Kracken
Disclaimer: I don't own them and I don't make any money off of this.
Warning: male/male sex, graphic, language, violence, abuse, torture, attempted
NCS
Burning Candles
Reboot
Heero spent all night tracking the email and came up empty handed. He was stopped by the need for a password, but, after hacking through that level of security, he found only a deleted account and no trail. Obviously there had been a time limit that had passed for communication.
Frustrated, Heero picked up the photos again. He tried to be dispassionate, tried to block off the emotions caused by seeing Duo abused in such a way. It was hard to be the soldier, hard to make himself look for clues that would confirm the words of a man who had talked under duress.
It was a hanger, Heero surmised, with rusted metal and old style riveting. That supported the man's claim that they were using an abandoned air field. What gave Heero pause though, was the fact that the men were wearing thermal overalls and coats. They looked cold. Also, the use of stainless steel, bracing along the walls, and seals around a doorway gave Heero the impression that this was a place on or near salt water. Not the arid West then.
Heero scanned the photos into his laptop and enhanced them. He shivered at seeing Duo's shock burns magnified, but he was forced to travel up that body to the chains holding him off the floor. He found the clamps halfway up. He was right to assume that the chains had been borrowed from machinery. Those clamps were the same used for mobile dolls and small remote units.
Next, Heero scanned the people standing around Duo. He moved over them minutely. He found himself memorizing the face of the man putting his hand on Duo. He tried to clamp down on his intense anger, the need to punish that man in the harshest manner, but he couldn't. It seethed through him. I will make you pay, he thought, even as he checked the man's clothes for any clue as to who he was.
There. A folded up piece of paper was sticking out of the man's coat pocket. Heero zoomed, enhanced, and ran it through the computer pixel by pixel until he was able to pull the lettering into focus. Harold Chamberman: Duty roster three; level c; hanger. The man's duty sheet.
Looking over the rest of the men didn't give him any other clues until he noticed writing on a paper sitting on a console. It was almost out of shot, just a sliver, a few characters, nothing more. Heero took an hour bringing that small piece into focus. Nort-
Revenant Madagar, Harold Chamberman, Nort. Clues to follow. Heero closed the
photos, composed himself, and pushed all thoughts of revenge and saving Duo
aside, as he began trying to hack
into Une's Preventer database.
______________________________________________
"Guess that set you back a bit," Duo sneered and was fully prepared when a booted foot kicked him in the jaw. He saw red and his mouth filled with blood as his face exploded in pain. He bowed over and gasped, half sprawled in chains in his cell.
"You destroyed the engines of every one of my machines," Revenant informed him, murder in his eyes. "Sugar..." He paced. "Sugar in the fuel hoses! A child's trick and my guard fell for it!"
"You did too, don't forget," Duo snickered. He tucked up tight but the toe of Revenant's boot still caught him hard in the ribs.
Revenant grabbed Duo by the braid and brought his face up close to his. He pulled something out of his pocket and dangled it in front of Duo's face. It was a photo of a very young girl grinning wickedly for the camera. Revenant crushed the photo in his hand and dropped it in front of Duo.
"You have signed her death warrant," Revenant told Duo coldly. He took out five more photos of children of varying ages. He crumpled them, one by one, and then let then drop as well. "And these as well. They are dead, Maxwell. Was the price of your little rebellion worth that?"
Duo turned his face away, jaw working.
"My machines will be fixed," Revenant promised. "You will learn to operate them and you will train my men to operate them.
"Liar," Duo sneered and turned his head to glare at Revenant. "I'll bet you my last credit that my little demons took your man out, not the other way around.
A muscle twitched in Revenant's face. "Are you so sure?" he demanded.
Duo didn't reply.
"If you are, then let it comfort you while my men show you what happens to men who stand in my way." Revenant told him and motioned to three men standing at the door. "If dead children don't move you, and being shocked doesn't curb your rebellion, then perhaps I haven't gone far enough. Let's find out just how little of you is needed to pilot, Agent Maxwell."
One of the men pulled out a large clever, grinning, and the other two grabbed Duo's foot. Chained down, Duo could barely move. He shuddered as he watched the blade rise over his ankle.
"Shit!!!" Duo wailed, "Stop! Stop! Okay! Okay! Don't... Don't do that. I..."
Revenant smiled. "I'm listening, Maxwell."
Duo squirmed in his chains, panting, eyes sick and wide. "I... I don't want... I can't live like that."
Revenant smirked. "Ah, now we find out your true weakness; not caring
for others, not loss of your pride and honor, and not losing your life. You
fear living a cripple the most. " He laughed. "How pathetic!"
He nodded to the man with the clever. "Still, I think you need a taste
of just how serious a threat this is. James? If you please..."
_____________________________________________________
She knew.
Heero sat back in his chair and stared at the satellite photo of a supposedly derelict research platform. It had a hanger for supply ships and research craft and it had lower levels sealed against the sea. It looked deserted. Bird nests were everywhere, seaweed and barnacles covered the lower supports, and weather damage had taken out communication towers and roof panels. A fuel slick was making a greasy track away from it, though, and there were no records showing that any such fuel, or machines using it, had been left behind when the platform had been deserted.
Any agent worth his pay check would have realized that a fuel slick meant activity. Une wasn't stupid. The photo had been in her records along with reports from various agents, reports that were meaningless unless an agent was aware of the platform. There was also a sub file on Duo Maxwell and his extensive capabilities as an agent. Was Une hoping that Duo could manage his own escape? Was she waiting for some sign of that, keeping watch by the satellite network? It didn't make sense. If illegal activity was going on, she should have been moving in at once with troops.
Heero had already hacked into her personal email and found nothing. He was sure she wouldn't risk something that open if she were running a covert action. He had mainly hacked into it to get a feel for her personality, for words she might use as passwords into deeper files. She was canny, though, or Duo, who had set up the system, was. There were trip alarms and false data in every layer. Security like that, for any operation, was unusual. Une didn't want anyone knowing about the platform, Madagar, or Duo's whereabouts. That made Heero think of blackmail or the possibility that Une had her own agenda. The thought of the head of the Preventers, working against Peace, chilled him to the bone.
Heero packed his laptop and gathered a duffle of clothing and weapons. He needed to recon the platform. He could continue to hack into Une's system on the way. Opening his front door, he came face to face with Jake. Startled, Heero almost drew his gun, knowing just how dangerous the boy could be.
"Two of my boys are in the hospital," Jake said, his eyes shadowed under his head band. "I left the rest with the goody goodies at the kid's home. They'll be fine. They'll cheat those morons out of their money, steal what they can, eat all their food, and be alive when I get back."
Heero looked the boy up and down. Jake had changed into plain jeans, a black leather coat, and he had pulled his unruly hair back into a pony tail. The way he stood and the set of his jaw, reminded Heero sharply of Duo. "That's your own business," Heero told him as he moved past into the hallway.
Jake was smart enough not to grab onto Heero, but he did follow. "I've had two years training with Mr. M."
Heero stopped and looked at the boy sharply. "Training?"
Jake jammed his hands into his pockets and glared. "I want to be a Preventer, okay?"
"What sort of training?" Heero asked. If Duo had taught this boy his Gundam Pilot training... Heero's trigger finger itched at the prospect. Training like that didn't have a place in their world any longer. Super men who helped keep the peace was one thing, a super man taking advantage of that training on the streets was another.
"Preventer basics all the way to third level," Jake told him with some pride. "Mr. M told me I'm a hot shot son of a bitch, but I have talent."
"Third level?" Heero was impressed. Some five year veterans never made it to third level. The boy did have talent.
Heero made a sudden move, whipping out his heavy bladed knife and stabbing towards Jake's gut. Jake blocked, twisted, and brought his own knife towards Heero's throat with a snarl of fury. Heero blocked it, grabbed Jake's arm, and bent it. The boy groaned, but his nerveless fingers dropped his knife. He wasn't out, yet, though. He let his weight drop like a stone, pulling Heero down with him. His back hit the floor, he rolled his body up, and then kicked out into Heero's gut. Heero's momentum brought him into the kick full force. He had tensed his abdomen to take it, though, and he only grunted as he pulled away and glared at Jake.
"Duo was right," Heero said as he rubbed at his bruised gut. "You do have talent."
Heero turned, retrieved his dropped luggage, and began walking again.
"Hey!" Jake shouted and caught up with him. "I proved I can handle myself! I'm going where you're going."
Heero gave him an intense, sideways glare. "I could have killed you eleven times during our fight. Stay home, protect your gang, Jake. That's what Maxwell would want."
Jake didn't follow him, but a string of profanities did.
______________________________________________________
Give them something, Duo thought, but not too much. Duo let the tears run down his face and he shuddered and whimpered as he kept touching his mangled foot. "You bastards! Bastards! I'll kill you for this! God, how could you?! Shit! It hurts! I'm a freakin' cripple! Fuck you! Fuck everyone of you bastards!"
Revenant wasn't looking. Standing in a splatter of Duo's blood, he said in a voice that was slightly unsteady, "Now do you see how serious I am, Maxwell? I've killed your children, I've taken away your dignity, and now I've taken away a piece of you. It can get worse, Maxwell. What else can't you bear? I can find out all too easily."
"I..." Duo sobbed and then bit down on his hand to stop himself. On his back, panting, staring in a red haze of pain at the ceiling, he counted to ten and then said in anguish, "All right! No more fucking tricks! No more! I... I'll do what you say. I... can you put them back on, please? Please?"
Revenant narrowed eyes in disgust. He nodded to a doctor standing by. "Micro sew his toes back on... this time. When you're done, pump him full of a local anesthetic and put him back to work."
"Anesthetic, before or after I sew them back on?" the doctor asked without expression.
Revenant thought for a moment and then replied, "After. Let him feel it for a time."
Duo braced himself as the doctor knelt and opened up a case of instruments. The pain was searing, incredible. It almost took him under with every one of his heartbeats, but he held on, turned his head to try and watch Revenant leave.
The strange man was there again, waiting for his report. Half hidden by the door, Duo saw the barest impression of a face. He strained to listen.
"He's afraid of losing body parts, it seems," Revenant told the man.
"You are a fool," the man growled and Duo tried to memorize his voice. "This is another game of his. Gundam Pilots don't surrender. Put him on the console. Put a gun to his head. If he makes one move away from his work station, paint the walls with his brains. If I have to use Mobile Doll intelligence chips, I will. Time is running out."
"They can't operate the systems properly," Revenant warned. "In all of our tests, they failed independent, battle field, problem solving. They can only operate from downloaded battle tactics."
"Trieze conquered Earth and space once, we can do it again with his machines, if we have to," The voice retorted.
But they weren't Trieze's, Duo thought. The man hated Mobile Doll intelligence chips.
The man left and Revenant didn't return. Revenant was squeamish, Duo thought, something else to file away in memory. When a needle sank into his damaged foot, he looked down his body, startled, at the doctor kneeled there in his blood. The man was blocking the sight of the needle from the guards with his body. His eyes narrowed sharply and Duo understood. Grateful for some compassion from his enemy, he let out an impressive scream as the doctor began to sew the toes back onto his numbed left foot.
It wasn't the first time that Duo had gone through micro surgery, or the first time that he had sat through, awake, having a part of himself reattached. You didn't go through a war without wounds. Still, five toes, however small, were attached to bones and joints. The doctor had to repair it all, a phenomenal knitting job with a laser for a needle and bio fibers for thread..They wouldn't be as good as new, but they would be on the end of his foot again. It was all for the cause though and Duo knew, as he allowed himself to go unconscious, that he would very likely get his revenge on them in the end... well, except for the doctor. He would try to make sure he, at least, lived through what was coming.
_______________________________
"Secure line?" Heero asked.
"Of course," Quatre replied, his image on Heero's laptop eating a fig as he leaned back and looked at something to one side of him. "Your jet is still doing fine. Radar hasn't picked you up at any point and I haven't heard any chatter wondering who your are."
"No communications to Une's office," Heero told him."I informed Headquarters that Duo's death was affecting me adversely and that I needed several days off to come to terms with it. When they call my apartment, they will get a message stating that I have taken a trip to South America to visit Trowa Barton. I made a reservation at the airport and at a local hotel in Argentina."
"Trowa is almost at the sight," Quatre informed him, eating another date, taking a sip of chilled juice, and leaning forward to punch up something on his computer. "He's going by Mateo Escavera. He will meet you at the reserved terminal and the rest is up to you two." He leaned in close to the vid screen. "You will make sure my lover comes back alive, Yuy."
"Roger that," Heero grunted and cut the connection. He leaned back into his leather seat and looked out the window at the blue sky and clouds all around Quatre's personal jet. Three hours in the air. Three hours to get as much information as possible, and to plan an assault on a platform, in a sea, with a view from every angle. Recon, he amended, not assault. He wouldn't go in until he was sure what he was dealing with and who was one which side of the conflict.
______________________________
Pictures of children were pasted to his console with bull's eyes drawn on them in red. Duo frowned. Why was Revenant trying that again? Maybe he was trying to pinpoint Duo's favorite, trying to find the one Duo cared about the most?. The problem was, he cared about all of them, deeply. His heart was a lump of ache and frantic worry. He knew his kids. Some of them had come through the tail end of the war; orphans, street mean, used to people trying to kill them from every point imaginable. If the war had still been going on, he could imagine them hiring themselves out as scouts, mercenaries, snipers, and spies. He had been working on taming them, bringing them into society, teaching them that there were better things to be than street trash. His successes had been many. Jake... he thought fondly of the eldest of his kids. That boy would make a fine Preventer. He had taken the longest to convince, the longest to trust. Jake would be keeping the others safe, Duo knew, and he was almost certain that the idiots Revenant had as soldiers of his new government were no match for a child that had grown up on broken glass and switchblades.
Duo wiped sweat from his forehead. The anesthetic was working on his foot, but he couldn't convince his body that it hadn't just experienced a traumatic shock only hours before. He couldn't let it make him weak though. He had to stay in control. He had to keep leading Revenant down the path of his choosing despite what the man ended up doing to him.
"Go ahead," a guard sneered, scratching Duo's temple with the barrel of his gun. "Go on and take a walk, try to mess up more fuel lines, try to get away, try to go take a pee even. I think red would look pretty good on these walls."
"Watching me has gotta be better than bending over a barrel for your 'comrades'," Duo replied, "Or do you want me dead 'cuz you miss it?"
The man nudged at Duo's head hard. "Keep it up, pretty boy. Maybe that'll be Madagar's next punishment when you screw up; us screwing you?"
"I can tell you're eager for that," Duo sneered. "You been eyeballing my pretty ass?"
The man leaned close to Duo and whispered in his ear, "It's all the same when you're giving it to a pretty ass."
Duo looked sideways at him, frowned, and then ran his fingers over a side console. "Did you realize this has a recorder in it? Seems Revenant wants a periodic update of my progress. Guess we'll see what he thinks about your 'party' ideas."
The man straightened sharply, went pale, and swallowed hard, just as two more guards came up on either side of him.
"Revenant wants to see you, Sanders," One of them men announced in a cold voice.
Sanders glared at Duo. "He's going to kill you in the end, piece of shit! I hope he cuts you up into little bits, slowly, and makes you watch while the bits are fed to the birds!"
"Nice," Duo replied with a feral grin, "Maybe you should try out for Revenant's executioner? Oh, wait, I'm sorry, you'll be dead, won't you?"
The man was taken away struggling. Duo wiped a hand over his sweating face,
glared at the machine in front of him, and mumbled, "Now that distractions
are freakin' over with. Let's get busy, you piece of crap."