Gundam Wing Fan Fiction ❯ Deadly Beautiful ❯ Homecoming ( Chapter 25 )

Disclaimer: expresses non-ownership of Gundam Wing and its characters, as well as lack of monetary income, through interpretative dance

Deadly Beautiful - Chapter 25

By danse

Duo practically fell out of the taxi, flinging money at the driver before stumbling up the granite front steps of an office building in New York City. It was 7:00 AM on Sunday, May 14th, and he hadn't slept at all the night before. Instead, he'd spent the night trying to get from Clearwater Academy to his current location, in front of G's office building. The three-mile run to the gas station had taken rather longer than he'd hoped, partly because he'd been far too tired from fighting to exert himself with running for three miles flat out. It had been a sort of jog, or fast walk, for half of the distance.

Upon reaching the gas station in question, with the help of his handy GPS, he'd dug change out of his pocket and used the pay phone outside to call his contact number. He'd gotten no answer--the phone had just kept ringing. Cursing and swearing, he'd ended up taking what would have been a thirty-minute drive on foot, attempting to hitchhike. The cars didn't stop for him; perhaps it was the bruises on his face, and his dishevelled appearance from fighting, jumping out of a window, and travelling for miles on foot. Whatever it was, he was forced to walk all the way back into the city, finding himself in the Bronx, where he caught a cab to take him the rest of the way.

Now, as the yellow car behind him pulled away into the sunlit morning, he stood dully in front of the glass lobby doors. They were closed, and the lights behind them were out. It's not open yet? he thought, having expected at least a few people to be around. He gave one of the doors a yank to test the theory. It was locked. God damn it. Now what? He had to get in, to change his clothes and get his car keys. And possibly pick up some coffee on the way home, to wake himself up. There was no way that he could present himself to Hilde in a school uniform, especially a torn and dirty one.

Adjusting the way his backpack rested on his shoulders, he left the front doors and walked around the building slowly. The underground parkade was locked, and Duo saw a guard reading a magazine inside his little booth. He kept walking.

At the very back of the building, a regulation fire escape snaked up the wall. The ladder at the bottom of it was secured about fifteen feet up, only meant to be released from above, by escapees. He squinted up at it, and then glanced at a big, black dumpster several feet away. There were some wooden crates beside it, partially dismantled. I bet.... he mused. Quickly, he took off his backpack and red jacket, and stuffed both inside the dumpster. Next, he dragged the crates under the fire escape, setting up the two that were still mostly whole in a short tower. Climbing on top of the stack, he jumped as high as he could, swiping at the bottom of the ladder. He missed by about three inches, and nearly fell off of the stack of crates when he landed again. Undaunted, he slid off of the tower and found a third crate, dragging it over to sit in front of the tower, creating a makeshift staircase.

He backed up several paces, aimed himself at the stairs, and then took off at a run toward them. He leaped up the stack and into the air, reaching up again and scraping at the cold, black-painted metal of the bottom rung. He snatched at it but missed, and felt the ground abruptly coming up to meet him. He barely landed on his feet, bending his knees low to absorb the impact. His feet stung.

Two attempts later, he snagged the bottom rung of the ladder and hung there in surprise, his arm nearly yanked out of its socket. After dangling for a second, he grabbed the bar with his other hand and tried to pull himself up. He heard a loud screech of metal and was suddenly standing on the ground, holding the ladder that was now only six feet from the pavement. He glared up at it, silently cursing the godawful racket it had made as it unfurled itself.

Claiming his backpack and jacket from the dumpster, Duo clambered up the ladder and made his way up to the third floor. The door was gunmetal grey, and had no doorknob on this side. Only the hinges showed. He attacked those with a pair of pliers he kept among his lock picks, tweaking, wiggling, and yanking until he'd pulled the pins out of the hinges. When that was done, he glared at the door. "I need a crowbar," he muttered, casting around helplessly. The fire escape creaked under him as he moved. The structure was in horrible shape, old, weak and rusting. He noticed that the bars connecting the railing and the platform had bad weld joints. And they were flat, like a crowbar. Drawing on what reserve strength he had left, Duo rattled the railing and found a bar that was looser than the rest. Positioning himself in front of it, he grabbed the railing with both hands, one on either side of the bar, and twisted as hard as he could, grunting under the strain.

He heard a creak, a squeal, and a clatter as the weld on the bottom gave, and he suddenly had a partially disconnected bar. He put his sneaker-clad foot against it and pushed, holding the bar in one hand so that it wouldn't drop to the concrete two floors below. His leg shook a little with the strain, and he could feel the imprint of the bar through his shoe. He ground his teeth together and pushed some more, and finally the bar whizzed upward in his hand. He worked it back and forth until it broke free, and then turned his attention back to the door.

He could just barely ram the makeshift crowbar into the crack between the door and the frame. When it was in, he braced himself and leaned with all of his weight on it, trying to pop the unhinged door out. He had to try it again, closer to the bottom of the door, and twisted the metal in his hands quite a bit before the door finally scraped open about an inch at the bottom. He excitedly stuck his hands in the crack and heaved outwards, his tired muscles and the fire escape all screaming at him to stop. After a lot of grunting and straining, he made a big enough gap to fit through, if he pushed his backpack through first. He squeezed through the hole, rolled to his feet, and saw that the door was twisted outwards, held in place at the top by the little metal arm that allowed it to close automatically.

He shrugged his backpack on again and started moving quickly. I had to have set off an alarm somewhere,he thought. He had to be fast, if he didn't want to be found and shot. Luckily, there weren't many people who knew this building better than he did.

He'd left his car keys on Helen's desk before he left for Clearwater, because he knew that she wouldn't lose them. He ran to an elevator, saw that it wasn't running, and made for the closest stairwell, right down the hall. It was behind a locked door, but he picked the lock quickly with his tools and shot up the stairs, hardly a moment wasted. On the fifth floor, he ignored the door, which was locked too, and instead balanced one foot on the doorknob and the other on the corner of the stairwell railing as he pushed up a ceiling tile. The hole was black and dusty, but a pipe ran right above it. He touched it with the back of his hand, felt that it wasn't hot, and grabbed it to heave himself into the hole. He balanced on the top of the wall studs over the door, and pulled up a tile directly in front of him to reveal the fifth floor hallway. He jumped down through the hole, ignoring the displaced tiles for someone else to take care of later. Bastards deserve it for not opening the place up on Sunday morning. Who knows what a person could need in here?

He ran at full tilt down the hall, gasping for air and ready to collapse. At the very end was the door to Helen's office; he picked the lock, barged inside, and ran to her desk. His keys were sitting right where he'd left them, in the top drawer of her desk. Stuffing them in his pocket, he started contemplating a way out. He could dimly hear footsteps on the stairs in the quiet building: Security was on the move. Up here, they'll probably shoot me first and ask questions later, he thought. Thinking quickly, he pushed open the wooden door to G's private office (which was never locked), and went over to the bookshelves. Through the large window, New York was getting busier, with the weekend breakfast rush starting. Duo scanned the bookshelf, running a finger along the titles, and eventually pulled a red leather book from the shelf. It was The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, and behind it was a small switch. Duo flicked the switch and quickly replaced the book as the shelf suddenly swung out, revealing a staircase. He walked into the opening and pulled the shelf closed behind him just as a security guard burst into Helen's office, wielding an AK-47.

Duo walked quietly down the stairs for a minute, trying to get away from the office, and then started moving faster, heedless of any noise he was making. The stairs were narrow, lined by cinderblock walls, and lit by occasional halogen bulbs set overhead. He emerged on the training floor in a minute, pushing open the door to encounter darkness and silence. He knew a way out from here: a basement window in the explosives lab. He made his way into the lab, which was unlocked, and through the quiet room to the window. Just as he was reaching up to open it, he heard a voice behind him that made him jump.

"What are you doing, Duo?"

He turned around slowly. Ivanov was sitting in a chair at the front of the room, working on something by the light of a small lamp. Duo had been so intent on getting out by this point that he hadn't even noticed the man sitting there. "Did you know that this place is all locked up on Sunday morning?" he asked.

Ivanov leaned back in his seat, an amused look visible on his face in the lamplight. "Really? It would never have occurred to me that they would be closed this early on a day of rest," he answered, laughing.

Duo came over to the desk. "I needed my stuff, and I had to break in."

The explosives expert nodded in understanding. "So that is why I got a call from Security barely five minutes ago, telling me not to go anywhere while they solved a security breach. Surely you could have phoned inside, and someone would have unlocked the door?"

Duo glared. "No, no I couldn't. You see, that would involve using all kinds of common sense, which I am only capable of doing when I've slept the night before, rather than travelling thirty miles through the dark, nursing bruises."

"You do look quite beat up. And you are home two weeks early, are you not? Did the mission fail?"

"Yes, but it wasn't my fault. I was compromised, too, and I had to get the hell out. I tried my contact number, but it wasn't working."

"We have been having a few problems with the phone system in the last twenty-four hours," Ivanov explained. "Do sit down; you look exhausted." He gestured to another chair.

"If I sit down, I won't get up for days. I need a shower and some sleep. Maybe coffee, too."

Ivanov laughed heartily. "In that case, I will let you get back to your window. If Security comes, they will not hear a peep from me about anyone robbing the building of their own belongings on Sunday morning, and they certainly will not hear that I allowed the thief to escape through my window."

"Thanks," Duo grinned tiredly, before popping the casement open.

"Come and visit me when you are rested up," Ivanov called after him. "We are going to begin testing on the fountain pen detonator in the next few days!"

"Wouldn't miss that for the world," Duo answered before climbing outside, to get the guard to let him into the underground parkade. He would change his clothes in the Mustang and then drive home.

Hilde had just gotten dressed, and was sitting in the kitchen nursing a cup of coffee when she heard the front door open. What the hell? she thought, and got up to see what was going on. She was startled to see Duo standing in the entry, looking like something the cat had dragged in. "Jesus Christ," she gasped when she saw him. "What the hell happened to you? And why are you home? I wasn't expecting you for another two weeks!"

Duo kicked off his sneakers and dragged a backpack into his bedroom. She heard his voice drifting down the hall behind him. "Had some problems with a few different things, and the trip ended up being cut short." He came out of his room, unravelling his braid so that his messy hair flew all over the place. "I was mugged on the way home, but I didn't have my wallet on me, so they just beat me up."

"Oh god!" she cried, feeling terribly sorry for him. "Are you all right?"

"Just scratched up, that's all. And I'm kinda tired. Jet lag."

"I bet you are," she said sympathetically. "You want some coffee?"

"Yes, please." He followed her into the kitchen and collapsed on a stool while she filled a cup for him. "How's work going so far?" he asked.

"Oh... really good," she answered. "I'm learning a lot. They said I catch on fast." I'm learning how to kill people, she thought, and I'm really good at it.

"Oh yeah? So they'll keep you on for a while?" He sipped his coffee.

She sat down on the other stool. "I think so. I already got... a bit of a promotion. From errand girl to typist," she lied. Different kind of promotion... straight to the top. She remembered what the trainers had told her. I was picked for obviously special qualities, that they saw right away. Only a few, special people get selected for the real operation. The office is a front, and now I'm working in the real business. But I can't tell anyone, especially Duo. I have to keep it a secret from him. She felt a little superior to him now, knowing about the secret business behind the office. Poor guy's still working for a company that doesn't exist. Suddenly, she realized that he was staring at her expectantly. "Wh-what was that?" she asked distractedly, trying to clear her thoughts from her mind.

"I asked you how things went while I was gone. Everything around the apartment was fine, right?"

"Yeah, absolutely grand. Nothing broke, died, or exploded. Things were good."

"Good," he answered. He drained the rest of his coffee as he got to his feet. "I'm gonna shower and then go to bed for a while," he said, putting his mug in the sink and leaving the kitchen.

I think this might be a hard secret to keep, Hilde thought apprehensively in the quiet kitchen. I have to stay vigilant. And I certainly can't practice my kickboxing in the living room anymore.

Heero had awoken early Sunday morning from his drugged sleep, gradually realizing that he was sprawled, fully-clothed, on his bed in the dorm room while sunlight streamed in the open window. Shortly after that, he'd realized that he was in a lot of pain. He'd dragged himself into a sitting position, feeling bruises on his head, arms, and torso, and wondered what had happened to him. He'd looked dazedly around the room and seen the rumpled, empty covers on Scott's vacated bed and his gun on the floor. Both the closet and bathroom doors had been wide open, which wasn't their normal state. The fight of the previous afternoon had come back to him in stages, and he'd rubbed at the pinprick on his neck as he staggered into the bathroom to assess the damage.

Parts of his face were a lovely shade of purple, and his left eye was a particularly livid lavender, swollen half-shut. Scratches covered his face, the prick on his neck had bruised, and his uniform was messy, slightly torn, and a little bloodstained.

Now, Heero sat on his bed, rubbing Icy Hot onto his leg, the pain in which had flared up again from the exertion of fighting. He'd straightened up the room and stowed his gun in the little safe inside his locker. He wished he had it in his hand now, because he dearly wanted to shoot something. That bastard got away from me twice. How did he manage it? He stretched out his leg, grunting from the pain. If I ever see him again, no matter where or why, I'll kill the fucker with my bare hands. Crowded street, high window ledge, whatever. I don't care. He's dead. No more hesitation.

Heero put on his good red jacket and hauled his suitcase out of the closet, ready to pack. He was leaving Clearwater today, and the limousine would be there in an hour.