Scene VIII: What Happens When the Lights Go Out
" When the walls around you won't stop laughing,
Where do you go?"
--Life of Agony, Ugly
Li had wanted to see the look on Quatre Raberba Winner's face when he found out that the man his sister had been sleeping with was none other than Heero Yuy. But the room where they'd taken Atsuki's body was private, and she didn't think the dark-skinned boy who was keeping watch over her would appreciate a third party. So she left Quatre there at the front doors of the hospital, making him promise to call her if anything came up. She knew he wouldn't. He looked fragile and innocent, but he was as tough as nails, as cunning as they came.
That was, after all, why he had been a Gundam pilot.
It was fully dark by the time she returned to the main part of the base, to a headquarters full of chaos. The main building, she was told as she pulled into the area, was locked down until a sweep could be conducted, and General Une was away to Bern. She was directed to the temporary main control center which was a mess of flustered guards trying to direct lost civilians, babies crying, people demanding to know when and how everything would be fixed again. Li paid them no heed, and the few who began questioning her backed off when they saw her major's ranks, the hard set of her face, and the death glare she fixed on them.
She had grabbed the nearest available Preventer officer, a young captain who was calmly giving directions and looked like he had a brain in his skull. "Where's General Po?" she demanded.
"Next building over, ma'am," he said, then recognition dawned in his eyes. "Major Li! General Po was asking you to report to her. Should I radio her that you're coming?"
Li opened her mouth to say no, then reconsidered. "Yes. Please tell her I'm on my way."
It would be wise to make everything look normal. For now. Until the computers were repaired.
That was her worst fear, her every nightmare come true. It wasn't the base that concerned her, but the computer system. The terrorists had violated her personal territory when they'd slipped that virus into the systems, and they would pay, if it took her a million years to track them down. Those in their right mind did not anger Aidoru.
She fought down the overpowering wave of fury and despair at the temporary loss of her domain and ducked into the next building, searching for Sally's office. It didn't take her long to locate it. The door was open and she could hear the muted clicking of keys from within. She knocked lightly.
"There you are."
She took those words as a signal that she could enter, walked in to find the general seated at the end of a long conference table in front of a laptop computer. They'd set up some temporary servers in the office - nowhere near the power of the central base system, but adequate.
There was a staff sergeant standing there by Sally's chair, taking notes. Li ignored him, turning her attention back to the honey-haired woman who was gazing at her with a weary expression. "General, the computer systems are completely down. The base is a sitting duck."
"I'm well aware of that fact," the general had snapped back, her voice raspy and tired. "Major, I'm glad to see you're safe. I asked you to come see me precisely because of this issue. I'm putting you in charge of getting those systems back online as soon as possible."
"It could take weeks," she said. "Ma'am." Looking Sally in the eye. Sally knew how important those computers were to her, but there were some things that even the Preventers' second-in-command couldn't fix.
"One week, Li," Sally said, not looking. "If not less. You're good, Li...that's what I told Une. Now I want to see how good."
Li saluted, feeling the tension in her muscles as she did so. "Yes, ma'am."
Sally hadn't wanted to admit in front of the sergeant how central the computer systems were to base operations, but Li knew. Sally's tired posture had told her that much, but there had also been something else there, something that worried her. Something that said, we're running out of time.
Li didn't want to believe that. There had to be more time...for her, at least, to do what she wanted done. This Preventers Headquarters would not go down without a fight, and when she had won this battle, she would go after the bastards who had dared to venture into her territory. It was personal now.
It took less than four days to fix the system, after Li had personally gone down and set up camp in the information headquarters. Her first act after seeing Sally was to march down to see the system chief, a lieutenant colonel that had sneered at her when she'd walked in and had been almost reduced to tears as she walked back out. It was nice knowing that she had the power to do that.
On the network, she had the power to do even more than that. More than the power to cause fear, even more than the power to kill. Once she set her mind to it, she could destroy a life. Erase someone as if they had never existed.
On the fifth day after the attack, she went to see Sally again, to inform her that the computer systems were online. Not fully complete, but online and fully secure. To her relief, the security walls had held even through the electric and network blackout and none of the classified information had been hacked into. Perhaps the lieutenant colonel was more competent than she'd given him credit for. She'd gone to see him again after reporting to Sally with a cautious congratulations and a promise of promotion if he could get the system fully up and running, even more smoothly than before, in the next two days.
He exceeded her expectations. He did it in one. Even she was impressed.
She'd have given him a promotion herself if she had had the time, but there were more pressing matters to take care of. The main building was still off-limits, so she'd had to settle for the rigged-together system in her makeshift office in the temporary building, but it was enough. She'd remembered to take her VR goggles with her out of the building, though everything else, including all the correspondence locked in that drawer of her desk, was still inside. No one should be able to get into those files, but then again, Une's Gundam pilot files were supposed to have been confidential as well.
As soon as she moved back into the main building, she would have to destroy any evidence that those files in the drawer existed.
Six days after the attack, she'd tested the system to find it sufficiently ready for what she had been planning to do a week before. The delay did have an advantage...Masamune would have had more time to find good assassins for her. His reputation was good...she was about to find out how good.
The rest of the base was still asleep at 0400 hours, and she kept the lights out in her office as she slipped inside, closing and double-bolting the door. There were no security cams in this room, which was one less thing she had to worry about. Her computer was on standby and as she sat down, the motion sensors detected movement and the CPU hummed to life. She plugged in the goggles carefully, adjusting the brightness on the screen so that it wouldn't be seen from under the door.
"Activate," she said quietly.
The screen flickered and the lines of familiar code began scrolling down. So far so good. She took the long way, just in case she was detected by the security 'bots that she'd personally ordered the lieutenant colonel to place on the system. Nothing like a show of bravado after the storm to keep people on their toes, and she was pretty sure that if she'd continued working on that system, she'd have the lieutenant colonel eating out of her hand before long. If he wasn't already.
She slipped on the goggles, and the lines of code abruptly became a long corridor of red sandstone with an iron door at the far end. She hurried down the corridor, hearing her footsteps clicking on the stone floor, not concerned with her appearance. She'd adjust that later. Her fingers flew on the keyboard and through the goggles, she saw her virtual fingers move, producing a key, unlocking the heavy metal padlock, throwing open the door. Heard it slam behind her as she stepped through into black nothing.
She was in.
Drawing a deep breath, she swallowed. The network looked the same as it had a week ago, the liquid mercury shimmering as waves of light passed through its murky, transparent depths, but it was nearly deserted. Instead of the familiar patterns of Holes, Bugs, and tracers, there were mostly "shadows," faint traces of Holes that had once been there and had been closed up. Plunging into the eerie quiet, she kept alert for any foreign presence that would explain the sudden disappearance of most of the network's population, but except for the lapping of the mercury ocean, there was nothing.
Li would gladly have lingered in the shallower parts to do some readings and tweak some code tracings, but she had no time for that today. Plunging directly into the data sea, she was prepared this time as the sensation of Pulling overtook her, watched as the blackness of the Dungeons dissolved into...a tropical rainforest.
Disoriented, she blinked and glanced around her, turning in a slow circle to take in the landscape. She was standing in a small clearing surrounded by towering trees wrapped in thick, heavy vines, tropical flowers bursting with raucous color. Somewhere overhead, a bird cawed.
Her present garb was beginning to make her feel hot and uncomfortable, so she discarded it, pulling up the android visualization, giving herself a darker metallic skin than the bright silver she usually preferred. Taking a step forward through the thick, muggy air, she found the ground under her foot was spongy, squelching slightly at the pressure. She made a face.
"You don't seem to like our current landscaping."
Li jumped before she could help herself, then swung her head around to glare at the man emerging from the curtain of vines that swung at one edge of the clearing, a man who could only be Masamune. He was dressed in the same Japanese shogun costume, but instead of looking incongruous, a man out of place, he blended right into the colorful swirl of vegetation that now seemed to her more than anything like a backdrop, a scenery set, a curtain for a stage on which he was the central player and she the helpless audience.
She didn't like that feeling.
"Whatever you deem suitable," she said coldly, reminding him that she was the one in charge, the one with more power. Or at least, she tried. She saw the look of amusement in his eyes as she did so, knew with annoyance that no matter how powerful the name Aidoru was, the Dungeons were Masamune's domain.
"I've found your assassins," he said, not bothering with the niceties of a formal greeting. He knew what she was here for. "I was wondering when you would come back to claim them."
"I was...delayed."
He raised an eyebrow. "Actually, you couldn't have come back at a more opportune time, Aidoru. They're just about to make their move."
She narrowed her eyes. "What do you mean?"
He smiled, that thin, watchful smile that would have made her skin crawl, if androids had skin. "This particular group was...a bit anxious to get the job over with, especially with the amount that I offered. They also seemed to have personal reasons to take the deal. Whatever the case, they're already on mission."
"What?!"
He gazed mildly at her. "Should I have waited?"
Li stared at him, fuming. It wasn't the issue that he had somehow found out the information of who she was trying to kill before she had had the chance to tell him. It was the Breaks, after all, and someone would have found it sooner or later. She'd dropped hints around the place while looking for assassins on her own. But the fact that he had let the assassins go after the target before she had the chance to speak with them...
"I sense you're angry with me," Masamune said abruptly. "I thought you would be."
"You bet I'm damn well angry with you!" Li snapped. "I haven't even personally talked to these assassins of yours yet! How do I know they're reliable?"
"They are reliable," Masamune said coldly. "Trust me."
"I don't even know you," she countered, just as coldly. "Trust is something that one builds up over time. I don't believe we've had that time yet."
"What if I told you," he countered, "that these two assassins were relatives of Seki Hikaru?"
For the umpteenth time that day, she did a double take. "They're what?"
"Relatives," he said. "A great-nephew and a grandson." He smiled again, showing his teeth. "Rivalry is strong in the Breaks. What better way than to pit snake against snake?"
"You're a bastard," she said, but she knew he could sense her grudging admiration, and didn't bother to hide it. "So where are they now? Are you monitoring them?"
He gave a curt nod. "If you'd like, you'll be able to witness the final kill."
"If it's not an inconvenience," she maintained, putting emphasis on the last word. He was still smiling.
"Not at all. You've paid me well, and I told you that you could trust me. This way."
He led the way along a trampled footpath of jungle foliage, through a jumble of exotic plants thriving in the ever-humid air that condensed on her metal android body, rolling in large dewdrops down her arms and legs and torso and becoming uncomfortably ticklish on her face. She ignored the sensations, focusing on the mission, on getting there, making sure the job was completed, and getting out. She'd argued against this being done at all - in fact, she'd argued against using the Breaks and the Black Diamond Cartel as a resource in the first place - but now that it was in the works, she was damned if she would let it fail now.
We can't let someone like him run loose on us anymore. I was taking a big gamble with him, and it's worked out so far, but I don't know how far he'll test his leash. I don't want to find out.
Seki Hikaru was a big fish, but in the end, he was only a fish. She had to admire the ruthlessness and the unwavering mindset of her employer. She herself would have let Seki alone, but she could see now that he was too dangerous, that he knew too much, and that knowledge could destroy them, should he ever try to use it against them.
And that was why he had to die.
"Here," Masamune announced, as they stepped into a second, smaller clearing. There was a blinking vidscreen on a pedestal of some kind, and both of them seemed to be made up of the same shifting, glowing mercury of the network ocean. He didn't seem to notice her surprise as he motioned her towards it and adjusted the display. "We shall be able to watch their progress here."
"I'd prefer to watch alone, thank you," she said harshly. "Leave."
She expected him to argue, but instead he simply bowed in the traditional Japanese manner. "As you wish." She stared after him as he departed the clearing, but he didn't look back, and sighing, she turned her attention to the vidscreen.
At first it didn't show much - a bunch of squiggly lines that spoke of a broken connection, and she was about to stalk into the forest after Masamune and tell him that she was deducting half his pay - but as she watched, the lines resolved themselves into shadowy forms, forms that cleared and lightened into human bodies.
The first was clearly still a boy in his teens, no more than sixteen or seventeen, she guessed, but she wasn't surprised that he was one of the assassins on this mission. Children grew up quickly in the Breaks, she'd heard, or they didn't grow up at all. The second was a little taller, broader in the shoulders, with the ease of motion of an adult male. His facial features looked very familiar and she struggled to place him for a moment before she realized where she'd seen him before.
He looked like Shinobu.
Before she could begin to digest the significance of that, the figures were already moving, almost too quickly for the virtual camera to keep up. She squinted her eyes to keep track of them for a moment, then noticed the blinking buttons on the side of the camera pedestal, fiddled with them for a moment. The top one apparently allowed the camera to connect directly with the VR goggles, and she adjusted the settings and switched it on. There was a moment of disorientation as the network maneuvered around the Preventers' system security walls, and then she was connected.
It was an odd feeling. She had now essentially become a tiny, invisible, floating camera in the Breaks itself. She'd heard of such technology before, and knew more or less the specifics of how to make something like this work, but she'd never actually been inside it. It was only the very experienced and the very brave who would ever try something like this, and in a place like the Breaks, if someone was caught manipulating data flow like this by the cartels, it would mean instant death.
Her respect for Masamune went up a tiny notch.
The boys (yes, they might be old enough to be adults in the Breaks, but they were still boys to her) were making their through a hallway inside some building, which she assumed was the Black Diamond's headquarters building, with the bare gray functionality of the walls and the sparse décor. She'd heard that Seki was quite a cultured man, but there was nothing here that indicated culture, only monochrome color and greenish fluorescent lights guiding their way. The boys traveled smoothly, lightly, as if they were on a walk around the park instead of a journey to assassinate the most powerful man in the Breaks.
It would be interesting to see what happened after Seki died. Would there be a power play, as with the Shionji cartel? Would the Black Diamond Cartel fall as well? Criminals pitted against criminals would make an interesting spectacle.
Li smiled tightly to herself. She shouldn't be talking...if she were caught here doing this, she would be considered a criminal as well. She thought of the files still locked in her desk drawer in the main building and wondered how many of those would be enough to earn her a court martial. Ten? Two? One?
The boys stopped in front of a low, narrow metal door, and she watched as two men slipped out of the shadows and conferred with them for a few seconds. Bodyguards? Whatever the case, the boys must have been deemed trustworthy because the bodyguards slipped back into the shadows and the older boy produced a key from his pocket and inserted it into the electronic lock on the door. It beeped and the lock clicked.
She let out a breath she hadn't even realized she was holding. For a moment there, images had flashed through her mind of the guards stopping them, not letting them through, seeing all her hard handiwork gone to dust. It was absurd, of course - they were relatives...but nothing was impossible.
The door slid open automatically and the boys entered. The room was dim and dark and at first it took several milliseconds for the camera's lens to adjust to the sudden decrease in light - milliseconds that her networked linked vision interpreted as far longer than they actually were. She was still trying to orient herself when she was suddenly aware of a strange glow filling the room.
The walls were glowing.
That wasn't true, of course, the data linked to her brain insisted. The walls were coated with some phosphorescent material that emitted a soft, natural light...but the overall effect was impressive. Glancing around the room, she found it was an antechamber of some sort, the kind of eighteenth century meets science-fiction outer room that one could only find in movies nowadays, with strangely shaped and weirdly beautiful statues and paintings scattered artistically around the walls. The ceiling was a dome made entirely out of one sheet of smoked glass, and she noticed a switch on the wall, which her data sensors told her controlled the tint of the glass.
She now understood why they called Seki a cultured man.
A vidscreen stood in the middle of the room, but it took her data sensors a moment to realize it was a vidscreen. The stand was in the shape of a slender tree trunk with a blinking keypad set just below the screen, and the screen itself was merely a wide metal ring balanced vertically. She saw in an instant how it worked: the image was projected from photon emitters around the inside of the ring, shooting towards the center and creating a picture suspended in midair. It was a new state-of-the-art design, almost priceless, but then again, being one of the richest men in the world, Seki could probably afford ten of these things.
The boys had crossed the anteroom now and Li tore her eyes from the vidscreen, hovering just behind the two as they stopped at what seemed to be a piece of flat sheet metal set into the shimmering walls. On second glance, her data sensors revealed that it was a door of smoked glass, the same kind as the glass in the dome, but reinforced with steel. She'd seen these before, where the person inside the room could see out but those on the other side could not see in. The set up reminded her of Une's office in the main building.
The older boy knocked.
There was a silence and then the door swung open. Seki's office was as sparsely but elegantly decorated as the anteroom, and the theme here seemed to be oak and velvet. An oak desk, wine-colored velvet drapes and carpet, oak bookcase. In the leather chair, facing the door, was the crime lord himself.
He rose as the boys entered. He wasn't as elderly looking as she had imagined him to be, but his face was heavily lined and his shifty dark eyes had wrinkles around the corners. He was wearing a severe-looking traditional Japanese hakama in blacks and grays, the fabric molding smoothly around a form that was surprisingly muscular for a man of his age. Here was a man who was powerful, and knew it. A man who was not only powerful, but supremely secure in his power.
Not for long, Li thought grimly. Your usefulness is about to come to an end.
The boys stopped in front of his desk, bowed. Li felt the data sensors tingling as they analyzed the scene, found herself wondering just how the two were planning to conduct this mission. The camera was obviously not equipped with soundwave sensors, because Seki opened his mouth and spoke, but she heard nothing. The older boy answered him, then gestured to the younger one, who looked faintly angry, crossing his arms over his chest. Seki laughed.
She saw the younger's hand twitch slowly, realized he was wearing a gun strapped to his belt. Her heart plummeted. Surely they weren't that stupid, to think that they could just march into Seki's office and shoot him? He would have guards against that sort of thing. How had the gun gotten past the guards, anyway? She fixed her gaze on the older boy, hoping he had something else up his sleeve, but he seemed to be too busily engaged in conversation with Seki, who looked bored. The younger boy was tapping his foot against the carpet impatiently.
Seki said something else and it was the elder's turn to be angry. He spat something and the younger one frowned, answered. Seki pointed a finger at him, glaring at both of them, and the older boy rolled his eyes. The younger one was shouting now, advancing at the desk. Li watched in fascination. Whatever they were, these boys were great actors.
Seki pointed his finger at the younger boy and the boy spat something, and as the older one lunged forward, the other pulled his gun and fired.
It would have been too fast for her to follow if she'd been watching this with human eyes, but the data feed to her nervous system alerted her to the fact that the bullet had not been aimed at either Seki or the older boy, but in fact at an almost hidden security camera in the wall. She saw the bullet leave the gun, saw it hit the camera and saw the camera lens shatter into thousands of tiny slivers. She watched as Seki glanced scornfully at the camera, then flicked his glance over the two boys.
At once, Li realized two things. One, that Seki knew the gun was not dangerous and had allowed them to bring it into his office, because the antechamber was equipped with sensors that would not allow any real weapon to pass through. Therefore, the gun had not been loaded, at least not with any kind of bullet the sensors would recognize. And two, the thing that had hit the camera lens had truly not been a bullet of any sort. It was a capsule.
A poison capsule.
Her camera lens zoomed in to Seki, saw the tiny slivers of the lens, almost microscopic, burying themselves in the exposed flesh of his head and neck. Saw, as if on an x-ray, the poison creeping through his bloodstream.
But if Seki had been hit, surely the two boys...?
She zoomed out and saw that the older boy had fallen to his knees. Looked up at Seki again and saw the dawning understanding on his face as the boy's eyes rolled up in his head and he collapsed against the velvet carpet. The younger boy was still on his feet. She could feel the fear rolling off of him, not from any program, but from his very stance and the look on his face.
For the first time, Li wondered if the scene before the shooting had been scripted at all. This was a cartel, and the older boy clearly had had some kind of high standing in the family. Perhaps Seki was not the only one who had been tricked.
She saw the cartel leader sway on his feet, press his hands to his desk to keep himself standing. She expected him to rant or rage, perhaps pull out a gun and shoot the younger boy, who seemed to be frozen, watching the still form of his cousin. But instead, the drug lord simply smiled. Then began to laugh, and as she watched his shoulders shake, she couldn't rid herself of the feeling that he knew he was being watched. That he knew, and was enjoying her discomfort, as if instead of being the loser here, he had in fact won.
She was glad that the camera was not equipped with sound as his head lolled back on his shoulders and he slumped against his chair, his eyes wide and staring but the smile still on his cunning face.
The door to the office burst open and bullets from the guns of the bodyguards struck the younger boy, but Li had been expecting that. As he crumpled to the ground and as the blood began staining the wine-colored carpet, she was already stepping back from the screen, keying her way out of the Dungeons and out of the network. Her fingers trembled as she hit the final keys out of the system and, pulling the goggles from her face, she rested her head on her hands, trying to calm her heart.
Even though there had been no sound, even though she was kilometers away from L1, even though she was no longer connected through the mercury ocean, she thought she could still hear Seki laughing.
Scene X : A Traitor Among Us
"There's an unceasing wind that blows through this night
And there's dust in my eyes, that blinds my sight
And silence that speaks so much louder that words,
Of promises broken."
-- Pink Floyd, Sorrow
She felt out of place; Geneva had become home, and being in Bern was a sign of her failure. Une sat back in her chair, looking at Carrington, who had taken the seat across from her. "How is it going?" she asked, shuffling a few of the papers on her desk to give her hands something to do. She dismissed her sentimental feelings to focus on the matter at hand.
"It could be better," Carrington said. She had just arrived from the third day of the trial in Geneva to give Une a first person perspective, and Une was relieved for her presence, for a change. Carrington would not bother with any flowery platitudes- she would explain the situation without glossing over any of the lumps. "Quatre is both the best and worse pilot who could be the first to go on trial. People want to hate him, but he's honest, and looking into his eyes makes you weigh yourself- and usually find yourself wanting. Still, they want someone to blame for the war, and he did destroy two colonies single-handedly... it'd be worse if it was one of the others... most likely."
"Maxwell would rant about being the God of Death, Chang would lecture about justice and the strong surviving, and the other two would stare ahead blankly or do something just plain scary. Trowa and Heero aren't precisely the two most... normal individuals I've ever met." Une spoke precisely, her tones clipped and very factual.
"That was my reading of the situation. Still, Winner is listed as one of the ten wealthiest individuals, and that makes people jealous. Getting the chance to bring him down makes some people salivate at the thought." Carrington flipped through the notes on her legal pad, the neat hand writing standing out against the amusing doodles and SD depictions of Fatima bint Narish getting her head whacked off with a herring.
"What do you think the members of the assembly will say?"
"Relena Peacecraft, Sylvia Noventa, and surprisingly Dorothy Catalonia seem to be very much on our side. I'm relieved that Lady Dorothy replaced her mother- Duchess Noventa is not a kind woman and bint Narish has her in her pocket, no matter what the Duchess thinks. Keets has become vehemently opposed to the pilots and Preventers due to their daughter's death, bint Narish is vocal in her opposition. Lord Jareth, Governor Tatsumi, and Dancing Horse seem to be taking the moderate stance... the others are either taking their usual stances or being unreadable. It was just opening arguments, though, so..."
"How long should we anticipate this lasting?"
"Weeks... months... as long as they can drag it out, they will. I hope Winner is prepared to be crucified, because that's what's going to be happening."
"Quatre always did make a splendid martyr," Une said dryly.
"That wasn't that funny."
"...you know, I'm not sure it was supposed to be." Both women remained in their seats for a moment, thinking on the usually serene pilot.
"I feel sorry for him..." Carrington admitted after a moment. "I think I feel sorry for all of them. And I respect them even more."
"You?" Une asked in surprise.
Carrington nodded solemnly. "I respect few people. Respect is something that must be earned. Who else has done more to earn it then they? Did you watch any of the trial footage?"
Une shook her head, wondering where Carrington was going.
"I was there... and when Fatima lit into Quatre, I wasn't sure what to do. But he remained calm, and... it was like he was centered. He's at peace with himself- he's confident. He's here to tell his side of the story, and while he'd like us to believe him, he won't wilt away and die without our approval.
"It's not just Quatre, though. The night of the attack, Chang was out helping. I see how loyal Barton is to his sister, or how much Maxwell cares for his friends. There's something in them... something deep. For a while I was wondering about Yuy, but all the others seem to respect him most of all. And he did stop the Libra from falling..."
Une looked at Carrington. "Were you at that fight?"
"Anyone who could fly a MS was there. That battle... well, I'm now on the ineligible list for combat duty. Look at my file much, Une?"
Une shook her head. "I don't have time to. Sally's in charge of personnel."
"Well, if you've ever taken a look at it, you'd seen that I've got PTSD. They wrote it in nice, big red letters all over my profile- the shrinks wanted me to retire, but I told them where to shove it. I need to keep working here..."
Une was surprised. "What happened?" she asked. Carrington had always stuck her as tough-as-nails major who wouldn't let anything get her down.
"I never met Treize - I envy you that," Carrington said, in her usual abrupt change of topic. Une tried not to flinch at the unexpected mention of the man she had loved for so long.... No one had said his name to her in ages, and hearing it aloud hurt, especially now that she had screwed up all of the ideals he had worked so hard for.
"Treize was a very special man," Une agreed after a minute, setting aside the stack of papers she had been toying with. She wasn't going to be getting any work complete with Carrington there, and there was no point in keeping up the pretense.
"I know," Carrington seemed to grow softer, and for once her hard features took on an edge that seemed to make her look almost attractive. "I saw him speak once, though... in London. It was before the Gundams descended, back when I was still an officer for the Federation." Her blunt fingers toyed with a strand of her graying hair, and she seemed to be looking for the right thing to say. "It was magical."
"Treize was like that," Une agreed. "He believed in himself, and caused others to do so as well."
A smirk transformed Carrington back into the woman Une was familiar with, something that relieved the general greatly. "It was more than that," Carrington admitted. "I think I was a little in love with him. Who wouldn't be? He was everything that I joined the military dreaming I'd follow. Handsome, intelligent, and brilliant - he had plans, and he meant to carry them out. He wanted to make the world a better place, and he offered me a chance to help him, even though he didn't know me. I wasn't a part of Operation Daybreak - didn't have a clue it was coming, though I should have. Anyone with a brain should have known something like that was coming- the Colonies sure saw it."
"We often don't see what's right in front of our face," Une said, still speaking softly.
"Heh. I was forty-two years old, and a career soldier. I thought I knew what I wanted, but as soon as Treize rose, I followed him.... I was probably a little in love with him, even though I was old enough to be his mother."
"Anyone who saw Treize most likely was.... Some of us more than a little." Une blushed guiltily.
"Some people are like that. Burning brightly, they illuminate us all. Entrancing, but those that burn brightest, burn quickest. Or something like that." Carrington shivered. "I saw Chang kill him. I see Chang kill him. I think I will see Chang kill him...."
"What?" Une wasn't able to make sense of what Carrington was trying to say.
"PTSD. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. A noise, a sight, something triggers it.... And I'm back there, watching the light leave the universe. It took me six months to get it under enough control. I still have to get weekly counseling and I'm on a few anti-anxiety medications."
"How... how close were you?" Une asked, pained. She had never talked to anyone who had actually been that close to Treize as he died, had never been ready to. She never dreamed that the brash Carrington would be the first person she'd speak to.
"Within half a kilometer. Close enough... sometimes I dream that I could feel the heat from the explosion... and then, the world just went insane." Her hands dropped like lead weights onto the desk. "Sometimes I wonder if it'll ever be sane again, with him gone. We pinned all our hopes on him, and he died."
A knocked sounded on the door, but before Une could give permission to enter, Brown entered, trailed by the ever-present Lopez. Brown's face was tense with stress lines, and Lopez looked like he'd been sampling arsenic to get his skin the pure white color that it was currently boasting.
"What is it?" Une asked testily. "I thought you, Lopez, at least had the manners to knock."
"Pardon us, Lady, but this is a little bit too urgent to observe the formalities."
"Oh?" Carrington asked with interest.
Une shot her a dirty look, but Carrington just shrugged. "Should I leave?" the unrepentant major asked.
"No," Brown said. "I need everyone I can trust in here, and right now, I can count that number on one hand."
"What's wrong?" Une asked, sobering up, forgetting her anger. Brown rarely got stressed, and she couldn't remember ever seeing him look this grim before.
The two men pulled up chairs as Carrington hitched hers over, creating a half-circle in front of Une's desk.
"Seki Hikaru died two days ago."
"Seki Hikaru... I should know that name...." Une said, trying to place it.
"He was the head of the Black Diamond Cartel," Lopez said.
"Fuck," Carrington said.
Une felt the same. "Great. How is L1 taking it?"
"Not well. He was killed by one of his likely heirs, who died in the attempt. There's no clear succession- a few nephews, a granddaughter, a missing grandson... and lots of factions all wanting the power. The fight is starting to spill out of the Breaks, and L2-C is experiencing the repercussions. The Black Market planet side is going to be hit within the next two days." He paused.
"Why do I feel like you're not telling me the worst of it?"
Brown and Lopez exchanged glances, communicating on the level that members of the same gender used to say something the opposite sex wouldn't understand. "It gets worse," Lopez said softly, ignoring the towering difference in their ranks to speak freely.
"Much worse," Brown agreed without humor."
"Can it with the build-up and spit it out!" Carrington spat.
Brown shot her a Look, reminding her who was the general and who was the major. "Seki was a vengeful bastard. As far as I can tell, he had some kind of system rigged up... if he didn't enter some kind of passcode every 48 hours, it would trigger a data dump of his files into mine."
"WHAT?" Une exclaimed.
"I have no clue how he got my personal account number, but he was one of the best. I've got months worth of information to dig through- I'm going to be able to make a lot of arrests, assuming the Preventers are still operating."
"What do you mean?"
"Seki knew he was dealing with people as dangerous as he was... he wasn't sure exactly of the name, but he knew that if he dumped into my system, I'd be able to combine it with what I knew, and be able to pin the bastard."
"What do you mean?"
"Une, we have a traitor."
Une's mind reeled. "What? Who?"
"Let me and Lopez break it down, and you'll see."
"Seki was involved in supplying the rebel faction of A007," Lopez said. "He also planted operatives in various groups to incite anti-Gundam sentiment, hired the assassins for Chang Wufei, and has been doing other actions to undermine the World Nation."
"Why?" Carrington asked. "I thought he was happy enough playing in the Breaks."
"There's been a lot of power plays there- no one's been able to keep what's been going on there straight. What I think happened is that he's afraid that the L1 government is actually going to keep its promise to attempt to clean out the Breaks- and that would have been very bad for his business. Criminals thrive on chaos."
"So he gambled... and lost. He got himself killed," Carrington said with a bit of satisfaction. "What does that have to do with a traitor?"
"Someone inside the Preventers was working with him- several someones. I'm starting to think that there is actually a rather large organization of people within the Preventers who are working to bring down the World Nation."
"Why?"
"Nationalists." It was Lopez who spoke. "Many people believe that the World Nation is just a return to the Federation under a different name. Some of the fighters feel... gypped by what happened. They fought during the war, and all the sudden everything returns to a status quo that seems frighteningly familiar."
"So... we have traitors. That's no surprise."
"It's more complicated than that. From the data dump I received, the person who is in charge of the anti-Preventer activities is very high up in our organization. High up enough to reassign personnel to where they become ineffective, or plant their agents where they can do the most damage."
Une's blood ran cold at the thought. She herself didn't have time to do everything in the organization, so had learned to delegate to people she had thought were worthy of her trust. Apparently her feelings had been misplaced. "Who?" she demanded.
Lopez spoke again. "The person had to have high security clearance. Personality-wise, it would be someone above suspicion, with an intense loyalty to his or her country of origin. This person would be able to place Banks near your office as a security guard, send Lucrezia Noin away, since she would likely catch on, rearrange staff whenever they started to catch on, keep agents off-balance with their postings, be able to divert military resources..."
"Only three people have the security clearance high enough to do all that needed to be done. I didn't have any reason, you built the Preventers, so that leaves the third..." Brown trailed off to let Une put the final piece into place herself.
She opened her mouth, but was interrupted by a priority one message flashing to life on her screen. "What is it?" she snapped.
Etille's tired face flashed onto the screen. "Etille?" Une asked, wondering what else could go wrong.
He blinked once, the only sign that he was surprised to see her. "I was calling for General Brown. I have some... unpleasant news."
"MORE unpleasant news?" Une asked. Her mind still refused to come to the conclusion Brown was trying to lead her to- it was simply unacceptable.
Brown rose and went over to where he could look over Une's shoulder into the view screen. "What is it? Did you get her?"
He shook his head. "Negative. Apparently the information leaked, and she had a chance to escape."
"WAIT just a second. Would you mind explaining what's going on?" Une demanded.
"I issued an arrest warrant as soon as Lopez pieced enough information together. We didn't want to risk our bird flying the coop... even though she still managed to..."
Une placed her head in her hands. Her head was throbbing, but she couldn't deny the reality anymore. Slowly she raised her head to look up at Brown in horror as all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle clicked in an alarming and all-too-plausible whole.
"Sally Po."
END SAINAN NO KEKKA ACT IX
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