Falling Down
1x2 disaster fic
Duo whistled in shocked disbelief as he flipped through the extensive charges
on his palm computer. Flipping back to Quatre's face, he asked the one time
Gundam pilot, "What the hell, Qat?"
The miniature visual still managed to show Quatre's worry and the wide blue eyes that compelled Duo to act. "One doctor is standing between Heero and the full force of the law," Quatre informed him."Any one of those weapons charges has a potential death sentence."
Duo snapped off his bandana, from around his neck, and wiped his forehead with it. He moved away from a shuttle, revving engines in a test, and went into his small, plexiglas office. Suspended five stories above the tarmac, it gave him a panoramic view of every bay and the transports being repaired inside of them. Men swarmed like insects and the noise was deafening. That noise cut off abruptly as he closed the door to his office. He collapsed into a padded chair, one leg sticking out stiffly.
"Why?" Duo asked at last. "What was he planning?"
"He contacted all of us," Quatre explained. "He said that everyone was in danger, that we had to prepare, immediately for an attack. He talked about having intercepted radio transmissions, in code, but.... Duo, I looked that code over myself. It was gibberish. I couldn't see the logic of his translation at all. When no one believed him, when we all questioned his conclusions, he grew enraged. I-"
"He didn't contact me," Duo cut in.
"I know," Quatre replied with a tone to his voice that told Duo exactly what he needed to know.
Duo frowned, mouth set bitterly. "He didn't think that I measured up anymore, right?"
"Duo, he didn't say that," Quatre assured him, without any real conviction.
"Why would he need to?" Duo retorted. "I'm not a Preventer agent any longer. I'm just the forman overseeing putting Preventer shuttles back together. I get to limp around and yell at people from nine to five."
Quatre's expression hardened. "We can talk about your feelings of inadequacy later, Maxwell! Right now, Heero needs you to get his ass out of the fire, Preventers needs you to find his inside contacts, and you need to make sure that Heero isn't right about an impending attack."
Duo rubbed at his forehead. One of his men pounded a fist on the plexiglas and waved a clipboard at him. Duo swiveled in his chair to face away from him, while giving him a 'in a few minutes' signal. "That's some pretty messed up commands, General Winner," Duo told him. "Either you think he's crazy or you don't. I don't think that you can have it both ways."
"Heero saved millions of people," Quatre replied, leaning into the screen and speaking with strong emotion. "Even if he did everything as charged, I think that proving that he was insane at the time, and making sure that he gets the help that he needs, is owed to him."
"Life imprisonment, you mean?" Duo fiddled with his name plate at the head of his desk. Duo Maxwell, foreman.
"I don't think that they would agree to less," Quatre said.
"For a price, of course?" Duo guessed. He used a thumbnail to dig at the title of forman. It was obvious that he had been scratching at it for sometime.
"If we can find Heero's insiders," Quatre explained, "the men and women who gave him the materials, the weapons, and the logistics, then we can begin to bargain."
"Begin?" Duo sneered. "They always want a pound of flesh. What else do they want?"
"We would have to sign papers, agreeing that Heero was mentally unstable," Quatre told him. "They won't move alone against popular opinion. The civilians love Heero Yuy, savior of Earth and Space."
"Judas," Duo said shortly as if the word tasted bad.
"Four of them," Quatre agreed.
"And you don't want to sign papers unless you know for a fact that he's really wrong?" Duo swiveled in his chair and came face to face with three men on the outside of his office looking angry and impatient. He turned away from them again and barked, "That's my job, right?"
"You're under the radar," Quatre told him firmly, not coddling him a bit. "They will expect us to act, but not you. Everyone knows that you have too much bitterness for Preventers, and Heero Yuy, personally, to agree to investigate his claims."
Duo scowled at the small image. "Since you've just said my reasons for not doing it, why would I?"
"He said, 'total destruction of the Earth.', Duo," Quatre replied. "Isn't that enough, or are you angry at millions of people, as well?"
Duo simmered, raking a scarred hand through his bangs, before he grunted and said, "All right. Have the info ready to dump. I'll hook up when I have some real equipment that I can work with."
He cut the connection and tossed his palm computer onto the desk, making it clatter and scatter papers. He glared down at his leg, a combination of ball bearings and metal struts intertwined with flesh.
"I gave my pound of flesh and they dumped me," Duo growled to the leg. "Now they want me to give some more." He sighed as he levered himself up and limped to let his men into the office. "I'm such a self sacrificing shit head."
-----------------------------------------------------
"Not piloting your own ship, Mr. Maxwell?" The flight attendant
asked as Duo settled in the seat of the commercial shuttle.
He put on a grin and shook his head at her, as always unable to make the words come past his anger. He couldn't cover up to that extent.
They never knew how much they twisted an emotional knife into his gut when they asked that question. They were just trying to be familiar with a celebrity, he told himself for the thousandth time, trying to make his 'famous' rub off a little on them. They couldn't know how it had felt to stand before the aviation board and have them tersely tell him, 'Your piloting license has been revoked indefinitely. You are no longer physically capable of piloting any ship.' A little death added to a host of them the day that they had also taken away his Preventer badge and told him, 'Desk work is just as important as field work, Mr. Maxwell."
He had been a captain. How casually they had taken that away from him with all the rest. He could easily hate them all, especially Heero Yuy, who had stood by, at correct attention, and said nothing in his defense as he had handed the man his service revolver and his special identifications and passes. Maybe that had hurt the worst, but Duo was in firm denial of that, locking that feeling down deeper than the others and refusing to even peer at it for an instant.
Duo looked out of the shuttle window at the tarmac and then firmly pulled down the shade when the shuttle taxied past personal transports. He couldn't keep hands from flexing on imagined controls, couldn't help from going over a mental flight checklist, even though he could only sense how well the shuttle was operating. They were habits as unconscious as breathing.
One hand, scarred thickly across the palm, wouldn't close properly and it pained him. The wrist on his other arm ached and then shot pain down to fingers that protested with weakness and cramps in the joints. His bad leg, not liking it's forced position, either, set up a counter throb of pain.
Pills. Duo's hand automatically fished in the pocket of his black leather coat and touched the packets. There were two;one for mild pain and one for unbearable pain. He hadn't thought to need the second one so soon. He didn't like that kind of weakness in himself. He especially hadn't liked having to declare them at check in. Doctor's prescriptions had been handed over, checked, stamped, and returned with looks of keen sympathy. That sympathy had deepened when he had also had to give them papers stating his medical condition;an explanation as to why metal detectors and scan alarms tripped when he passed through them.
Humiliating, Duo thought bitterly. That was what his life had become. He took his hand off the pills and decided that asking for a drink, to wash them down, was one more humiliation that he couldn't endure, just then. Later, he promised the pain. After take off.
Needing a distraction, Duo took out his palm computer and went over his contacts and leads. Heero's activities, before his arrest, were varied and nonsensical. The people that he had visited weren't connected in any way to each other. Somehow, between visits to these non entities, he had managed to collect enough weapons to start his own war. One of them, Duo decided, must know something, something that they had refused to tell Preventers. It was possible that they would tell an ex Gundam pilot, a one time war buddy of Heero Yuy. That kind of respect hadn't died after the war.
Duo rubbed at his painful knee, feeling metal and flesh, and tried to relax as the shuttle took off. If Quatre had known, Duo doubted that he would have come to him, doubted that he would have asked him to take on any sort of mission. Personal files, Preventer and medical, weren't open even to someone like Quatre Winner.
Sitting and directing grease monkeys in the Preventer shuttle bays, was one thing, but actually going out into the field was garnering the exact results that doctors had warned him about. Muscle spasm, tendon stress, and nerves outraged by having to work too closely with metal parts, that hadn't completely integrated with flesh and bone yet. He felt exhausted dealing with his body, already, and he had barely begun his investigation.
"Pillow?" the attendant asked brightly and then tucked one under Duo's bad leg without waiting for a reply. It gave it enough support to keep his leg from pressing on the seat and his heel from taking any weight on the floor.
Duo smiled gratefully. "How did you know?" he wondered.
"Had a broken ankle, once," she explained sympathetically. "I learned some tricks."
"That's a good one," Duo agreed and noted how she had tilted the pillow just so and filed it for future reference.
"If I can do anything else for you, please let me know," she told him.
"Some water," Duo couldn't help asking, but told himself, as she went to get it, that he still wouldn't take his pills just yet.
Trowa would kill Quatre when he found out, Duo thought, and he would be the one to tell the man that he had made a mistake. He had been Duo's partner,that day, after all, and had seen him after the suspect had over powered him and chucked him over a railing. A desperate scramble for a way to stop his long fall to concrete had probably saved his life, but the injuries had still been severe. Bare rebar, and the bones of a half demolished building, had been almost as unforgiving.
The scene played itself out behind Duo's closed eyelids, and he played the game of 'what if', just as he had played it, over and over, since waking up in the hospital to find parts of him gone and other parts barely human any longer. Not severe, the doctor's had assured him, and they had told him to consider himself lucky, some of it would heal... eventually... a few years down the road.
Duo's hands tried to close into fists and failed, in an attempt to express his anger at life, at chance, at the odds that often were against him. He should be shrugging it all off, he thought, glad, at least, that nothing had sliced into his face. He still had his looks, a healthy heart, and full function where it counted most. The rest was just pain to overcome and his own knowledge that his skin was hiding metal parts from the rest of the world. Certainly no one else could see anything wrong besides his limp.
He could do this, he told himself. He had to do it. Preventers might sideline him, afraid that his injuries might get himself killed, but there was nothing stopping him from doing, alone, what he had always done; sacrifice himself for a cause. If not him, then who? That had always been his mantra. Quatre had known that when he had asked him to take on the mission. There had never been a moment when refusal would have been an option. Duo wouldn't let a planet full of people die, because he couldn't get over Heero Yuy, or the fact that his body had proven, without a doubt, that it wasn't invulnerable.
And if no one was actually in danger, except Heero? If he was, indeed, short a payload? It made Duo uncomfortable to realize that he would still be on that shuttle and risking himself even if that were true. Whatever was between them, a man who had accomplished as much for humanity,a s Heero, shouldn't die as someone who had betrayed that self same humanity. That couldn't stand in the history books, and there were more reasons than sentimentality to prevent that from happening. Humanity needed it's heroes, it's symbols, to gather behind, or it's sense of what was right began to slip. That had been proven far too many times in the past. Disillusionment could become a blade to cut down a young government.
Liar, his own mind called him, but Duo ignored it and tried to stop thinking about anything. Whatever his reasons, his goal was clear enough. It was yet to be proven, though, if he was physically up to the task.
______________________________________________________________________
"So, where are you off to?" the man who had settled next to Duo asked brightly. He was older, well dressed, and not seemingly aware that Duo was scowling at the interruption to his sleep.
"That's not your seat," Duo told him firmly. He knew that for a fact, because he had purchased it to make certain that no one bothered him.
The man chuckled and shrugged. "Big plane, lots of empty seats, and nobody for company. I thought that you might like some?"
Duo got it, then. The older man was interested in more than talking. "I'm not into mile high clubs," Duo grumbled. "Get lost before I... I dunno... Twist and break your neck...?"
The man's mouth opened in shock and then he paled and stammered, "Oh... well... I'll just... go... Excuse me..."
The man scrambled out of his seat and hurried up the aisle. Duo grunted in annoyance and checked his palm computer GPS to find out where they were. They were still hours out from their destination. He tried to get comfortable again, but he felt another presence almost immediately. He opened eyes, ready to follow through with his threat, but, strangely found no one there.
Duo searched the cabin. Everyone was busy with their own affairs, no one looking as if they had moved, and none of them looking suspicious. Duo had been so certain, though. It made him nervous and unwilling to go back to sleep. The pills seemed like a very bad idea, just then, and he mentally kicked himself for thinking that a commercial flight made him safe.
"Is everything all right?" the stewardess asked as she passed by.
"Fine," Duo muttered automatically, but then blinked as she picked up a small square of folded paper from the seat beside him.
"Would you like me to throw this away, sir?"
Duo reached out and took the paper. "No, thank you."
She smiled brightly. "If there is anything that you would like, please let me know."
Her smile hinted at more intimate requests. Duo kept his annoyance in check, this time. "Work before pleasure," he joked, "and I'm afraid that I have months worth of work ahead of me."
She looked prettily disappointed but stayed cheerful as she replied, "All right. I'm just a call away if you need me, though."
Duo watched her walk away, scanned the cabin again warily, and then unfolded the paper. The note was short and unsigned. It said simply, 'Leave it alone.'
Duo studied the note, saw nothing to mark it, but then tucked it carefully into a pocket for analysis later. There wasn't going to be any more sleeping on the flight. Someone was on it who knew his mission. Someone with interest in Heero. There were people who would have liked the Gundam pilot to stay in jail forever, or even get the death penalty. There were also interests who had supplied Heero with illegal weapons. They wouldn't want their ties found out. They might even be willing to kill another Gundam pilot to prevent it.
Duo rubbed at his aching knee and wondered just how well he could defend himself if it came down to protecting his life. The guns and knives, that he had locked down in cargo, offered concrete protection, but he had learned, early on, not to depend on them. If it came down to his body and an attacker....? Well, he thought with a tight smile, he still had some dirty tricks from his days on the streets. His handicap had been much greater, back then, and he had still managed to survive. It took brains, more than brawn, most times.
Duo ignored the rules and took out his cell phone. He made a short text message to Quatre on a secure line. 'They're on to me. Being followed.'
Quatre texted back, 'Proceeding?'
Duo grunted and texted, 'Of course.'
'You have it bad, my friend,' Quatre returned.
Duo could imagine Quatre's laugh. He blushed as he closed his cell and put it away. There wasn't any denying it, he supposed. He wasn't putting his life on the line for a war time buddy and Quatre had chosen him, knowing that, among other things. Heero might never appreciate that, might even hate him for it, but Duo would still do it, still take the risks.
The flight seemed to take forever and Duo was thankful when it finally set down. Time for business, he thought as he forced his body to start moving. Time to show that he still had it in him.
____________________________________
"I gave you my med card," Duo complained as he spread his arms and put up with the security man crouching down and examining his leg. In his underwear, Duo was getting goose bumps from the chill and from the curious stares of the other two security people, a man and a woman, who were there with hands on weapons. As if he wasn't law enforcement... as if he would forget himself an attack them. Heero had damaged a fragile trust, it seemed, that all Gundam pilots had joined the ranks for peace.
"Impressive," the man said as he ran a scanner over the metal parts. It showed him the inner workings on a small screen and gave him minute readouts.
"Impressive, but not a danger to the public, " Duo pointed out. "May I go now?"
The man's eyes flicked up and he looked irritated. "You, of all people, should understand why we have such tight security practices, sir."
"Highest, per capita, of ex war types," Duo replied sourly. "A veritable who's who of military elite."
The man nodded. "Which makes us suspicious when someone of your caliber, decides to visit."
Duo lowered his arms and glared. "So... you imagine that I'm smuggling contraband weapons in my leg?"
"A possibility," the man snapped back.
"Gray? What's this? You know women are only to be screened with female personnel," a strange voice demanded.
The scrutiny man leaned to look around Duo's legs and Duo looked over his shoulder. "Don't let the hair fool you," he quipped at the man.
"Sorry, sir," the new man apologized as he picked up a scanner and read Duo's personal stats. He had enough badges to alert Duo that he was higher ranking than anyone else in the room and the other two security people looked nervous.
"Routine, sir," Gray said, though he sounded as if he had been caught doing something wrong.
Apparently he had. "What criteria did you follow to initiate a personal scan, Gray?" the official demanded. "All of his records are in order. He didn't scan with any suspicious objects."
"High profile," Gray argued. "He is on the 'watch' list."
"Not a travel watch list, gray," the man corrected him. "I'm sorry, sir," he said to Duo. "Please dress, and continue on your journey. I hope that it's a pleasant one."
"Well," Duo joked, "I did get to meet some new people on a really intimate basis." The woman blushed and Gray and the other scrutiny man looked embarrassed.
"I will be discussing that with them and the need to be discrete," the man replied in a warning tone, giving the other security people a scathing look.
Duo dressed and limped out of security without letting them see how angry he was. He kept his expression amused and his speech unthreatening. He couldn't make trouble, that would take time and only affirm what Gray had been thinking when he had pulled Duo out of the line of disembarking passengers, that he was a risk: trouble on two legs.
"Fade out time," Duo muttered as he left his fake luggage on the baggage carousel and ducked into the restroom.
In a stall, he turned his coat inside out. Black turned to pale cream. A cream colored cap came out of a pocket. He jammed his bangs under the brim and tucked his braid into the back of the jacket. Zipping it up, hid his shirt and changed the collar. He had learned by experience that it took very little to confuse someone. People tended to recognize someone by their hair, by their clothing, even by their body type. Faces were harder to memorize, even famous ones like his.
When he walked out of the restroom, he gritted his teeth and refused to limp. It cost him, that careless stride, and he would pay for it later, but it was worth it when he walked by the security guard, who had scanned him earlier, without the man taking notice of him at all.
He boarded another flight, with fake ID, and settled into his seat, satisfied that who ever might be following him had probably lost his scent. It would take them a long time to figure out that Duo Maxwell wasn't investigating anyone in the most likely place to find a war criminal in the Earthsphere.
Duo had his suspicions, knew, better than anyone else, who Heero's friends might be. Not shadow mercenaries. Not people on the fringes. Not subversives on record as being disgruntled with the government. If Heero was telling the truth, then who ever had helped him had shown themselves to be self sacrificing, knowing that jail time, or even execution, might be their reward. Mercenaries and shadow agents weren't self sacrificing.
And if Heero was lying? Duo frowned as he sunk in his seat and tried to make his body comfortable. If that was true, then he was bypassing all the good leads to break the case, and Heero was going to face the full might of the law and the people that he had betrayed. It was a gamble, but Duo had never flinched from bad odds. Something in him wouldn't believe in a Heero Yuy who would betray everyone, even if he had lost his mind to paranoia. He would prove that, he promised. Failure wasn't an option.
______________________________________
"Ah, Agent Maxwell," Milliardo said as he swirled a cup of wine and crossed his long legs. Sitting on his veranda, roses and lush foliage everywhere, and servants ready to jump to his every whim, he looked far removed from the military commander that had almost perpetrated a mass murder on the Earth.
"Perhaps I should say, Chief Mechanic Maxwell, instead?" Milliardo went on with a tight smile. "I recall hearing about your demotion."
"It wasn't a demotion," Duo replied, though he kept the growl out of his voice, "Since I never had an official titled position with Preventers to begin with."
Duo stretched his bad leg out to ease it as he reminded himself that Milliardo was only being defensive, attempting the tried and true method of putting one's enemy off his game. He knew that Milliardo was studying him over the rim of his glass, trying to ascertain just how much he knew, how dangerous he was, and what kind of man he had become since the war.
"So young, still," Milliardo finally said. "Scars. Fresh wounds. The heavy burdens of society. Yuy was right when he said that you were-"
"Can we not do this?" Duo wondered sharply. "I'm here on official business. A few questions and you can go back to staring at the roses and telling your therapist you didn't really mean to take a chunk out of the Earth."
Milliardo's blue eyes went cold, his long hair free and catching a slight breeze. He looked less than human, Duo thought, and had to wonder about tampering with genes and the effects that might have on a man's stability.
"Even if I knew anything, why would I tell you?" Milliardo said bluntly, putting down his glass, on a side table, as if he had decided to give up all pretense.
Do you want Heero to die?" Duo wondered. "You two were always in competition. Is this the final 'one up' on Heero Yuy?"
"That was war," Milliardo scoffed. "This is survival. I'm walking the thin edge of a death sentence, myself. I'm sure a plea of insanity will help Yuy, just as much as it helped me, in the courts."
Duo looked over the vast estate. "I doubt that he'll get a cushy cell like this one while they give him therapy."
"Connections," Milliardo replied with an apologetic shrug.
"Heero called you," Duo pressed, tired of the game.
"It seems that he called everyone, except... you," Milliardo pointed out and gave Duo's body a pitying once over."Everyone forgets the wounded veteran, when he's not able to fight any longer."
"How do you know that?" Duo asked sharply, pushing the anger down and staying professional with an effort. "Why did he think that you could help him?"
Milliardo took up his glass again to take a long, delicate sip of his wine. "I was the last person that he called, or so he informed me. I was his 'last chance'," Milliardo finally replied.
Another answer aimed to unsettle Duo, to make him angry. That he hadn't even been Heero's 'last chance'... He wouldn't play into that, he decided, and asked, "last chance before he went into his unofficial contacts?"
Milliardo made an 'of course' motion with his glass and took another sip.
"He said nothing to you about who those contacts might be?" Duo asked.
"Are you hoping that I will tell you something that I didn't tell Preventers?" Milliardo wondered with a laugh. "Do you imagine that we have some sort of special connection, because of the war, that would cause me to share?"
"More like, I have enough on you to end this five star cushy retreat, so you'd better spill," Duo told him as he flipped his palm computer at Milliardo to show him the screen.
Milliardo put down his glass as he read and then frowned sharply. "Noin is-"
"Ex-military personal that you are not supposed to be interacting with, per your court arrangement," Duo pointed out. "I have vid, too, beside eye witness accounts."
"So, you've stalked me?" Milliardo snorted. "I will have to remember to pull my curtains closed at night."
"I stalked for one night, last night, as a matter of fact," Duo replied as he shut off his palm computer and pocketed it. He added with distaste, "I'm not about to make a habit of it."
"Only Yuy is your type?" Milliardo wondered acidly.
"You're definitely not, and neither is Noin," Duo countered as he stood up. "Last chance."
"Mark Sheffield," Milliardo said, reluctantly. "That's not a solid lead, by the way, just a name that I heard when someone thought that I wasn't there to listen."
Duo nodded. "I know the name. It is a possibility."
"Then I can reclaim my solitude?" Milliardo asked, as if he had become bored with it all.
"Wallow in it," Duo replied and began to walk away.
Milliardo called after him. Duo stopped and didn't turn as Milliardo said, "I know that look, the look of a man longing for someone. I see it in the mirror often enough. Remember who Yuy is: a perfectionist, a man who doesn't accept weakness of any sort, and a man who even frightened me with his drive to give his life for a cause. Don't imagine that there is any place for you in his world, now, if there ever was."
Duo threw over his shoulder,"You still don't have a clue what Gundam pilots are made of, Zechs, and I don't think that you ever will."
Duo's hand was wandering over implants and scars, though, as he walked, and he couldn't help a tightness around his heart. Milliardo was right about Heero in one respect, but he was wrong in assuming that, knowing that, would effect the way Duo needed to do his job. Heero Yuy didn't have the market cornered in self sacrifice.
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Another few days were lost in a dive of an efficiency hotel, after changing clothes and making false trails. Duo spent the time trying to find a Sheffield who's life seemed likely to have crossed paths with Heero's. Duo narrowed it down to sixty three, before he began cold calling them, with different aliases, to see if he could tease any information out of them, that might narrow down his field of suspects. When he was done, he had the list narrowed to eighteen.
School teacher, eight ex military, two pilots, drift mechanic, lower government official, swat team expert, construction worker with terrorist ties to the war, and several out of work ex Oz who still kept in contact with their old units. The school teacher was the most interesting. He had taught at one of the schools that they had used for their undercover operations. The coincidence was enough to make Duo put him at the head of the list. It hadn't been just two Gundam pilots that had been fighting the war. It was possible that Heero, at least, had backup.
Wasting too much time, Duo thought irritably, as he convinced a valet that a red sports car was his, after lifting the ID, and claim ticket, from it's unsuspecting owner. Duo had learned, early on, that people did not often focus on the ID photo. It was enough, in their minds, that a person bothered to take it out, as if that act proved honesty.
A trip to a small store for spray paint and the car was soon a splotchy gold, instead, with fake rust spots in red. Duo almost felt like apologizing to the piece of metal, as he used it's speed to get him through the night and to his next destination quickly. He'd explain to Preventers his lapse in ethics, later.
A dropped name when they thought that Milliardo hadn't been listening. That bothered Duo. Survival instincts sensed a possible trap, or false lead, at the least, but he couldn't ascertain the reasoning behind it. They might suspect that someone would talk to Milliardo, but they wouldn't know who that person would be. Duo wished that Milliardo had elaborated more, or that he could have safely beat it out of him, but the man had enjoyed his moment of importance too much, knowing how well he was guarded. Everyone now knew that Duo Maxwell had visited him. They might even know about Sheffield, but, until he showed up at the man's door, they wouldn't know when. It was his only comfort.
The car was abandoned two cities from his destination and Duo took a transport the rest of the way. When he was let out onto the rolling lawn of a familiar school, Duo felt a bit of pleasant nostalgia, as he kept his head low and stayed in a crowd of disembarking students.
The school seemed pretty much the same, a sprawling collection of buildings with young people walking about in uniform. Duo couldn't pass for one of them any longer, but he hoped to be mistaken as an aid or a teacher.
"Do you need some help?" A young man asked politely, looking up at Duo with concerned eyes.
"Directions to a Mr. Sheffield's office," Duo replied with an easy smile from under a staid gray hat that was better suited to a much older man. His matching gray suit, lifted from a clothing store, didn't fit in the leg, but his shoulders were wide enough to carry the coat well.
"Do you need a hover chair?" the young man asked. "It's a long walk to the North campus."
"I can manage," Duo replied, annoyed that the boy had spotted his stiff limp, despite his attempt to walk normally. "North campus, you said?"
The young man nodded. "Room 131. It's still taped off, but people have been in there. The students made it a game. Sneak in at night to see if Mr. Sheffield haunts the room. Stupid, really."
"Mr. Sheffield.. died?" Duo guessed with a disappointed frown.
The student looked instantly contrite. "You didn't know? I'm sorry. We're you a colleague, friend... family?"
"Colleague," Duo lied. "What happened to him?"
"Heart attack, they said, but they searched his room as if they suspected something else," the boy told him as if imparting a secret. "The room was torn up, badly, and the people who came to investigate searched every inch."
"Rumors," Duo chided and the boy looked embarrassed. "I don't suppose they would mind if I took a look? Are his things still there?"
The boy replied, curiosity peaked, "No one's come to clean the room out, yet. They might not like anyone there."
"I'll make sure to talk to the faculty, before I go in," Duo promised. "Thank you for the information."
"You're lucky that you ran into me, sir," the boy told him with a cheeky grin. "I run errands for the faculty, so I know more than most students."
Duo chuckled and pulled credits from his pocket. He slipped them into the boy's hand, knowing that it was required if he wanted the boy's silence. The boy gave him a wink and went on his way. Duo had another moment of nostalgia that had nothing to do with the campus and everything to do with his childhood on the streets.
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Everything had been picked over thoroughly, Duo saw, as he lifted the crime scene tape in front of the door and ducked under it. It wasn't the usual search for suicide notes or bottles of heart medicine, though. Couch cushions were ripped open, floorboards pried up, and parts of walls caved in. Blank spaces on bookshelves, and dustless areas on several surfaces, told Duo that things had been confiscated. A computer keyboard was all that was left of a computer system.
Duo picked up the keyboard and turned it, this way and that, in his hands, as he looked around him. The man had been a rugby fan, many things in his apartment reflecting that fact. That decor made one thing stand out like a red neon sign.
Chucking the keyboard suddenly aside, with a rattle of keys and a loud sound, onto a table, Duo strode over to a clear, square vase. It had a dead orchid arrangement in it that looked as if it had never seen water. The bottom of the vase was filled with pale gray stones. Duo dumped the contents of the vase onto the bed. A memory stick fell out with the rocks and dead flowers.
Duo grunted as he picked it up. "Didn't seem the type to arrange flowers," Duo muttered as he pocketed the stick.
Duo searched a little further, flipping through a few personal things they had left behind. He wasn't surprised when a voice said, from the doorway, "Are you from the investigation team?"
Duo turned as he let documents drop, his expression pleasant. "Sorry that I didn't clear it with the office, first, sir. There's new facts in the case and they wanted me to recheck some items."
The man frowned. He was tall and powerful looking in his faculty uniform. he had blonde, steely blue eyes, and a chiseled jaw like a block of granite. Everything that wasn't an attraction to Duo. Apparently, though, from the man's appraising up and down perusal, Duo was attractive to him.
"They told me about his child porn collection," the man replied as he ducked under the tape and entered the room. His look of distaste didn't reach his eyes as he stepped into Duo's space and looked down at him. "We're talking to any students who had regular contact with him."
"Child porn?" Duo echoed, mind taken off track.
"Not young children, teenagers," the man added as he reached out a hand to shake Duo's. He held it a bit too long and Duo was forced to extricate his hand himself. "Mr. James Greenwell, Headmaster."
"Teenagers?" Duo repeated, trying to fit that information into the picture of the man that he had already formed.
"Nothing sexual in the photos, thank goodness, and they were all dressed, but the suspicion is there, nonetheless," Mr. Greenwell replied. "Why else would a man keep a collection of photographs and computer files of teenagers, if he wasn't... using them?"
"Anyone from your school?" Duo wondered.
"No," Mr. Greenwell replied, "As far as we know, of course. Isn't that why you're here? To find more information about those children, Mr..."
"Agent Maxwell," Duo informed him. "I'm with Preventers."
"The famous Duo Maxwell?" the man said in astonishment. "I'm honored, sir."
Duo was very certain that the man had already known who he was dealing with. There was a flatness to his gaze that was familiar from the war. Game face, Duo knew, the face he put on as well, when he didn't want his enemies to know what he was about to do to them.
The man's eyes slid over Duo's shoulder to the bed with it's upended contents. He didn't comment on it, but when his eyes returned to Duo there was a firmness there. This wasn't Headmaster Greenwell, Duo knew, then, and surmised that the man had 'borrowed' the uniform to sift through the contents of the room, himself.
Duo's gaze was rock steady as he said, evenly, "This could get messy. You can walk away. One chance."
The man rubbed at a rising erection under his pants. "Oh, I want a chance, all right. I'll take it, too."
Duo was used to people who doubted that his short, crippled package could do them any harm. Some were wary of his roll of large shoulders and cocky stance, that promised otherwise. Complete idiots ignored those clues, and his reputation, that would have spelled out his real abilities. Greenwell, or whoever he was, wasn't an idiot. The hand on his crotch was a ploy to get that hand under his uniform to grab something else.
The stun gun was meant to take Duo out quickly. The man was surprised when Duo not only didn't go down, but after a jerk of muscles, was able to clean the man's clock with a blow of an elbow that had been reinforced with gundanium.
"Paid a hell of a lot for that," Duo told the unconscious man after panting through the tremors of shock in his nerves. He waggled the elbow at him. "At least this hardware is good for something besides keeping my ass in one piece."
The shock had jangled resistors and micro chips, though, and Duo found it hard to make the connection between his brain and certain parts of his hardwired anatomy. His training, that could shrug off the shock to begin with, and operate on whatever it had, carried him through the door and down the hallway at a stagger.
The boy was waiting for him with a hover chair outside of the building. Duo grinned at him and the boy winked back. Never underestimate a cheeky opportunistic teenager, Duo thought as he all but fell into the chair and paid his 'fee'.
"Thought you might have trouble, after, sir," the boy told him and then pointed to their left. "Side entrance for deliveries is down that way. There's nothing going on there until later. It will be deserted."
"I might have done something illegal," Duo couldn't help pointing out.
The boy snorted and rolled eyes. "You? I can tell you're not a bad man, sir."
Duo was mystified, especially considering his violent life. "How?"
"Just can," the boy said with a shrug. "Leave the hover chair by the gate, if you can. Old Keller uses it. I'll need to take it back to him third hour."
"Thank you," Duo told him. "You are helping the good guys."
The boy nodded and grinned and then he was walking away, keeping undercover, so that no one would see them and be able to link them together if Duo managed to get caught.
Taking the hovercraft to the gate, Duo left it, and managed to walk the block and a half to a transport. By that time, he was exhausted and shaking. He had to lose any chance of pursuit, though, and he didn't find a place to rest, until he had changed transports several times.
Once in a cheap room, at a hotel that didn't even ask for ID, Duo felt safe enough to lock his door and then boot up the memory stick with his palm computer.
There were photographs of teenagers, boys and girls, Duo discovered, everyone of them standing at stiff attention and staring at the camera as if they were part of a military review. Their stats were attached, and they were all eerily similar in height, weight, and build. Names weren't part of the files, or histories of any kind. The familiar flat look was in all of their eyes.
Soldiers, Duo guessed, or brainwashed. Why a teacher in an out of the way school, would have their information was the question. Was he killed for it? How many people had been looking for that information? Mr. Greenwell, or whoever he was, was another in a line of investigations. Late to the scene? Maybe not. If he had found out that information hadn't been discovered yet.
The mystery was unearthing ugly clues that Duo was familiar with. He didn't want to imagine the world plunged into more fighting, more wars with people using whatever means necessary. He had his own photo, somewhere, with his own stats, stating his perfect physical conformation to pilot a Gundam, a machine that had required flexible, small, and a mind set that didn't care about dying.
"Not on my watch," Duo ground out.
TBC