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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 174 2nd March AC 198 Colony L1 - 0025 B [La Grange point 1. Serial number 0025 B ] Preventer Building Time : 06:20 [approx Sanc time 05:10] Trowa In all honesty he was surprised he was still alive. He was hale and healthy against all the odds and he was making a difference. At least he liked to believe he was making a difference in a positive aspect to the lives of people he knew and to that of people he did not know. This desire to make a positive difference was relatively new. At one time in his life he had indiscriminately killed men and women; mothers, sisters and daughters, husbands, brothers and sons. He had never overly concerned himself with the lives of those who fell before him neither in his days as a mercenary nor during his time as a Gundam Pilot. * “Keep it impersonal, boy. Never allow killing to become personal. Never take on a job if it is going to bother you people will be dying at your hand. When it does bother you, and it eventually will, it will be time to get out before the ghosts begin to haunt your dreams at night. Ghosts turn up when they are thirsty for your company and you weaken and let them in. They make your hand tremble when you can least afford for it to shake. They make your reflexes slow, not by much but just enough to leave you marked by a knife or catching bullets. Ghosts herald the end, one way or the other. If you can keep the distinction of distance through a job and not have it bother you when you are done, you will make a fine mercenary. You’ll survive.” * He could feel the presence of ghosts this day. He could feel ghosts from the past watching him, calling to him. Waiting for him. Some of the ghosts had been waiting for a long time and he had thought he had escaped them. Those he had killed and once walked and fought beside as comrades would be forever waiting for their chance to weaken him. He should have known better than to think, even for an instant, he could escape the past. Given his past employment and the fate of others in the mercenary band he should have run out of luck during the war. He should have died during the chaos of the One Year War as just another one of the numberless, faceless and all too meaningless lives Dekim Barton had intended be sacrificed as cannon fodder. Operation Meteor was Barton’s master plan to place himself at the highest point of society. The power behind the throne. Barton would have ensured everyone loved the red-haired waif he claimed as his granddaughter and whom he had intended become the Queen of the World. His political machinations had not given him the kind of power he had desired and he had determined to take his plans to the extreme. While the people would hail Mariemaia as Queen he would be the true power, she his mouthpiece, nothing more. Wipe out the Alliance, cripple the Earth and take over the colonies at leisure. Barton had tried twice to accomplish this goal and no doubt, had he survived, he would have tried again. He should have died during the war, as a nameless, faceless mercenary, one of many amid the Barton ranks but circumstances had shifted. Fortuitous circumstance alone had dictated the lengthening of his life. He had been in the right place at the right time to take advantage of murder and gain for himself both a new name and a new life. He had no longer been the nameless mercenary mechanic but was suddenly a Gundam Pilot wearing a murdered man’s name. He sometimes wondered if the scientist who had shot Trowa Barton had ever been found out and punished for the crime. A justifiable death many would say, but shooting a man in the back was not honourable combat. It was not even assassination. It was cold-blooded murder, even if the victim had been a loud-mouthed, hard-nosed bastard who was out to kill anyone who stood in the way of the plan to form a world order dependent on a dynasty. He could have died at any time during his mercenary days, long before the group had been nearly wiped out and he had needed to find gainful employment in the ranks of Barton’s little enterprise. Idealism had never been something he had entertained seriously until after he had acquired the magnificent Gundam he had been working on and practically salivating over. He had felt something he had not previously felt before when he had looked upon Heavyarms for the first time. Suddenly and inexplicably he had thirsted for the great machine, aching to experience its power for himself. He had envied and hated the real Trowa Barton, the knowledge it was his. He had even fleetingly fantasized killing the man himself and stealing the machine until cold hard reality in the form of a pay check had brought him to his senses. Death had never bothered him, either the thought of his own death or the deaths of others. It was the idea of murder that did not sit well with him. The questionable morality of killing someone did not bothered him so much as the means used to end a life. If anything, he had always been practical about life and death and the means to kill cleanly on instruction. He could poison or drug an individual without blinking if he was hired to do so, and in combat he could kill without reservation. The people he had slain in the past had not been known to him on a personal level, and he had been hired specifically for the task. Even those few who once had fought at his side, and whom he had been required to kill in a different location and time, he had considered anything but personal. What other people would see as murder he had viewed as gainful employment. Many would not understand the distinctions he placed on the times and means of a kill. The thought of cold-blooded murder disturbed him. Should someone stand in his way it would not be a knife in the back that removed his opposition. It would not be a draft of poison or a shot from a distance, safe and anonymous. Spur of the moment opportunity or sudden, intense anger or fear, while he could understand them, were not the times to kill in his view. Particularly not during peace time. Removing war from the equation made killing something else. A clean fight between two evenly matched individuals and not to the death appealed to him more than striking from ambush or premeditated murderous intent. The existence of war, or its non-existence, denoted murder for him as it did for the few others who had lived as he had. It did not bother him that people would claim he had double standards. Even Quatre could not understand his concept of the standards of killing. Of those he called friends he suspected Heero alone would understand his views. He should have died before he hooked up with Dekim Barton’s faction, when he had run with the mercenaries who had been the only family he could remember. He should have died during the war piloting Heavyarms, and he knew the scientists had not expected any of the five who piloted their creations to survive. The pilots had been a means to an end, nothing more. He had somehow come from the war in one piece and it had given him a better reason to live than he had ever had before. Trowa Barton was a dead man. Though it had not been by his hand, Barton had died. He had witnessed the murder of the man. A single shot in the back by a frightened and angry man and he had become Trowa Barton, the pilot of Heavyarms. The machine had never been intended for him but had been built for the real Trowa who had had a family and a personal reason to fight. He had not known Barton particularly well though they did have a passing acquaintance, enough that Trowa had shown him a photograph of his sister and her young daughter. Mariemaia Barton, the girl who was the same Mariemaia Khushrenada who had, years later, threatened the hard won peace of the Earth Sphere. He was a man who had no name, who had a past better left forgotten and who lived with another man’s name. He was not particularly proud of his past but neither was he ashamed of having survived. Survival was the ultimate goal of the species, after all. The strong survived and the weak died, that was the law of nature. There would be no survivor’s guilt for him. He had learned early death came to everyone, old and young, male and female, healthy and crippled. Death was never concerned with your skin colour, your wealth or your station in life. It did not even care about your religion. Death had no care if you were good, bad or indifferent to the world surrounding you. When it was time, you died and there was no avoiding it. Death was a great leveller and supremely neutral. His past experience with life and death had taught him you did not sit in one spot and wait for the Grim Reaper to tap you on the shoulder and take you for that final walk. He was not religious, though he knew Quatre was and his religion was causing him a great deal of pain. The conflict between the scripture Quatre had been taught to believe in and the physical desires of his body, was something they were going to need to deal with. He was uncertain exactly how to broach the subject with his lover, but he was going to need to find the right words. His religion meant a great deal to Quatre and it was not something they could ignore indefinitely. * “You don’t believe in God, boy? That’s fine, each to his own, but I do. Always respect that in a man. Religion is important to them even if not to you. With me I want to believe there is something more after this life, something better and not just a blank nothingness. Not that I suppose I would be aware of what was not there but you never know until it’s too late. Every man has to find his own way to understanding what lies beyond death. I’ll give you this word of advice and it will be a long time before we talk about religion again. My old nanna taught me this lesson when I was younger than you, and it’s a lesson everyone needs to learn. God helps those who help themselves. You know what that means, do you? Don’t rely on God to get you out of shit you put yourself in. Do everything you possibly can to pull your own arse out of the fiery pit and maybe God might be feeling inclined to give you a helping hand.” * He could do with a little divine intervention about now. The rooftop was bright with morning sunlight. The wavering, diminishing shadows of the air conditioning unit and the elevator block stretched out over the length of the roof in an assortment of odd shapes. He stared at the shadows, needing to determine what amongst the dark areas might be the shadow of the roof structures, and what might be a hint of the location of his hunter. He needed to keep his own shadow concealed amid the larger shadows and not offer up any hint of his location to his opponent. He was running out of time. The clock was ticking down to his discovery and he had yet to decide where he might find the best cover to conceal himself. Hiding from the hunter, while required, was not going to solve the overall dilemma facing him. He needed to stop the assassin from gaining a satisfactory position and the time necessary to open fire on the headquarters building. For him to be assured of stopping any chance of such an assault from succeeding, he needed to be on the far side of the air conditioning unit. He needed a location on the far side of the roof, where he could maintain a view of the only satisfactory position to effectively destroy the laboratory he was certain was the killer’s mark. If his opponent managed to get into position and make that shot people would die, and pending investigations in other cases would lose vital information that might put terrorists behind bars. His heart was steadying, his breathing evening out and the thunder in his ears fading. His own heartbeat had been drowning out all other sound, and he could not afford to miss any nuance of sound or movement that might give him a vital second’s warning. //Until I can find a suitable location to hold my ground, I suppose the best thing to do would be to keep moving. Certainly I can’t remain here. If I do settle in one spot he will come for me and there are limited positions where satisfactory cover is available. If I can keep moving and keep him following me, effectively stalking me, I should not have to take the chance on closing with him. If he gets the opportunity to go for the rocket launcher I will have no other option than to go for him. I can’t afford to be pinned, though. Anywhere I stop to rest I need to be assured of more than one exit.// How long would it be before someone else took some form of action to resolve the situation? He had glimpsed a small group of women and tossed the shoe, but he had no idea if they had actually noticed the shoe land or if they had ignored it. Perhaps they had noticed but thought the message to be a joke? He did not even know how close to them the shoe had landed, and if he had gotten it wrong, it might have landed in one of the low bushes near the path. So many things could go wrong. He might still be on his own with no backup on the way. //I’m thinking in circles. Wasting time. Not good. I have to rely on them noticing the message and acting on it. They must at least give it credence enough to check it out. It would surely require no longer than ten minutes for them to do something constructive about the situation.// Ten minutes of dancing around the rooftop plumbing playing tag-me-if-you-can with a killer. There were better things to do first thing in the morning. Psst. Clang. //Shit!// A forward diving roll, no time to think just flatten at the last moment instead of coming up to his feet. Flatten, go down and scramble madly, slithering under some pipes. No delaying to think, just react and keep it random, give the man nothing to predict to make the next shot luckier than the last. If he wanted to survive, and he did, he needed to stop the bastard from so accurately predicting his movements. Scramble over a pipe quickly and up to shinny up a downpipe and thrust forward into the advantage of lingering shadow, above normal eye lines. He needed time to draw breath and dared not even look about him for sign of his pursuer. Clinging to the pipe, trusting his precarious perch to keep him above the eye line of his hunter, daring to give himself a moment to rest. A small breathing space in which to check himself over to see if he had taken any injury. No bullet wounds, just an assortment of cuts, scrapes and bruises to add to his already impressive collection. He would be sore if he survived to see this bastard go down. He was alive and therefore he still had a chance. //Where was the bastard hiding to take that shot?// If he could work out the position of the man he would gain a possible location to start his own stalk. The killer was too much the professional to linger long in one place, but if he could find a starting point, he could track him. The killer had that advantage over him at the moment and was very effectively hunting him. An advantage that saw him on the run, unable to act beyond protecting his life. If he could mark a definite location then perhaps he might be able to project two or three progressive locations and come up on the last position by a circuitous route. If he could do that he might just luck out and plant a knife in the assassin’s back. Une would prefer the bastard alive for questioning, but if he had learned anything about Preventer Earth, it was that she was practical. She preferred live agents over dead prisoners if the situation warranted a kill. Une was too practical to worry about an unnamed corpse if he could get lucky, which was fortunate for him as he was of the view it was better to have a live Trowa at the end of the day. //There are so many answers we need from this killer. Where did he come from and why is he set on blowing the laboratories into so much ash, are just the tip of the iceberg. Who the hell is he and who trained him?// Clinging to this pipe was not progressing his survival any. He had more to do than hang around looking for suspicious shadows. Any second now the bastard should finish checking two of three positions he was sure the man would have marked as possible hiding places. It was what he wanted to try to do but at the moment he was the prey, not the hunter, and that had to change. //Why blow the labs? Is this something to do with the John Doe I found in the alley and if so, what is so special about the kid to warrant a professional hit on the laboratory doing the autopsy? Presumably this is to destroy the body and any evidence that might be found to lead us to his killers. Or to where the kid came from.// This entire mess had to be centered on a Preventer case but was he correct in his assumption it was centered on the boy? It could have been any one of half a dozen high profile cases the labs were processing evidence for. It was only his nightmare which made him connect the hit with the boy in the alley and if there was any substance to his dream… He shuddered. Quatre was forever telling him it was a mistake to disregard the substance of his dreams. According to his lover he should be paying attention to the dreams and making use of them. He had tried to dismiss the disturbing nightmares that haunted him when Quatre had first begun to ask questions. He had ignored them as nothing more than nightmares. After all, he had been having the dreams for as long as he could remember, but his lover would not be denied. Since their association Quatre had shown him repeated instances of similarities between his dreams and real life events, and some of those events even he could not refute echoed his nightmares. //It is bloody annoying he is right so often. What do I make of this? Do I follow the dream and presume it is the boy and the chance to destroy something vital in the way of evidence? Or do I look for some other explanation? I suppose in the course of the investigation I could cover both options, but it will take time I may not have. Psychologists claim dreams are the actions of the subconscious, and reflect the doubts and insecurities in a person’s life. I’ve not given serious consideration to anyone other than Quatre who suggested dreams may be more.// Fire had featured all too often in his dreams and it had led him here to the roof and possibly to his death. He had witnessed too many deaths in his past and no doubt with his current lifestyle he would see more in the future. Hopefully this killer would be the next to die by his hand and himself not fall victim to the Grim Reaper. His entire life had been filled with death, and it seemed in near equal measure, fire had been a part of his days and nights. There had been hatred involved in the killings and cold-blooded disinterest too, the professional distance mercenaries needed to survive. He had been taught to kill by the best, and it was only recently he had had more to look forward to than ceaseless killing until he himself was killed. War did that to a person, shortened their perspective until everything was black and white, kill or be killed. War also opened the way to experience rebirth. Respectability was not something he had known until after the One Year War. Life as a mercenary did not prepare you for the difference having a proper home and a relationship with an individual who saw you, not as a killer, but as a lover. With the end of the war had come a stint in the circus and his first real attempts to forge a relationship with Quatre. They had made mistakes and almost lost each other, but they had persevered and become stronger for the strife. They now had their own business empire in the making, a secure and promising future together. The nameless mercenary was dead and he could not say he was sorry to see those days behind him. Life with Quatre as his focus was very different to the life he had grown to know. Different and infinitely preferable. One of the greatest components of their relationship was the trust and honesty with which they viewed each other. It was amazing how much comfort trust could provide. In the mercenary life there had had to be trust between their fellows, but it was a very different kind of trust from what he shared with his blonde lover. Trust, that in hindsight, had been disturbingly easy to set aside when the order to kill had come and he found himself in opposition to his former teammates. He had, after all this time of blood, guts and war found more to look forward to than simply surviving to the next mission. He was not about to lose this promising future with the one he considered his soul mate because he was trapped on the roof with a killer as proficient as himself. Green eyes glinted with a slowly smouldering fire. He could not deny the skill of the one who hunted him. The man was a professional and a very talented professional at that. Some people, despite the amount of training you could give them, could not rise above a certain level. Natural aptitude, some would call it, but he was not so certain. This man had to be the best he had ever seen and he had worked with some exemplary killers in his day. It was far more comfortable to have these natural assassins on your side than to suddenly become their target. Good as the killer was he must not lose sight of the most important element in this hunt. They were both human. Humans were not infallible no matter how good they were. If the man was perfect the building across the way would be in flames now and people would be dead and dying. Trowa Barton would certainly be dead and he was very much alive. This man could be beaten. People need not die because of him and he would keep the killer away from the weapon waiting on the far side of the roof. He alone would know the truth, that they owed their lives this day to a dream. He would not tell anyone other than Quatre the truth of the situation. It disturbed him, but he needed to give credence to a dream as it had caused him to wake in time to delay the killer. It would be all thanks to the dream if he could stop the killer, but only Quatre would understand and he had no desire to be shunted into a mental institution. He should have confidence in his abilities, that was what Quatre was constantly telling him, but he had doubts. Huge doubts. Always there was the knowledge that by interfering he might have made matters worse. By delaying the assassin from making the shot when he initially set out to, the building he was targeting would be near filled to its usual daily complement of workers. Trowa was only too aware if he failed to contain the situation now more people would die and be injured, than would have been endangered had he not taken a hand in the matter. He was not certain how to deal with the possibility he had made a colossal blunder, other than to make certain he did not fail. He had gone up against opponents who had greater skills before and survived to walk away and tell the tale. This need be no different. He might get hurt beyond the scrapes and bruises he had earned and he might die, though he would do everything in his power to avoid such a fate. He was not enamoured of the idea of coughing out his life on an L1 colony when he could be on Earth snuggled with his lover. They had a business to coax into a comfortable lifestyle for them to share and a long lifetime together in which to enjoy it. Another two or three years was all it would take for them to set themselves up the way they whispered about in the dark of night, free from Quatre’s familial ties and financially secure. They could even leave Preventers behind them and become ordinary citizens of the ESUN. The financial security he worked for was not for himself but for his lover. He was more than familiar with living hard and rough and with barely any finances to see himself through hard times. He was accustomed to such a lifestyle but he was not willing to have Quatre face such a future. Much as his lover argued the point he was only too aware it was because of him that Quatre was facing off against his family. The loss of Winner Enterprises and the ire of the Winner clan would not have fallen on Quatre were it not for the fact he had a male lover. Quatre vehemently denied he cared about losing the assets of the Winner resources, but he cared. They had found something wonderful in each other and Quatre was willing to lose everything to keep it, but he, the boy who had no name and who called himself Trowa, was not willing to see his lover lose everything. For the love of Quatre, he needed to be certain the blonde could live in some reasonable comfort. It would take them a number of lifetimes to acquire comparable resources to the Winner Empire but that was not what he wanted for them. He just needed to be assured his lover could be comfortable in a lifestyle not too dissimilar to the one that had reared him. Comfort and familiarity was all he sought to emulate and he would do everything in his power to love Quatre enough to make up for the loss of his family. They would not have the kind of income Quatre enjoyed as CEO of the Winner Corporation, but they would be financially secure for the remainder of their lives. He had explained his reasoning to Quatre and insisted they have that security and had gained the cooperation and understanding of his partner before they had firmed their relationship into what it was today. Quatre had initially argued, claiming it was not necessary and money meant nothing to him but in the end he had agreed. * “But why, Trowa? Having money is not what will make us happy. Being happy has nothing to do with being a CEO or being wealthy in general. I love you, not the money. You are what is important to me.” * It was true his lover had lived rough during the war though not for any length of time and in all honesty Quatre’s idea of rough had been his idea of comfortable, not that he would ever tell his lover the difference in their definitions of the word. With his privileged background Quatre did not understand what it was to have nothing and Trowa was determined to ensure such would remain the case. He had been hanging from the pipes too long. Now that he had a chance to draw a steadying breath he could rationalize his actions in the past few minutes. His conscious mind had been near to panic in its efforts to get his body out of harm’s way and now his mind was catching up. If the killer was looking low, at roof level, in a bid to glimpse bare feet his current position was not going to assist the hunt. Such a precarious perch would not do for an extended period and the pipes might not support his weight for any great length of time anyway. Shifting his grip carefully he eased around the pipe, his bare toes seeking for the horizontal pipe on the far side and he could only hope it would take his weight. He dared remain here for seconds, not trusting the thin pipe but not wishing to drop down to the roof as yet. There was little in the way of support he might shift to and not give away his position and the shadows were in retreat, threatening to expose him with each passing second. Where to go next? How long had he been avoiding the hunter, running for his life? How long before he could reasonably expect help to come? He could not afford to present a silhouette for the killer to target, nor could he afford to cast a shadow and reveal his location. He certainly could not hang about in the pipes all day and there was the urgent question of how long he dare delay checking on the killer’s equipment. The abandoned gear left at the optimum point for the shot would need to be checked, though he was doubtful the killer was inclined to bolt for the spot and chance a hurried shot. This man was too careful for that and intent on hunting him down. Why had he not thought to pick up his mobile phone or his Preventer radio before he had investigated the validity of a dream? //Don’t start that, you idiot there is no time for that sort of recrimination. Move before he targets you. Keep him busy, keep him moving. They will come.// To reach the next point of reasonable cover afforded by his surroundings would mean he needed to go around the pipe he clung to and expose himself for a fraction of a second. A dangerous manoeuvre as the killer had already proven he could take advantage of fractional seconds. How many more times could he be fortunate enough to have the killer miss? If the assassin had a reasonable idea of his present location then that fraction of a second of exposure might be his last. This would be a critical move on his part. In the next five seconds he might find himself wounded, at best, or dead, at worst. Hanging around here was gaining him nothing but aching fingers and straining muscles. //Running is no good. I have to have a plan and doing nothing more productive than running from him from cover to cover will serve only to get me shot. There has to be something more constructive I can do.// He worked cramping fingers carefully, shifting his grip to gain himself a few more seconds before he had to move. Anything to relieve the growing distress of clinging to this perch. Just a few more seconds to give himself time to think, to assess his reactions to this point and come up with a plan. A few more seconds to allow the killer to gain a more advantageous position. Time worked both ways. //I need to stop running from him and turn the focus to acting against him. Can I sucker him into a position advantageous to me? Can I somehow work him into a position where I can get a stab at taking him down with a knife? I need to control where and how far I run, pick my cover carefully and at least three moves in advance.// It would not be easy to shift the action from being the hunted to becoming the hunter. The killer had managed it when Trowa had underestimated him at their first encounter and since then Trowa had been running and that had to change. He was singularly tired of being the prey. He had blown his chance at taking the killer down though he had managed to stop the shot but how long could this stand off last? How long had he fled from the man now? Surely it could be no more than fifteen or twenty minutes, perhaps a good deal less. Time ran strangely when your life was on the line. * “If you are on a job and it turns sour you have
a number of options. If you are running your options are limited and
you have to make up your mind just what you intend to come out of
the day. Do you want to end up in a body bag or at the bar swilling
the local horse piss that passes for liquor? Live or die, that is
what you have to decide and you have to decide it fast. Once you decide
which it will be don’t hang about, act on it. If you are running
and you have armed men after you and your cover is crap, well, likely
you’ll get the body bag despite your personal preference. Not
much you can do about it. If your pursuers are inclined to take prisoners
then consider a stint in a cell a lesser price to pay. When you bust
out you can always pay back the bastards at the end of a knife blade.
If they don’t take prisoners then you make bloody sure you make
your last breaths count. About the best thing I can tell you from
personal experience is to never give up. Not until you feel that hot
bullet with your name on it Time to move. A slithering move, sliding to drop a little in height and then the careful easing of more of his weight onto the smaller pipe, working his way around the larger. He dared not pause and listen for any hint of movement, reaching out to grasp the next small horizontal pipe. No time for hesitation, just hope the pipe could take his weight and swing himself over the gap. With a cacophony of sound the pipe ripped away from its bedding, and in the one instant he lost both his hand hold and his footing. His circus training was useless in the maze of pipes though it ensured he did not get hung up. He sprawled on the roof top, exposed and stunned for a precious few seconds before he was scrambling for any cover at all. Hunkered down in a shadowed gap, enclosed with nowhere to go when the expected shot was made he could only hold his breath. His heart thundered in his chest and drowned out all sound, but there was no burning sensation followed by excruciating pain. There was no bullet impacting on him and ending his struggle. He blinked as the seconds passed, his eyes searching the pipes and shadows for the faintest hint of shape or form that might be the killer. Anything that might suggest the silenced gun was aimed in his direction. The man had to have, at the very least, heard him even had he not been in a position to make the killing shot. He already knew the killer was not wasteful and would hold a shot if he deemed it advantageous to wait. Silence. No bullet with his name on it, no psst to say the shot had been made and no clang to say it missed. No cold hard steel blade in the heart to see him drop silently and bleed out his life trapped in this nook in the pipes. He had to have used up his luck for the next twenty years. //Damn. Where is he?// There had to be some hint of the man in the area. This was simply too good an opportunity for the hunter to miss. His position had to be marked and the only access point to him was directly in front of him. The bastard was probably holed up across from him and waiting for him to get tired of huddling in this sorry excuse for cover. He could not remain in this position indefinitely and the hunter must be watching him, savouring the moment of the kill to come. //You have to be there, but where? I have no other options but to go straight out the front and low, maybe a roll to the left will buy me a second or two. Going right would give me little in the way of cover and probably present a better opportunity for him to get a clean shot in. Looking at this mess of pipes and angles where would I place myself to take best advantage of the opportunity?// He was confused and at a disadvantage as there was no adequate cover he could see to disguise the killer directly in front of him. Nothing seemed large or solid enough to obscure someone of the size of his hunter. He had seen the man, been close to him and knew him to be nearly as tall as he and certainly heavier in build. His more slender form was easier to hide, even if he did have a height advantage but where amid all that hodge podge of cover could he secret himself to make an ambush shot? He could not. By some strange quirk he had actually picked a spot where he could not be accessed from any appreciable distance. The angles and the knot work of pipes interfered with a killing shot and the hunter wanted a clean kill. //He must be off to one side or…// The air in his lungs seemed to solidify and he could not breathe. He gaped, gasping for air as the cold certainty took him. He had been duped, played expertly and he had fallen for it. The killer had decided hunting him was a waste of time and he was nothing more than a nuisance. He had been played, carefully hunted away from the danger point and his opponent had deemed him to be in a position to permit him to initiate the final act. //He’s gone for the rocket launcher. The bastard has gone to take the shot! If I don’t stop him he’ll blow the labs. How far ahead of me is he? How long has he had to get back?// Running fingers along his jaw with narrowed eyes he glared at the cross work of pipes before him. It looked like a jungle, impenetrable. Crossing this would slow him down, forcing him to take a circuitous route, giving the killer added seconds to make the shot. If his assumption was correct he would have a clear run right up to the edge of the available cover. The killer would not be concerned with taking him down while he was in the protective cover of the pipes and buildings. The man would be waiting for him, knowing he would come and attempt to stop the shot being made. All the advantages belonged to the unknown man who was beginning to make him feel like a rank amateur. “Fool.” He was a fool for falling for the very deliberate hunt. He should have realized the man was keeping him on the run, forcing him further and further away from the weapon left on the roof. There was no time to consider how stupid he had been, recriminations would come later when he had the time to call himself all the foul names he had learned in his colourful career. He had no means of taking his opponent down from a distance. He would have to leave the pipes and close the distance between them to have a fair chance of throwing the knife and hitting his target before the man could dodge. While he had to close to knife range the killer had the silenced gun and had no such constraints. //If I don’t appear he’ll take the opportunity to take out the labs and make the shot. If I do appear then he’ll target me and take me out before taking the shot. How much longer before I can dare to hope for some help up here? Fuck it, how long does it take to arrange for someone to get their arse into gear?// Heart in his throat he rolled from cover, bounced to his feet and thrust himself forward, waiting for the psst of the silenced gun and to cough his life out far from his lover. Nothing. No shot, neither the cold hard bark or short sharp psst of the silencer. No knife thrown from closer quarters either, no pain in his back to mark either an incapacitating wound or a killing blow. //Does he suspect I have managed to get word out and call for help? Did he see me drop the shoe over the side? If he didn’t he may not be so quick to take a hurried shot. He might decide to take me down first and that is about the best I can hope for just now.// It was, after all, what he would do if their situation was reversed. He would take the time to remove the nuisance factor and make certain the business he was here to perform was completed. If he was employed to take out evidence of a crime he would have needed to ensure he caused sufficient damage in the optimum place to destroy all trace of his target. //An amateur would chance a hurried shot, willing to take the chance but this man is no amateur. I can’t afford to make any more mistakes. I need to distract him, work my way close enough to pose a threat and maybe get close enough to him as he comes after me to make a throw with the knife count. I’ll only have the one chance.// There was, of course, the possibility the man might have more than one round for the rocket launcher, a second charge in the bag perhaps. He might only need an approximation of Trowa’s location to make a shot that would take down his opponent in a blazing jumble of pipes and building material. It would then be a simple matter to reload and in a matter of seconds a second shot would be ready to destroy his intended target. It was a showy and rather messy option but if there was more than one charge for the rocket launcher it was a very real possibility. //It’s a chance I‘ll have to take. There is no time to prevaricate. The rounds for the launcher I saw are small enough he might have had a second in the bag. He’s a professional and he would have known the need to be in and out quickly and quietly and lugging around an armoury is not conducive to either speed or silence. One should have been sufficient so would he carry around excess baggage? He would need to ditch the rocket launcher during his escape and would he want extra weight weighing him down? Throwing aside the launcher is not exactly the same as throwing away a live missile, no matter how small it may be. Ah, I am tired and I want to crawl into a dark hole and forget the world exists! Damn, no, I want Quatre to hold me.// His bare feet reminded him of the need to move with care and pay more attention to his surroundings. He needed to reach his optimum position and wool gathering would not help his cause. Going by what he had witnessed to date and his certain knowledge the man was a professional and not prone to making mistakes, he was fairly sure there would be only the one charge for the rocket launcher. One missile not to be wasted on him. He refused to give credence to the dream where he saw that missile coming directly at him. No, he would not believe the killer would waste the ammunition. He would be working his way back to the spot and settling down to take the shot at the building. A part of his attention would be tuned for the sound of pursuit and he would have his gun close to hand, but he would not waste the explosive charge on a single annoying human. He would take the chance he was correct and distract the killer and hope. The mad dash slowed to a controlled near silent run. He was careful not to make unnecessary noise and to place his feet with care to avoid another tumble. He needed to be quick or the man would have sufficient time to line up the shot before dealing with him. Precious seconds were ticking away and he knew himself to be more than capable of making such a precise shot in only a few seconds. He had given his opponent a headstart and he needed to make up time. He was forced to pause to look for a way through a tangle of pipes and frowned, cocking his head at the sound of a high-pitched whine. Confusion held him for all of five seconds while he sought to identify the sound and he swore, throwing caution to the wind and scrambling over pipes in a bid to present himself as a target. He had heard that signature whine before. Laser targeting devices were generally silent and deadly because of their silence but one system boasted a signature whine. It was a new piece of hardware and he had been briefed on the targeting system a year before when they were first perfected. Preventer Earth had considered them a danger and wanted her agents to have first hand knowledge should they ever come across the devices in the field. The computer-controlled laser guidance system would enable the missile to which it was attached to hit a pre-determined target with pin point accuracy. All you needed to do was enter in the coordinates and press the trigger. //The bloody missile will even go around corners!// He had underestimated his foe once again and because of that people were going to die. All the man had to do was attach the guidance system to the missile, activate the device and shoot. Even if he was facing in the opposite direction the missile would hit the intended target. The system came complete with a high tech cross between a radar and sonar system that integrated with the computer and ensured the missile avoided obstacles in its path until it reached the designated coordinates. //He hadn’t finished assembling the device when I made my move. He was sighting in to get the exact coordinates of the target when I disturbed him.// He had given the killer too long a headstart. A professional assassin made contingency plans for every feasible scenario that might occur and he had come equipped with the computer targeting system. The man had no intention from the beginning of missing his target. Trowa’s heart pounded in his chest as he leaped a pipe and threw himself against the cage surrounding the air conditioning unit. The noise of his collision and his scrambling to get over the cage and onto the unit to take seconds from his run was horrendous, even given the thundering of his heartbeat in his ears. He could save maybe five or six seconds by going over the top rather than around the unit and he leaped over the far side of the cage, gracefully grasping a leading pipe and swinging himself around and down and threw himself into a roll as he broke from cover. No need to present too easy a target and it was worth hoping such a sudden entrance would distract the killer. He entertained a fleeting thought as he broke from cover that the killer might be using the device to sucker him in, but it did not slow him down. He came up running and stared in horror, trying to pump his legs faster, to cover more ground with each stride, to reach the hitman before it was too late. He stared in horror at the man who stood at the edge of the roof, one foot resting on the low retaining wall crowning the edge of the roof. The man was waiting for him, head turned to watch him and for an instant their eyes met and he knew he was too late. “Nice try.” He never heard the words though he did read the man’s lips. He heard the unmistakable sound of the launch as his fingers closed over the hilt of the knife but it was too late to throw it. In slow motion he watched as the device discharged the rocket and it had barely cleared the muzzle before the weapon was in mid air, discarded as so much excess baggage. The killer had not even attempted to aim, merely held it clear of the roof and in the general direction of the building across the way and pulled the trigger. He was seconds too late. The killer already had his gun in hand to dispose of the one witness to his crime. What he did not understand, and what froze him to the spot, was why the killer’s head exploded into bloody crimson gore.
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