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"Alternative Directions: Options "Written By: Karina Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing or the lovely
boys and their girls in the series. Wish I did. Please don't sue me.
I haven't even got a brass razoo to give you. Rating: Deffinately PG in Australia, at the moment,
but probably safer to say R for later chapters. Not sure about international
ratings Warnings: It will be 6x2, even though it does
not start out that way. After all, Zechs and Duo never met in Gundam
Wing and only spoke briefly over a com line in Endless Waltz. I've
tried to keep them in character as I saw them in the series. A bit
of language creeping in under stressful conditions. Pairings: eventual 6x2, past 2xH, 2+H,6x9, 1+R
Summary: Directions is set post Endless Waltz
and roughly 2 years have passed. Zechs and Noin are on Mars and Duo,
after spending some time with Hilde in a relationship leaves L2 to
join Preventers. Hilde was not happy about his decision. I guess enough
said. Here t'is, and I hope you like it. This is also AU for the standard
setting, as well as the series and Endless Waltz. Spoilers: Gundam Wing Series and Endless Waltz Many thanks to Dulin for volunteering to beta this. //... // thoughts
"Alternative Directions: Options"
Chapter 110 Mars Colony Base Dome 2nd March AC 198 Time: 00: 38 [approx Sanc time 22:28] Zechs At least he knew that he need not concern himself with two of the agents who had been sent from Earth to take him from Mars. Noin had killed two which had sparked off this blood bath that ravaged the population of Mars but of those he had personally faced thus far he knew that two still lived. The men he had taken down in the maintenance room he had found still there, sleeping where he had left them. He had given them a quick once over and determined that their pulse was strong and steady and they appeared to be having no difficulties with their breathing and so he considered them to be safe enough for the moment. In their current state they posed no danger to the people of the base nor to themselves. He had been disturbed to discover that the two women had been moved from the room where they had faced off over the twins, but he had known there was the risk that the nurses who had been witness to the altercation would not be inclined to leave the women as they had fallen. No doubt they would be somewhere in the medical section, their injuries having been long attended to and if there was a kindly God looking down on this mess, then they would still be under the effects of the anaesthetic that he had administered. Surely no well meaning doctor would have interfered with the sedatives. The results of the search of the medical centre thus far had produced the two men sleeping in the maintenance room, two missing ESUN agents and a death toll he would prefer not to contemplate. He had felt something deep within him clench when he and Giles had located the two male patients known to be in the centre and three of the nurses assigned to the medical wing. Slaughter had come to the sub base, but there were still staff missing and thus far they had not located Jenny Santos which he hoped was an indication that there were people alive here. He almost wished that they had found no one and that he still could entertain the illusion that at least the sub base had been spared the slaughter. He pressed his back to the wall, staring at the uniform tan colour. That wall was clean. Clean and just as it should be and it was a lie. That colour belonged to a place that had not known the depravity of cold blooded murder. Sometimes it was better not to know. He watched as Giles closed the door and leaned his body back against its frame, taking the moment to rest. He could not blame the man for resting his head back against the frame, eyes closed as he tried to gain control of what no doubt was a sickening churning of his gut. He knew that sick chill deep in his own vitals only too well and though it was dangerous to linger here for more than a few seconds he could not help it. They needed this moment, this respite, to regain control. It had happened not so long ago. The evidence was there for anyone to see and understand. It screamed sudden horrifying death. Death dealt equally coldly and efficiently to both nurse and patient caught at unawares by the murderer in their midst. How long ago had the slaughter in the sub base begun? The bodies in the shuttle bay had suggested the killing of the personal there had taken place hours ago and Hawass had confirmed that time scale, but the death stalking the medical section was fresh, minutes old. Certainly less than an hour, perhaps no more than half an hour had passed since these people had met their end. The bodies they had found in Medical were all fresh and in the latest case warmth still lingered. None of them, be they patient or nurse had died easily. In most cases death had come at least mercifully swiftly, the evidence suggesting the kills had been from a distance with thrown blades. The evidence was clear that they had another knife man on the loose, but this last room … Something had changed. Did they have more than one killer stalking the area? In this room lay evidence of a psycho who thirsted for the thrill in the brutality and viciousness of a kill. A wealth of blood decorated the walls and floor in patterns that suggested the killer had smeared the evidence of his kills in something similar to a trophy statement. It was sickening. Revolting. The nurses body had been stretched out over the bed suggesting that she had tried to protect her patient from their killer. “Tell me that we are going to take those bastards down.” the words rasped from Giles, his voice betraying the thickness in his throat that made breathing, let alone speaking, difficult and suggested that he still fought against the urge to discard violently the contents of his last meal. //God, yes! I want them down. I want them down so badly but … Do we dare to take the time to hunt down this killer? I have to think of the greater design here. The larger need.// “They will go down but …” Zechs glared at his feet, his hands clenched at his sides as he fought his own urge to vomit. “I … We have to … Giles, we have to make up our minds here. About what it is that we must do. If … If I did not need to get information out of them …” Giles seemed to pull himself together with an effort, pushing himself away from the support of the door frame and looking up and down the length of the hallway. He was visibly forcing himself to get past the initial anger and the disgust and the horror to find that balanced point between the emotions where he could function without their influence. “Yeah.” his voice still was husky, thick, but he was already moving on. “Yes, I know. We need to learn as much information about who it was who initiated this mess as we can and we have to learn it from them. There is no one else who will tell us what we need to know. To gain the information we have to take them alive and once we have the information from them … then we can't kill them. Not in cold blood.” //Thank God. He understands.// It was one thing to take a man down and to kill him in the heat of battle, but it was entirely another matter to kill in cold blood. It simply was not a part of the nature of Zechs Merquise or Milliardo Peacecraft to kill wantonly or to kill in cold blood. Killing those men and women who had brought murder to Mars without the fire of battle heating his blood was quite beyond the capabilities of everything that made him who and what he was. Despite what so many people of the Earth Sphere thought of him, despite all evidence to the contrary, he was not a cold blooded killer. He never had been. Not even in the long ago days when he had been a part of Oz had he killed indiscriminately. He had killed, he did not deny that. He had killed many and he had done so with one exception silently apologizing to his victims souls for what he saw as the necessity of the moment. When he had killed he had always done so for a reason. For his own life he had killed. For the lives of others he had killed and for the future of man he had pushed the killing to extremes, but never had he killed in cold blood. In all of his career as a killer only one man had ever earned true and undying hatred from him and he had killed that man out of a child's burning need for revenge mixed with the anger of a young mans search for justice. He often wondered if in the end he would have pulled the trigger if the fool had not made a try for that hidden gun? In response to that moment of recognition and fear and the threat of the weapon he had seen again the bloodied body of his father, the body of his mother, fouled with blood and debris and he had seen his dream of huddled children and later the reality of those same children huddled together, dying in the snow. He would never be able to forget the flames leaping around those tiny bodies. He would never forget what that butcher had cost them all. //Yes. Yes, I would have pulled the trigger. Nothing would have stopped me, I think, but here it is different. No matter what it is that they have done I can't kill in cold blood. I have had my day of being Judge, Jury and Executioner. Is it simply that too many people have died already this day? There has been too much bloodshed. It stirs to life the vision and foreshadows the wars and … I will not permit so many to die. Please, please let it not happen. It must not be allowed to birth. I owe it to all those who have already paid the ultimate price of their lives to ensure that the Generation Wars do not become reality. I have killed so many people to turn away from that brutal course. So many innocents but … Was it for nothing more than to effect a delay? So many dead. Too many dead. They fill my dreams and then I remember the visions of what might be and I wonder that those deaths may be in vain. There have not been so many dead when I look at what I have seen and compare the numbers, but … I can't kill again. I can't kill without … without the threat being immediate.// “Zechs? Zechs! Are you alright?” Giles was close, thankfully not touching him but standing close enough to be a reassuring presence, and not to present a threat to his personal space. He realized that his body was tense, almost trembling in reaction to the sight of what lay beyond that door. Death had never affected him in this fashion before and he was like this because … because … It was just that he was tired. Physically and mentally exhausted by the trials of the day and by pushing aside the pressure from within that was becoming more and more alarming. Vision. It threatened to surge within him. He had seen too much death in his life and he was very tired of seeing that finality. Awake or asleep visions always seemed to come down to death. “I'm fine.” “No, you are not fine but then neither am I.” Giles moved a step away to lean back against the wall, lowering his head to watch his feet but not before giving the hallway a sweeping glance. “We can't stay here much longer and we have to decide what to do. They may not have killed everyone here.” There was the faintest hint of a question in his tone. //Make the decision for me, Giles. I don't want to decide who lives and who dies any more. Please take the decision from me. // Cowardice. He almost cringed and stiffened his spine. He had to get beyond this dangerous apathy that gripped him. If only that incessant pressure in his head would let up and permit him to think! // Do we take the time to look to see if everyone here is dead? Do we dare not take that time to check … there may be others alive here who will die at this lunatics hands. I don't … Noin needs attention. When this is all over she will need every assistance these people can give to her. She can not have come this far, survived this long only to die because all of the medical staff have been slaughtered. It can't end like that.// How many had they killed? How many had the members of Blue Squad and particularly the Sleepers killed in this never ending day? Not just here, in the medical wing but all over the dome? At least he knew that there were people alive outside the dome who would have died had not fortune and the Grace of God smiled on them. There were also people alive in the upper base under the great Dome and more in Alpha Base and they were safe enough for now provided they did not leave their secured shelters prematurely. “I don't know, Giles. I never saw half of what has happened so far this day in any vision that I can recall. Events are swinging wildly out of control, if I ever really had any control in the matter. The visions I don't know. I never saw the slaughter in the medical centre, that much I am sure of and whether that is a hope that there are people still alive in here or not I don't know. I told you that things had changed, that I am as much in the dark as you are.” Giles sighed, again glancing both ways along the hallway before he pushed himself from the wall and brushed hair from his eyes, setting his shoulders firmly. “Well, when you are Gifted one thing that you learn early is that you take the good with the bad and fill in the gaps between as best you can. We can not always have the advantage that visions offer. Sometimes we simply have to wing it. Time to move.” he glanced at his companion and offered a diffident shrug. “So … where do we go?” // Why me? I can follow. I do not have to lead. Why can I not follow for a change?// It seemed that it was not to be that someone else should provide the plan of action they would follow and bemoaning that would serve no purpose. He was going to have to lead and simply do the best that he could with his failing sensibilities. Where did they go indeed? Where did he think he was leading this man? To more death? Were they simply going in the direction that would lead to more bloodshed and no solution other than the total decimation of the colony? If he had not survived Libra and come to Mars then death would not now stalk the halls seeking more victims. Was this all because he did not have the grace to die when the Libra had exploded? Was it inevitable that this massacre had to happen because he had lived? Who was he anyway to sit here and presume that the worlds of the ESUN revolved around his survival or death? Talk about an ego. He hissed softly, squashing that train of thought quickly. He could not afford to become absorbed in the intricacies offered by entertaining the what ifs of possibility at this time. This was neither the time nor the place for him to entertain the plunge once again into depression. Yes, it was undeniably the truth that he was still in shock but he could not permit himself to succumb to its effects at this time. In truth he had not felt himself since that episode in Hydroponics Dome Two where he had arranged the electrocution of the two Sleepers. Steadily things had seemed to be going downhill from there and his perceptions seemed to has somehow shifted until he had little faith in himself and next to no faith at all in the validity of his visions. He was confused, exhausted and he could only take so much more. When this was all over he could allow it all to sweep over him and take him down into blessed oblivion. Whether that escape would be in the form of depression, screaming hysterics or the pit of unconsciousness he did not care at this time, just so long as the reaction held off until he was assured that it was all over and that there would be no more killing because of him. “Engineering.” He made the choice but something within him quivered at it. By rights, by all of the years of his training and by the needs of common decency itself, they should go room by room through this wing of the base, seeking out the killer, but he dared not open one more door and find another corpse. The trembling he could feel deep within him was warning enough that something was very wrong. He did not trust himself at this stage, with this unknown pressure influencing him to face death again so soon while his blood ran so cold in his veins and the headache reared to spitting, clawing life. It was the headache that so worried him, tantalizing sign that vision or lack of vision was pushing him into mistakes. Turning aside from the hunt through the medical centre went against all of his training which reinforced the idiocy of leaving so much potential for betrayal and discovery at his back but he could not face it. If he left the medical centre then perhaps the surge of the visions would recede and he could get the equipment he needed to find. He would have to chance leaving an undiscovered enemy at his back and he could not forget that they had a time table to cater to as best they could. He was going to have to guard his partners back because this foolish decision to leave the medical bay was his responsibility alone and he would not permit Haydon Giles be the one to pay the price. ---------------- Giles “Engineering.” He nodded his acceptance of the decision, almost expecting the choice but distrusting it now that it had come. Taking a moment to look down the hallway that led deeper into the hospital section of the base and wondering where in there the killer lay and how many victims he would gather while they … No. He would stop that kind of insubordination right here and now. It was a command decision and knowing Zechs as he did he could not think it was a choice made lightly. There would have been due consideration of all of the potential variables before that decision had been reached. There had been no alarm raised in the sub base beyond the alarm that had called out the emergency response crew when the elevators had exploded into fiery destruction. Whether people were alive in Medical or not it no longer mattered. At this time they needed to make a move and he needed to get Zechs out of this place and keep him functioning if at all possible. If he could keep the blonde active and occupied then he had a hope of keeping him stable and he truly had no desire to deal with a high talent psychic in the throes of a breakdown. //At least I can count my blessings that he has not shown any sign of a kinetic talent to this point. If he was a kinetic I think it would have shown under the stress we have experienced today. I can just imagine the kind of destruction he would be capable of if he was a kinetic and he lost it as Noin did. With the tight rope he has been walking for the last few hours if he had any decent strength along those lines he could probably level the base if he snapped.// he scooted after the blonde who was already retracing their steps to the safety door, watching the sway of that long almost silver tail of hair. //There I go exaggerating again, but the problem this time is that I really am not sure if it is an exaggeration. I had no idea that Noin was a psychic, let alone had kinetic tendencies and obviously is a powerful kinetic talent. Look what she did when she was pushed to extremes. I hate to think how long it is going to take to repair the control systems of the base and she never left much of McIntyre. Bloody bitch looked like a pin cushion. He's been walking a tightrope a lot longer than Noin had been and if he breaks under the pressure I really don't want to be around.// Now that was stupidity in the extreme when he considered it. He was the only person on Mars that he knew of with any experience in dealing with psychics. Not that it was a comforting thought, of course, but it was the simple truth and he had to get used to it. He just loved being responsible for things beyond the limits of his abilities and troubles so far beyond the training he had been given to deal with his own talents. He would far prefer to find himself facing twenty of these ESUN agents unarmed than to deal with one psychic in crisis. //And I have been given the dubious joy of handling two of them. Raydon, you bastard, I am so going to give you a thick ear when I see you next. If I see you. Why did you not foresee that this mess would happen? Why did your much vaunted talents fail this time?// They were at the blast door and he took up position to watch their rear while Zechs dealt with the door code. He did not like leaving suspect territory at his rear and the medical section was now considered hostile territory. For all they knew those bastards who got their jollies off by slaughtering people could be in there still, quite happily killing the remaining medical staff. It went against all that was decent that had been drilled into him as a child to leave the killer loose. It left question marks of security that he did not want to leave unattended but there was little choice. He could not afford to have Zechs lose control and as much as he did not want to leave the centre unexplored he really could not say that he wanted to find more evidence of the brutality of these people. “I can't.” the whisper was a deep sigh, almost a groan. Somewhere between a moan of pain and a sob. His eyes shot to the blonde leaning against the door and the stance of the man was warning enough that he was not to be touched just now. Touching that shaking form would be dangerous to his health and he had already come close to paying with his life for being stupid around the blonde at a critical moment. “Problem?” he kept his voice a low whisper, unwilling to make more noise than necessary. “Yes. I can't leave the centre unsearched. I can't leave a killer on the loose. We have to go back and do it properly.” Giles swept a glance behind him at the empty hallway and shrugged, himself wanting to go in there and deal with the killer but aware too, as no doubt Zechs was, that they needed to deal with the entire situation, not just an isolated incident. “We have a deadline to meet.” “So we have a deadline. If we leave this unfinished we could be followed and picked off at their convenience. We will likely be late anyway to meet Barker, but at least we stand a chance of making it eventually.” Giles noted that he sounded as though he was trying to convince himself. “It's stupid to leave possible enemies unmonitored at our rear and if there is the chance that the bastard doing the killing is still here then he has to be taken down. I …” He rubbed at his temples, blue eyes narrowed with sudden pain. “Running is not the right way to survive to bring those men down.” //There is something wrong with him. Don't you break on me here.// “I'll take point. We know that the first six rooms are clear so we can start from there.” He was not going to argue with the man after all he agreed that they needed to take out this killer, but he was concerned that finding more dead was going to push Zechs beyond whatever balance he still maintained. He would do what he could to lessen the impact of whatever they were going to find waiting for them by being the first through the doors and keeping Zechs as far out of the action as possible. If he could cushion the man enough to allow him a few minutes respite to recover some semblance of stability and rest then they might just survive the remainder of the night. Neither he nor Zechs knew in what rooms the patients had been before the base had been raided by the agents and he was not going to offer that they split the rooms between them. Two ESUN agents were missing according to Zechs and who knew how many Sleepers might be hunting. Hurt as his partner was Zechs was still far more deadly in melee than he was and the blonde's reflexes were legendary. If he looked in a room and ducked fast then Zechs would react on an instinctive level and hopefully that would be enough. Ice blue eyes caught and held his for a lengthy moment and then a faint nod responded. A quick rummage in a pouch produced the dental mirror and Zechs offered the device to Giles with the briefest lift of his lips. If it was meant to be a smile then Giles was heartened by it as a sign that Zechs had regained some measure of control over his failing emotions. He had underestimated the man too many times today to make the same mistake again. Instead of anticipating when the blonde would crumble or explode he would face each minute as it came and hope to catch the explosion before things deteriorated too far and if it was a crumble, he was just going to have to hope that the man would be content to use him as a Teddy Bear and not as a punching bag. //I only hope I can react fast enough if he loses control, either way. He has managed to surprise me too many times today for me to doubt him now. If he thinks he is up to dealing with this then I have to take him on trust … even if I do flinch every time he looks my way. I can't give him the impression that I don't trust him, especially when the truth is that I do trust him. My concern is not for his capabilities, but for his stamina. // He sighed softly, received the mirror in silence and led the way back up the hallway toward the first of the rooms they had as yet not checked. //Yeah, right, and I'm a closet cross dresser. Just keep your control Merquise. I don't have a hope in hell of taking you down so don't you dare lose it. // ---------- Zechs // What is wrong with me? We are so far off any of the visions that I can recall in any appreciable detail that I have no idea if I am making the situation worse. I just second guessed my own decision. Visions. When the hell did I start to doubt … Ah, my head. I wish this bloody headache would leave me in peace. I used to work in the dark all of the time and it never bothered me. I never used to have visions and I was not afraid of acting then as the situation warranted. I went into some situations with far less knowledge that I have now unafraid and willing to act and I survived. Why is now so different? Why do the visions make everything so unreal? I made the decision to go to the engineering sector for valid reasons and now I change my mind because … I'm not even sure why I changed my mind. I have survived for years without the aid of visions.// He scowled as he followed the man along the hallway, quick and silent and expecting doom to fall at every step.. Was that the problem? He had survived unknowing of the repercussions on the future and the effects every action and decision had on the flow of future event. He had survived unknowing of the ripple flow on effect and he had not know a quarter of what he knew in this situation now. He knew a multiple of possible future outcomes and any one of them might be directly related to events about to occur in the medical section but he did not now what actions would produce the most desirable results or which would interact with leaving the medical section and meeting with Barker. Too many possibilities. Too many variables. He had been so much happier before this frightening ability had come on him. Was it his survival of the events of the past that bothered him or was it the death rate of the terra formers tied up to his survival that was the problem? Nothing seemed to make sense anymore. The more he thought about what was happening, what would happen and what must not happen the more confused and distressed he became. //There is no time for a psyche session now you fool and how would you know how to help yourself anyway? People are dying around you and you have to help them. As best you can. When did you find yourself concerned with whether you lived or died? Survival never used to bother you.// Survival had never mattered to him in the past. Whether he lived or died had not factored into his decisions beyond the need to equal the score with those who had murdered all that he had known in his childhood. No, his personal survival had not mattered after he had shot the bastard who had brought terror to his fathers kingdom. For a long time now he had not thought of Sanc as his kingdom or even his in general. He had no claim to that land that existed now. His Sanc was the Sanc of a child's lost dreams and could never again be found in reality. The Sanc that he knew was gone in blood and in fire, a thing of dream and nightmare, both desired and feared. He desired the dreams of his days as a child in the land that was so like a fairytale kingdom and he feared the nightmares of its fall. The Prince who had watched his world die had in turn died a long time ago. With the fall of all that meant life to him the child had died and what had been left of him had withered away over the intervening years. That innocent Milliardo Peacecraft was long gone. Zechs Merquise was another matter. Zechs had been birthed for the purposes of survival and later for revenge and justice and he was no stranger to bringing death to those who stood in his way. It had been a part of the price to be paid for his survival after the fall of Sanc. So many people had died at the hands of Zechs Merquise, but still more had died at the hands of the reborn Milliardo Peacecraft, but whether he wore the persona of the soldier Zechs Merquise or the determined pacifist Milliardo Peacecraft intent on ending all wars, he had never killed needlessly. He was at this time Zechs Merquise more than Milliardo and if you surrendered to Zechs Merquise you lived. His honor would not permit less, as certain people had learned when they had broken faith with the vows the Specials had taken on their enlistment. //Alex and Muller. God. I have not thought of them for a long time now. They were Oz officers, bound by the same code of honor that bound me and they slaughtered those men and women who surrendered to them in good faith. I have never killed as they did. I have never killed so wantonly, so joyfully and for those killings that I did I felt remorse. They were Noin's students and I know her well enough to know that she never taught them how to slaughter people. She was never like that and she honored her oaths as I did. I have never understood how people become that cold blooded vicious killer, but I have seen the results of their madness in the fall of Sanc and in the killings of those like Alex and Muller. I saw it in my childhood when Sanc burned around me. I saw it during the war many times, not just in those two. I was witness to it too often in visions and I see it again now on Mars.// He watched as Giles knelt at the first of the untested doors and slipped the dentists mirror into the first of the rooms, the door open only enough to permit the mirror to be slipped into the room and afford them a view of what might lie within. //I was never a cold blooded killer. Yes, I have killed and I have killed many people, many of whom no doubt did not deserve the killing, but at the time … They had the misfortune to be on the opposing side in the war and killing is a necessary part of war and being a soldier. Most of those who died would have understood that. The career soldiers would have understood it. Civilians caught up in the battles we fought died too, though I was careful to fight well clear of non-combatants where possible. As few people as possible died when I fought. At least I like to think so. It was never my intention to slaughter people. It was my intention to free Sanc and give it back to the people who survived the slaughter and the occupation. To give it to Relena to care for so that it might once again become the fairytale I recall. God. What is wrong with me? I'm going to get Giles killed if I don't wake myself out of this idiocy.// “Zechs? You alright?” “Yes.” he hardened his grip on the whip at his belt, a shudder rising deep within, racing through him, coursing through his body and with it again that surge of pain behind his carefully maintained barriers. “I think something … something is wrong. It feels … wrong.” Giles stared at him for a long second, a frown deepening. “You don't look so good.” No he did not doubt that he looked ill and he did not feel entirely well either. Something was threatening, hovering on the edge of his perceptions, bringing visions of death to dance before him. Visions of Sanc's fall and of the wars fought and won and lost. Visions of the Generation Wars that must not be permitted to rise from the ashes of past destruction. Visions of the dead lying in the upper dome and there was a thundering pain and beat in his head that was beyond mere pain. A thundering like the advent of vision and he wanted to scream at it to let him alone. He could not breathe with the pain rising and he could not afford to go down into vision now. ************** Fingers, long and slender, the fingers one associated with a musician wrapped around the metal knob. One hand on the door handle, the second holding an automatic pistol crowned with a silencer and held at the ready. A smirk twitching full lips into a sneer as through the crack in the door he watched the fools who would next grace his kill tally. The next victims who would meet the God of Death and sing his name in praise to his God and smooth the way for his welcome when it was time for him to face Death. All who were slain at his hands were slain for the greater glory of the God and he was His most humble and devout follower. Ah, but no, he must be careful here. He was the follower of the God of Death but he was the servant of men of high station and he must follow their instruction. One of these was his target and he must be taken alive. He must take only the one who knelt at the door and present him to the God of Death for his glorification and the other must be his offering to his human masters. His human masters who would forgive him the need to hurt their prize in capturing him so long as he did not kill him. The other they would not care about and he would be sacrifice to Death. // Come to me. Come to me and we can end this here and now.// His eyes glowed with fanatic fire as he watched the darker of the two reaching for Peacecraft who looked as though he was about to faint and that was his chance. He would have no trouble dropping the fool and collecting Peacecraft as a bonus. *************** Zechs “No!” His head generated pain in blinding waves that took his sight but he needed no sight through eyes to move as his body demanded that he move. He could feel hard leather in his hand even as he heaved Giles out of his way, lunging toward that door that lay on the opposite side of the hallway and was opening so incredibly slowly. Everything was happening in slow motion and it would not be so bad but for the pain that screamed along his every nerve and both speeded his reaction and impeded his every move. He knew what was happening here and he would not permit it to happen. He was all reflex and he was knowledge and he was action that needed no thought to guide. He was aware before event and he must take the opportunity that awareness offered him. He was beyond the pain and beyond the constraints of time. There was shape in the darkness. There was form in the awareness of a killer. There was purpose in the action to be taken against one hiding who thirsted for the kill and who lusted for the taste of the blood of one tied to the claim . He was form and he was motion and he was alive and he would not permit blood to be shed from a friend. So close. So close and the debt of blood must be paid in the blood of the killer, not the blood of the friend. --------- Giles //What the fuck!!!// Zechs heaved against him, eyes glazed, ice cold, distant, burning blazing blue. He was seeing something before him that was not there and it was a look that Giles had seen many times before. He had seen that look in the eyes of Raydon when a vision hit hard and fast and he had seen it in the eyes of others who had faced that other place where time ran in strange ways and they glimpsed what had not yet come to be. He had seen it in the eyes of those who saw death and who defied it with grim determination. //Vision!// There was no time to react as with impossible speed and strength Zechs hurled him aside with his injured shoulder, sending him sprawling and Zechs was lunging away from him and toward that unexplored hallway. A single step flowed in slow motion as the world around him seemed skewed into another reality and in which suddenly there was the whip in the slender hand and there was a gunman in the doorway across the hallway, automatic pistol up and aimed. He was aware of another door opening further down the hallway even as he reached out for the wall in an attempt to steady himself and he knew that he was a dead man. The gun was aimed squarely at him as were those cold crazed eyes of his killer. Too fast. It was all too fast. Too unreal. He knew it was too fast. Impossibly fast. He stumbled against the wall and there was a crack that chilled his bones … but he was alive and … it was no gun that had fired. The gun in the killer's hand had a silencer and that crack which echoed oddly through the hallway was so clear and chilling in its finality. The world was skewed, wrong but he was alive and he was staring at the gunman who was air born, looking as though he wanted to scream but there was not even time for him to voice his terror. The world around him seemed to lose all focus and plunge him into a place where shock made his sight and perceptions do strange and exotic things and he could easily think that he moved in another reality divorced from the rest of the world. Crawling nausea surged up within him and was gone just as quickly as it came in a bath of ice water in his veins at the thought and certainty that he should be dead. There was no time to entertain thoughts of throwing up at how close death had come to him and he desperately sought the clarity of mind to react to the reality surrounding him. Suddenly, frighteningly, Zechs was on the ground, body tensed in a rigid stance, muscles bulging and head lowered almost to the floor and the gunman was arcing over his head and impacting with a sickening crunch on the wall behind him. There was sound and there was suddenly a knife clattered to the floor in front of him, fallen from the Sleepers spasming hands. He had not even noticed the blonde loose the whip to be used. He had not seen him land. Nor had he seen the body of the assassin collapse to the floor. “Jesus!” a man dressed in green surgical scrubs was staring in disbelief from a doorway further along the hallway. He had not seen him enter the passage. Time resumed. Giles staggered to his feet, lungs heaving for air that for some reason seemed to be missing too long from starved lungs. He found himself staring at the crumpled form lying on the floor, at the length of leather wrapped tightly, around his throat and at the curious flatness of that head and at the odd, twisted angle of the neck. All that he saw said 'dead man'.
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