbled past. The acrobat folded with a painful grunt, falling heavily to the carpeted floor. He lay still a moment, breath wheezing, before trying to drag himself feebly forward once more.
The stun baton came down again, driving into the back of Trowa's neck this time. He let out a shocked, involuntary cry and collapsed completely.
The gang members dragged him in front of the seats. His arms were manacled behind his back, the chain running through a cargo-restraining cleat in the floor. He lay silent and unmoving, his eyes still partially open.
Duo had the horrible feeling he was looking at a corpse. He shut his eyes. He should have helped. He should have grappled with one of the gang for a gun...
But despite his misgivings, he knew they would have had no chance. Even if he could have gotten his hands on a weapon, he was trembling too badly to shoot straight, and Trowa could barely walk. They would have been overpowered easily, and then they both would have been prisoners.
But it didn't make it any easier to look at Trowa's crumpled form.
Soon after takeoff, Wheat pointed at Duo, then at the seat across from himself. Duo obediently slid into the chair and waited.
"There's an abandoned lab you're going to break into for me," Wheat said flatly. "If you're successful, you'll be paid half a million credits for your work. The contents of the lab are mine."
Duo whistled. "For half a million, you could hire a team of experts."
Wheat glared at him. Duo grinned back. He'd been glared at by the best - Wheat didn't even come close to Heero.
"You're not stupid," Duo continued, "you must have thought of that already. So... either you've offered this deal to a team and been turned down, or you already hired a team, and they failed." He watched Wheat's expression change slightly as he spoke.
"Heh. They all died, huh? I don't suppose you have any notes on what they tried or how they failed. That sort of thing could really improve my own chances."
Wheat's glare turned into a stare of sour, grudging respect. He held out a data disk. "If you double-cross me in any way, I will kill you slowly. Count on that."
Duo took the disk and popped it into a vidscreen, revealing three log files. He pulled up the first one, brushing aside a faint sense of deja vu.
An asteroid floated in space, man-made constructs just visible within a crater on its surface. A hand waved on the screen, pointing at something, and voices babbled in the background.
Duo's eyes widened. He knew that asteroid, had crawled on its rocks, had cursed its cold, unforgiving landscape, had flown by it at breathtaking speeds.
It could not be G's lab - he had already led a team of Preventers through its booby-trapped halls. It couldn't be, but it was.
Duo felt dizzy and sick. What the hell was going on here?
Duo shifted in his seat. He had run through the logs, looking carefully for any discrepancies, but there was no doubt in his mind. Despite knowing that it was impossible, G's lab was back where it had been during the war, with all of its gadgets and security apparently intact.
Duo spent about ten queasy minutes trying to think of an explanation that didn't involve his memory being totally screwed up by drugs. The only thing he could come up with was if he were remembering something from an alternate timeline - which was just plain nuts.
Finally, he put the problem out of his head. Whether he were screwed by drugs or crazy, the fact was that he would soon be facing G's security system. He'd better prepare.
Wheat had lost three teams to the deadly defences protecting the asteroid and its contents, but he was slowly chipping through the levels. Each team got a little further than the previous one, before getting blown up, poisoned, vaporized, explosively decompressed, etc.
The defence net was exactly as Duo remembered it - but it was the way he remembered it as he had gone through it with the Preventer team. How could that be? If his memory was accurate enough to get the randomly set codes correct, then why was the Preventer part of it wrong?
No - don't think about it! Concentrate!
OK - the defence net. He didn't think he would have any trouble getting through the last two or three traps, but he'd be damned before he would turn over G's weapons and technology to Wheat.
Oh wait, he was already damned.
Well, he still wasn't going to give anything to Wheat.
Wheat.
That thought brought him right up against the other reason he was finding it difficult to concentrate. His new boss was questioning Twister.
Duo swallowed carefully, eyeing the action going on behind him via the reflection in his vidscreen. He had been right about Wheat not wanting to spill Trowa's blood, especially inside his private shuttle. Once the Preventers realized their agent was missing, they would search the obvious places with a fine-toothed comb. The smallest spot of DNA-laden blood might be enough for an arrest, so Wheat was being very careful not to break his prisoner's skin.
But he was frighteningly inventive with the stun baton.
The Preventers used stunners that could knock a large man flat, or create a mildly painful shock. This one was definitely not a Preventer-issue stunner. With the dials adjusted just so, it was producing powerful jolts of muscle-clenching agony.
Duo swallowed again, noticing some of the crew looking a little green as well. Quiet, restrained Trowa was screaming.
Duo remembered talking to Trowa once about the mindset needed to infiltrate an enemy base. 'You have to be prepared for when you get caught,' the ex-mercenary had said matter-of-factly. 'Everyone has a breaking point, so you have to figure you're going to say something when you are tortured. The point is to have exactly what you're willing to give away firmly set in your mind, so that you can maintain that story and go no further. And of course you need to spin it out as long as you can, to give yourself more time to escape.'
So far, Trowa hadn't said much of anything. Wheat wasn't giving him much time to answer each question, and what he did manage to say was slurred and almost incomprehensible.
Duo was horribly aware that Wheat could very easily kill his prisoner without meaning to. Or he could decide that he wouldn't get any useful information, and shove him out the nearest airlock without a spacesuit. No muss, no fuss, no inconvenient bloodstains.
Why the hell wasn't Trowa cooperating more? Was he trying to hold out, to prolong his life so that the Preventers could find them? Was he too dazed to remember what he needed to say? Or worst of all, was he waiting for Duo to rescue him?
Duo's stomach was in knots. He felt he should be able to do something, but he couldn't think of what. He had no reason to beg for Twister's life - the only good Preventer was a dead Preventer, from their viewpoint. He had no tools, no gear, no...
No gear... and a good Preventer...
"Hey boss!" he called, before the little whiff of inspiration he'd just had could get away. "Did those other teams leave any gear behind? I'm gonna need a few tools if I'm gonna get into that lab."
Wheat looked up from his victim and caught the gaze of one of his underlings - Spider, Duo thought his name was - and jerked his head aft. Then he turned back to his gasping captive.
Trowa screamed again, hoarsely, as Duo followed Spider back to where the duffels had been stowed in compartments.
There were two bags with various pieces of equipment, some of it slightly melted or battered, some pristine. Duo sorted through them quickly. He found the field scanner he was looking for, but it wasn't good enough for the job.
He could have danced for joy.
He snorted with disgust instead, for Spider's benefit. "Well, this won't work." He grabbed the gear bags and pulled himself forward again.
Trowa was in bad shape. He was gasping shallowly, his eyes glazed. He was also shaking uncontrollably, muscles spasming in the aftermath of too many shocks. It wouldn't take much more to trigger a fatal heart seizure, Duo figured.
"Hey, boss," Duo called. "I've got a problem I need your help with."
End Page 20
(:./wingnut/alter20)
