GW Fic: Freeport 10 (rewrite)
Late like whoa with this, but moving house is always crazier than expected -_-; I should have my groove back in a couple of weeks.
Link to all chapters
"The canals and the bridges, the embankments and cuts,
They blasted and dug with their sweat and their guts
They never drank water, but whiskey by pints
And the shanty towns rang with their songs and their fights...
They died in their hundreds with no sign to mark where
Save the brass in the pocket of the entrepreneur.
By landslide and rockblast they got buried so deep
That in death if not life they'll have peace while they sleep."
---The Pogues, 'Navigator'
Freeport by Maldoror
Chapter Ten
"Will you relax?" Duo sighed.
Wufei treated that suggestion with the contempt it deserved and continued to scrutinize every shadowy corner and dark hallway they passed. They were back in the docking ring section on their way to board Scythe. The sound of their footsteps scattered and multiplied, chasing them down the long empty corridor. Each dark intersection had a great potential for ambush.
Duo walked as if he owned the place and Erickson hadn't tried to kill them less than twelve hours ago. Wufei still had bloodstains on his jacket's cuff, but the incident was apparently Over as far as Duo was concerned. Wufei was told repeatedly that Erickson would no longer be a problem, but he was having a hard time forgetting the man's rabid eyes, not to mention the fact that at least one of his thugs had managed to get his hands on a gun.
The room with the Customs desk was empty and dark, with only an emergency light above the door and the airlock, but the sniffers were operational and opened for them after a three-minute wait. The docking ring was a pool of shadows through which Duo strolled as if he hadn't a care in the world. Wufei only relaxed when Scythe's airlock hissed shut behind them.
Duo didn't waste any time. He was more interested in repairing his malfunctioning O2-meter than jumping at shadows. He dismantled the dial from the control panel in less than a minute. Then he took it to the bunk to work on, sitting cross-legged on an old towel to catch any oil, grime and small loose pieces that might fall. He absently waved Wufei towards the comms board.
"Since we're here, go ahead and type up a progress report for your bosses. I'll encrypt it and send it out when you're done," Duo mumbled around the small screwdriver in his mouth. "Then we can unload some boxes from the cargo hold."
Wufei stared at the blinking cursor of the text editor on the comms board. What exactly was he supposed to put in his report? 'Dear Trowa. I've been in Freeport for eighty-five hours. Duo and I have done a little groundwork, but the investigation as such hasn't actually started yet. We killed somebody yesterday. How are you doing?'
Finally he typed the code for 'still alive, investigation on track' and went to unload the boxes while Duo finished with the dial. He concentrated on the dozen or so boxes near the cargo hold entrance at Duo's request; they wouldn't empty Scythe's cargo hold in a day, not just the two of them, but this was a start. Wufei stacked the boxes on a cart near Scythe's ramp and rolled them over to customs. But since there was no Karl there to pass them through, the hole in the wall through which they'd shoved the cart and boxes last time was sealed shut.
"Just leave them on the cart. Sooner or later someone will show up and give them the inspection and the rubber stamp," Duo informed him, coming up behind Wufei with the last two boxes.
"What's in these?"
"Some stuff I got from Hilde. Junk that she doesn't want because it's so old only Freeport still has those kinda systems, and spare computer parts for the mainframe. I also got a good deal on discarded clothing from Clothco on L3. I got a contact there. He puts them aside for me, and sells them for a dozen cred a box. The boxes with my name on them is my stuff. There's hardware in here for my workshop, and a few creature comforts."
"And when will you get these things, if they have to be passed through customs?"
Duo made a wide and cheerful 'your guess is as good as mine' gesture. Then he started digging through one of the boxes labeled 'Maxwell'. He took out a small tin and a couple of books. "Here, hold these, willya?"
Wufei checked what Duo had plunked into his arms. A tin of bay leaves, a jar of paprika, collected essays by Emma Goldman and a book in Russian. Duo piled some bowls, vids and cheap garlic concentrate on top of what he'd already deposited in Wufei's arms. Wufei shifted them around, trying not to drop anything.
"What is all this?"
"Just a few things for Babka, Gilla and some of my buddies."
"Why am I carrying them?" Wufei grunted as Duo looped a bag full of something that clinked over one of his fingers.
"I forgot to bring a duffel," Duo explained, crouched by yet another box and stuffing computer circuits, micro-tools and a camera into the pockets of his long leather coat. "I think I have a bag in here somewhere that we can use...We'll bag the stuff while we're going through the sniffers, might as well use those boring three minutes."
Wufei stared down at the pile in his arms and then at Duo as he realized the latter was suggesting they walk out with these goods without passing them through customs. "Are we allowed to do this?!"
Duo looked up at him with unconcealed amusement. "What part of 'lawless anarchy' did you not get, Wu?"
"But-"
"It's not like the Freeport police are going to spot us. Hell, you're the nearest thing we got to that right now. Tell you what, though-" Duo added, straightening up in one fluid gesture and leaning over to pat Wufei on the cheek, fingers warm through the glove, "-if it makes you feel any better, you can always arrest yourself," Duo whispered in his ear like it was some sort of naughty suggestion.
Wufei stood frozen for a second, startled by the unexpected contact, the warmth of Duo's hand and breath that cut right through Freeport's usual chill - then he caught up with what Duo had actually said, and spotted the impish grin from the corner of his eye. The bowls and other sundries in his arms rattled as Wufei fought down the urge to drop the whole lot and sock their owner. He leveled a glare that could scorch steel instead. Duo chuckled and wandered off towards the sniffers. Wufei hesitated, and then for lack of any other choice he followed in a bit of a huff, though he preferred to think of it as justified irritation.
Beneath the annoyance, Wufei was puzzled, even a little scandalized. Duo had been so adamant about customs when he'd mentioned it before. He'd called it one of the colony's founding principles. Wufei had been raised to respect the law; even Freeport's. To see Duo flout regulations like this, even over such small, negligible items, ruffled him more than he wanted to admit. Particularly the way Duo seemed to think it was perfectly alright to do so. Wufei was trying to fit this into a coherent picture of how Freeport functioned, since function it did, and had been doing so regardless of all sense and logic for decades.
Okay, Chang, Wufei told himself; think about this rationally. The sniffers would stop anything truly dangerous from coming onboard, and they were automated. But then why were there customs... ? Couldn't all his boxes be automatically screened for dangerous items? Duo had mentioned hoarding. Said it could cause riots. Maybe that meant that small quantities were not regulated - hell, the whole place was run on volunteers, they probably couldn't afford to track the small stuff. But anything big, like the complete content of Scythe's hold, well, that had to be tallied and... what? Shared? Redistributed? How the hell did all this work?!
Freetraders like Duo 'paid' their way with things they bought on the outside. Wufei was holding currency in his arms in the form of spices and bowls and the books which Duo was putting into a plastic bag he'd scrounged from one of the boxes. Freeport only bought the bare necessities for its inhabitants. The Freetraders made life nicer by bringing in little luxuries and raw materials that the cart vendors could transform into goods. Then Duo and his ilk received the goods in exchange. But how could an equitable system be derived from this?
Wufei could just ask. There was absolutely no valid reason not to ask. Right.
The perfectly subjective and invalid reason he didn't feel like asking was the way Duo's eyes took that teasing slant whenever Wufei couldn't figure something out for himself, as well as the look of surprise and grudging respect he got when he did deduce something on his own, or ask a pertinent question about an aspect of life here that Duo had not thought he'd notice.
And beneath the trappings of that unworthy and totally useless competition of 'one-up' with Duo which Wufei just could not seem to refrain from, there was another motivation. Wufei had to admit he was intrigued, and challenged as a scholar and a student of people and societies for the first time in years. Though he disapproved of most of the aspects of this culture he'd seen so far, he just wanted to figure out how it worked.
His cover story was an unexpected windfall in that regard: as a Blade, and a newly arrived one at that, Wufei wasn't really supposed to know how this place functioned, and the no-communication rule made it hard for him to trip himself up. So he could take his time and make his own observations and deductions.
Wufei wasn't used to doing things just for the pleasure and knowledge it brought him, not since his marriage. But he told himself his research had an important and practical application as well. He looked forward to making a complete report to Trowa at the end of his mission. It was essential that the Preventers collect better information on Freeport than that issued by Duo, who was obviously too partisan to be objective. Proper understanding of this society would be a necessary first step to one day putting Freeport to right-
"Stoooop it," Duo muttered. The sniffers hummed and tasted the air, ignoring them both.
"Stop what?" Wufei looked up, trying to make out Duo's features from the gleam of the emergency light in the airlock.
"Thinking. I can feel you do it in the dark with my eyes closed. It's annoying."
The sniffers opened and Duo dodged any comeback by darting out of the confined space. He swung the plastic bag he'd filled with the spices, books and other sundries and walked away with a cheeky grin.
"What are we doing today?" Wufei grumbled as he followed. Hopefully Duo wouldn't drag them into another hostile sector full of one-time enemies.
"On our way back we'll stop and talk to a few people I know. Sweepers. I don't have to pussy-foot around them, these guys sort of know what I'm up to. There's no saying if they'll help me or not, but they won't tell anybody what I'm after either. Well, not once I give them a few presents." Duo patted the bag, which clinked again. "These guys sweep around that L3 colony Carver was on six months ago. They might have some info on him. Sweepers have a long memory. If he's used them or their friends to travel, he might have left tracks. Should take us a couple hours, assuming the guys we need aren't all on the outside doin' their own business. After that, we go back home. I got to reinstall and config the CPU of the mecha we fixed. Its whole core got wiped. Sorry man, I know you don't understand-"
"I do," Wufei grunted. Yes, he was annoyed at yet more delays in the investigation, but after that incident in Zapata, he finally understood at gut level why they could not move faster, why Duo had to pursue his usual routine as much as possible. This was a tight community; people watched each other with a mixture of neighborliness and paranoia that made Wufei's shoulder blades itch. Duo - and his Blade - had to be discreet.
Duo was looking at him out of the corner of his eyes. The remnants of the smug grin were still clinging to his lips, but the quirk of his eyebrows was puzzled.
"You'll probably be bored. I won't need your help," the smuggler added as if trying to judge just how far Wufei's unexpected streak of patience would go.
Wufei was about to wave off Duo's probe when he remembered a small detail. He glanced at his watch.
"Don't worry about me. In fact, it's good you have something to keep you busy today, Maxwell. I forgot to tell you I have to help fix the vent mechanism near Center Street with a couple of acquaintances in a little over four hour. We'll be at it until the sector's night cycle, I imagine." Hopefully Mirael and Kolia were going ahead as scheduled with the repairs they'd mentioned, and wouldn't mind his silent help.
Duo hid his astonishment well, but he was wide-eyed and silent for a full ten seconds before he gathered himself enough to marshal a question that didn't sound too flustered. Wufei swallowed his own smirk. Justice was sweet.
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The man's nose took the brunt of the blow with an ugly crunch. He staggered and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. Sitting on the sidelines ten feet away, Wufei tried to unclench his teeth and look away.
At almost the same instant, Duo's hand dropped beneath the table and landed on Wufei's thigh. This did nothing for the Preventer's equanimity. His fingers nearly shattered the bottle he was holding.
"Relax." Duo was very good at smiling widely and talking discreetly at the same time. "It's none of our business."
Wufei knew that. He hadn't been about to interfere in the fight. Really. He'd stiffened in reaction, true, but that was perfectly normal...He shifted, then discreetly tried to shove Duo's hand away. Duo removed it while reaching for his beer; a natural gesture, as if he hadn't noticed Wufei's efforts. But there was a little smile hovering around the neck of the bottle that looked too angelic to be true.
The wounded fighter shook his head like a maddened bull. Blood and mucus splattered the floor. Wufei wondered what the man was on. His fingers tightened on the bottle again. He took a deep breath of the thick, sour air and forced himself to relax from his center outwards. He had to stay focused. This was their first break in the case. He was not going to mess this up.
Five days after the fight in Zapata, with some more Scissorman work and a few discreet inquiries behind them, something had finally 'shaken loose', as Duo put it. An email message came through on Duo's beaten-up old laptop; a rendezvous to meet with one of Ravachol's middlemen to discuss some possible business. The man had given Duo a time and a place, a bar a few sectors away from Makhno.
Wufei had followed Duo with steely anticipation. Finally he felt they were moving forward with the case. They were going to talk with a man who almost certainly controlled the ship and crew who'd smuggled Carver out of L2- X953. He might even know Carver personally. They just had to get him to talk.
On another, less important note, Wufei had also been looking forward to seeing the flipside of Freeport. So far he'd ventured through dorm sectors and industrial zones, meeting somewhat upstanding citizens of a tight community. Granted, he and Duo had been attacked once, had killed in self-defense and witnessed two other completely unrelated 'duels', but this was still far from the sink of iniquity he'd pictured Freeport to be. But now that they were meeting a known criminal in a bar, Wufei was about to see Freeport's seedy underbelly.
It wasn't at all what he'd expected. Somehow Wufei wasn't all that surprised.
The 'bar' was a five-story tall building covering an impressive surface area. Space was at a premium in Freeport; Duo's one-room apartment was the norm for bachelors all over the colony, particularly in sectors like Makhno where a good amount of space was taken up by junkyards and mechanics' shops. The size of the bar was not the only unusual detail, its location was unexpected as well. It was in a zone which was otherwise used for cargo and hydroponics. There were no prostitutes, peepshows or other bars, no other sign of anything dedicated to the business of sin and pleasure. Just this ugly five-story structure stranded in an empty sector near the industrial zone.
There were no beckoning lights in the bar's windows. Indeed there were no windows. Presumably because, as sectors went, this was probably one of the most boring and hardly worth looking out upon anyway. Staring up at the building's blank walls, Wufei felt a shiver of claustrophobia crawl up his spine, compounded when he realized that the door was in fact an airlock complete with sniffers. He had to force himself to follow Duo, praying to his ancestors that there were emergency exits somewhere out back. As a minute trickled by in the dark, with Duo humming tonelessly under his breath a foot away, Wufei tried not to imagine what a blaze would do in this closed-up building. It made his burns itch.
"Why are there sniffers into this...place?" Wufei muttered, trying to distract himself from the thought. He'd avoided the word 'fire-trap'; it made it too real. "What are they afraid we'll bring in?"
The one-note humming stopped. Wufei waited. Duo took a breath, but the sniffers opened before he could answer. Wufei stepped out quickly from the confining airlock, getting his back to the wall and taking stock automatically.
The ground floor was one big continuous room, the lighting so sparse that even after the sniffer's darkness, it took Wufei's eyes a few seconds to be able to make out any details. When they did, two words formed themselves in his mind as if they were being chiseled out of ice. Opium den.
The first snarl of revulsion faded as his eyes and nose corrected him. The men and women occupying the beds weren't smoking or injecting anything; most of them were asleep. He saw no pipes, needles or any other drug paraphernalia, and there was no heavy smell of opiates and death in the air. He did smell vomit, piss, unwashed bodies and the thick, fermented odor of sleeping drunks, as well as alcohol, disinfectant, mildew and the smell of cheap food, the kind you found in soup kitchens.
Wufei forced himself to follow Duo as his Handler made his way through the rows of beds. His steps slowed as he examined the slack-jawed faces of the sleepers he passed. Most of them looked drunk, but some were twitching and jerking in a way he was all too familiar with. It seemed that alcohol was not the only poison you could obtain here. So he'd finally found Freeport's wino and junkie population, all in one place. Wufei's lips tightened as his gorge rose. Were they locked in here?
No, of course not. After all, there were sniffers - and hopefully fire escapes - out of this sedated, stinking hell. But the smell...it reminded him of the lockup in Rotterdam, that's why he'd jumped to that conclusion. There was a memory he didn't need, particularly here. He'd had to plunge into the local drunk tank to look for an informant. He hadn't realized that Relena was visiting Rotterdam that day. More to the point, he hadn't realized that, in most civilized areas, the cops rounded up all the drunks, the beggars, the mutterers and the crashed-out junkies, and locked them away during the President's visit. Wouldn't do for a TV camera to accidentally capture a shot of the darling President Peacecraft next to an old, dead-drunk veteran sleeping under a commemorative statue.
Wufei skirted a puddle of vomit and glanced down at the soiled camp bed and the junkie who looked all of sixteen. This was bad. But Rotterdam...the Rotterdam drunk tank had horrified him, and that took a lot of doing after all he'd been through. There were too many people who'd fallen through the cracks of the Peace, and to find them all in one place, locked up ten to a three-man cell...He'd also learned that a lot of cities poisoned the local pigeon population before Relena showed up for a peace march, in case one of those disrespectful birds decided to take a dump on her. Wufei had been all the more disgusted knowing that Relena would have been scandalized at these precautions her entourage were taking. Or at least he thought she'd be. The young girl he'd met and protected that first mad year after the Last War, who'd calmly stared down an armed gunman who'd slipped past Heero and Wufei, that girl would not stand for it.
He wondered how much of that girl was left now; it'd been two years and one election since Une and a presidential attaché had formally forbidden him from going anywhere near Relena.
Wufei shook his head and breathed out heavily, trying to clear the smell from his nostrils and the memories it had triggered from his mind. Duo was already on the far side of the huge open space full of beds, one of them with a couple having unabashed sex right in the middle of the drunk and unconscious. Wufei picked up his step. Duo, who'd not glanced either right or left as he'd crossed the room, started to climb the stairs to the next floor. Loud music filtered from above. Wufei ran three steps to catch up and grabbed Duo by the elbow.
"Duo," he whispered sharply in the ear that was turned his way, "do people have access to hard drugs in here?"
"Define hard. You got pot, booze, some fun chemicals, shit and-"
"What chemicals?" If he was likely to run into a guy hopped up on some of the disinhibitors they sold these days, Zerks, he wanted to know about it. He'd seen one of those junkies in the terminal stages break and mangle his own hand ripping it out of a cuff to strangle the officer who'd arrested him.
"Boosters," Duo informed him casually. "Party pills. Crackers. Acids. Sugars, white, brown and blue. Anything that can melt your brain for a few hours without being highly addictive."
"And they sleep it off here," Wufei concluded, mind jumping quickly from conclusion to conclusion. "What are the sniffers calibrated for? All of those? This ensures that they can't leave under the influence?"
Duo gave him once more that appraising look that meant that Wufei had guessed more than Duo would have given him credit for. "Yeah. Mainly it's to avoid people taking shit outside, but they're sensitive enough where they won't let you out if you're junked up to the eyeballs. And alcohol. The sniffers won't let you out if you're completely toasted. We already have more fights and rapes in Freeport than we need."
Wufei wasn't surprised by any of this. When Babka was talking about Tolstoy and the Haymarket Eight, one could almost forget that most people in Freeport were psychotics, free spirits, sociopaths, idealists, bitter ex-soldiers, criminals, terrorists, radical anarchists or an interesting combination of several of the above. Violence hung in the air as thick as Freeport's miasma. These people labored long hours in highly dangerous conditions in the shipyards, mines and factories. Then they'd come home and work on maintaining their sectors, or creating goods, food, clothes, utilities, things they and their neighbors needed, and then when that was done they'd take care of the kids or do odd jobs or collect the trash...
The Preventers came down hard on all sorts of drugs, but no government had ever successfully legislated alcohol and violence, the poor man's sedation. And this lawless and overworked population was tailor-made for it. Wufei had been constantly amazed at how relatively peaceful Freeport was compared to the L2 slums. But they'd just encapsulated the drunken violence and aggression and locked it away here, where people went when the toil got too much for them. They'd get it out of their system in a place where they were the only ones who might get hurt, and then they'd leave when they were clean and ready to pick up the burden again.
Duo led him up the stairs. The first floor was a soup kitchen, a huge cooking area with pots upon pots of stew bubbling on them. Half a dozen people stirred them, opened cans, cleaned bowls and served up the cheap fare to anybody who approached the counter. Long rows of metal tables under neon lights seated people in various stages of inebriation, eating quietly. The music was still muffled. It was coming from the next floor up.
Wufei gave in. He just had to ask.
"Food's free, I'm guessing. The beds as well." Of course they were free; everything was free in Freeport. "So are the drugs and alcohol?"
"Yup."
"They'll give them to anyone who asks? Does anybody control quantities?"
"Nope."
"...What's to stop someone from living here? Drinking and injecting upstairs, sleeping in the beds, eating in the kitchen and then doing it all over again?"
"Absolutely nothing," Duo answered.
Wufei thought of the Rotterdam drunk tank, of Neo-Tokyo's child-trade, of methadone clinics for ex-soldiers with so few funds that some of them cut the stuff with illegally obtained heroin just to avoid a riot...
...but no. No, for Chang Wufei, there was never any choice between two evils.
"That's repulsive," he said firmly.
"That's suicide," Duo corrected him. There was a hard edge to his grin.
"Nobody stops them?"
"A good man has buddies to talk him down and out. Ain't easy when he's fallen off the deep end, but we don't- I mean, when it's a friend-...Ah, music's fucking loud in here, the sector's Red Band should come down on that. Nobody could hear the breach siren in this fucking racket."
Wufei examined what he could see of Duo's profile in the gloom and decided he didn't want to know what Duo had nearly said there.
"Does this place push a lot of people to suicide?" The stairs were sticky beneath his boots. He felt contaminated.
"Fair amount." Duo's words were unusually clipped. It might be because he had to talk over the music thumping and screaming out of the speakers as they headed towards the stairs to the next floor. No drinks and drugs here, but the flashing lights, muggy air, the heat and the vibrations in the floor were enough to make one dizzy. People were gyrating and throwing themselves about with the same violence with which they fought in the streets outside.
Duo's voice rose above the racket, hard and apparently uncaring. "You have to keep in mind, some come to Freeport by choice, others end up here because it's their before-last stop."
"Then what the hell's their last?"
"Recyc."
After that final word, an uncomfortable silence settled between them once again, a distance that put Wufei firmly on the 'outside' and Duo 'inside'. Wufei thought that the divide felt a bit artificial today, a bit more defensive than it had on previous occasions. Or maybe that was his own interpretation. Unlike Heero, Duo didn't hide his emotions and thoughts behind an impassive mask; he wore his feelings on his sleeve. And other feelings beneath those and yet more others, ever-increasing finesse and nuance that was at once open yet hard to make out unless, presumably, you knew him very well.
Wufei had become quite good at reading people these past five years. It helped him understand some of the emotions darting through Duo's eyes, across his face, twisting the mobile lips, putting a hunch in his shoulders. But there were always more just out of reach, some of them deep and powerful, dark undercurrents to the bright, brazenly open personality. He remembered wondering the day after his arrival which, of the cheerful friend or the sinister Scissorman, was the 'real' Duo. Now he was starting to think that they both were. Though he couldn't be sure. When Wufei plunged too deeply into those blue eyes and embroiled, nuanced emotions, he'd end up unsure whether he was understanding Duo better or only reading a reflection of his own thoughts, as if he were staring at a Rorschach blot perpetually shifting before his eyes.
No matter. Today he didn't have the leisure to poke at the mystery that was Duo Maxwell, and that was all for the better...
The third story was the bar where they were to meet their contact. The music shivered the floor, but it was muffled, a cacophony beneath their feet, easily ignored. Nobody danced here. There were all sorts of patrons, from friends enjoying a casual chat over beers to the heavy drinkers at the bar or sitting in corners, nursing it.
Duo led him to the bar. "We got at least thirty minutes before they show up. Beer?"
"I'd rather not." Wufei wasn't at ease. This place was noisy, volatile and more dangerous than the big dorm sectors like Makhno, and they were thirty minutes away from dealing with a middleman for organized crime who might give them crucial information regarding Carver. Wufei could feel a subtle tension from Duo, and it was keying him up. He had no intention of drinking anything.
Duo stepped up to the bar, which was nothing more than a long metal table similar to the ones on which people were eating downstairs. "Two beers please, mate."
The man behind the bar was looking Wufei up and down with the usual Freeport scrutiny, so Wufei hid his irritation as well he could. Presumably Duo didn't want them to stand out by not ordering drinks in a bar.
Two beer bottles thumped onto the table. Big liter bottles, brown glass with the prosaic word 'Beer' on the plain white labels. Nothing else was legal about that label; no clue as to alcohol content or provenance. Wufei had by now deduced that anything without a commercial label - N-bars, frozen dinners, beer, medicine, hardware - had been made in the local factories or been bought ultra-cheap from other colonies by the shipload, packaged in Freeport and distributed in commissaries.
Duo turned and walked away, hands in his pockets. Fortunately Wufei reacted quickly and grabbed the bottles to follow his Handler.
That set the pattern for the next twenty minutes once they'd found a booth deep in shadow where they could both sit side by side, backs to the wall. Duo treated Wufei like his Blade. Everything in his attitude, the way he sat right in Wufei's personal space, which he normally respected, the way he calmly put that restraining hand on his thigh when the ugly fight started, everything was an elaborate act. The beers were part of their roles too. As Wufei had half-expected, Duo was only sipping, with a gesture that made it look like he was drinking more deeply. The level in his bottle barely budged. Wufei imitated him without prompting.
"So, what's upstairs?" Wufei asked quietly, trying to move past the feel of Duo's hand on his thigh. It made him uncomfortable for a whole host of reasons, some of which Duo was probably not even aware of. Duo had meant nothing by it, apart from restraining Wufei from interfering in a sudden fight between drunken patrons...with a little teasing thrown in as bonus.
"What do you think?" Duo countered, taking another exaggerated swig of beer. Great. They were back to the 'entertain me with a guess' game.
"Drug den, brothel," Wufei answered, because he just had to rise to the challenge each and every time.
"Right and wrong." Duo's eyes were tracking every movement, every person coming up the stairs. The fingers that had squeezed Wufei's thigh now tapped lightly on the table before Duo caught and eliminated that unusual nervous gesture. "Drugs and stuff, yeah. But prostitution don't work so well without currency."
I don't see how anything works without currency, Wufei wanted to say. He could understand how a small area functioned; Babka fed Duo, and Chris and Madir gave him 'candy' and fixed his boots, because Duo would probably fix something for them one day, or bring them spices and books and other gifts from outside, or defend them against criminals. The sector was its own little community where everybody knew each other and relied on each other. But Wufei still didn't understand why Hyun had fed them that Korean food the other day when she didn't know Duo from any other hoodlum. There was something here, something that underpinned a lot of how Freeport worked, that Wufei still didn't understand.
Some bystanders had separated the two fighters. One of them was staggering with, at the very least, a badly broken nose and concussion, but he was still willing to fight, straining madly against the arms that held him back. Drunk or drugged for sure. More people stood up and walked over to help keep the two apart. Quite civically inclined for a bunch of lawless anarchists bent only on survival. Then again, they could be in that pinch tomorrow, engaged in a drunken fight and needing cooler heads to stop them before they got themselves killed.
Another fight nearly broke out between two of the peacekeepers, which the two fighters paused to watch. Then everybody got separated, drinks were produced, the bleeding man was carted off to a room to one side, and ten minutes later everybody looked like they'd become fast friends.
Wufei felt the tension radiate from Duo, though he was certain he'd be the only one to notice. Duo's long lashes were brushing his cheeks, apparently looking down at his beer, but his attention was elsewhere.
"Incoming, eleven o'clock," he breathed. His voice was nearly lost in the ambient noise.
Wufei didn't look right away, but he tracked the movement he'd caught in his peripheral vision to keep a bead on the target.
"Small thick guy is Rav's middle man." The words were a quick mutter behind the beer bottle's mouth. "Others are-...shit."
Wufei glanced obliquely at Duo. The latter's tension had ratcheted up, but his discreet gaze wasn't directed at the new arrivals.
"Guy coming up the stairs. Watch him. Ex-commando. Kills for Rav."
It didn't take a mind reader to figure out that this man's presence was very much unexpected and not at all welcome.
The middleman's name was Terrence Darbois, according to Duo's quick briefing. A colonist and, as Duo would put it, a spacer through and through; the set of his jaw spoke of an unusual teeth pattern, probably extra molars, a common mutation among spacer populations. He was smaller even than Duo, which accentuated his rotundity. He dodged around groups of drunks who towered over him, his demeanor good-natured and mild. The three men with him, comically taller, didn't look good-natured at all. Bodyguards and walking intimidation. Wufei dismissed them to concentrate on the man following them by a dozen paces. Even without Duo's warning, Wufei would have spotted him.
He was three inches taller than Wufei. His hair was grey, probably dyed, falling in thick spiky locks sweeping away from his face; gelled stiff, or else he had a quite unusual follicle pattern (when one knew that Trowa's hair fell that way naturally, one no longer judged these things without information). His eyes were wide, heavy and almond-shaped. Some Asian blood in there. Indonesian, maybe. His features were regular; straight, small nose, high, well-defined cheekbones, lips firm, pale but sensuous. Probably not a colony mix, more likely originating from the Pacific rim melting pot. His body and stance screamed 'killer'. Tight, well-maintained muscles under form-fitting biker jacket and pants, wide shoulders on a lean, mean frame. The man moved like a tiger and didn't try to hide it.
Darbois and his men made a side-trip to the bar. The killer approached Duo and Wufei directly and leaned casually against the side of their booth.
"Hi, Duo."
Wufei had expected some form of intimidation. He was surprised by the openly amicable tone and look that went with it.
"Hiya, Mako. How's things?" Duo's tone was friendly too, all signs of tension camouflaged. "You come here to hang out?"
"Heard you'd be here tonight. Just thought I'd say hi. I haven't seen you in nearly a year."
"I didn't think my little meeting with Terrence would reach the high-up of Rav's organization," said Duo, sounding totally casual and relaxed about it.
"Well, it did. Rav sends his regards, by the way."
"Be sure to say hi for me."
"Will do."
Mako's eyes had flickered ever so briefly over Wufei. Too briefly. Wufei felt a prickle of tension across his shoulder blades. That had been nowhere near the Freeport scrutiny that usually dissected him. There was no overt hostility in Mako's stance, though. Maybe the man had heard about him beforehand, judged him unimportant and had just dismissed him from consideration.
"Ah, Maxwell! Long time no see!"
Wufei barely spared Darbois a glance. Let Duo take care of him. The goons were not really that much of a problem either. Wufei kept his attention apparently on his beer, his head down and his arms loosely folded across his chest, and every instinct centered on Mako who'd settled idly leaning against the side of the booth.
The civilities that followed were long and elaborate. Both Darbois and Duo asked each other about a long list of mutual acquaintances. Wufei's impatience peaked and then subsided as he realized this was more than courtesy. This was a delicate prenegotiation, situating each other on the map of the underworld as it were.
"And how's Henry Schwimmer these days?" asked Duo after taking another gulp of beer and belching lightly. Darbois took a sip of his ale and did the same. Wufei managed to keep his fastidious distaste from showing; maybe this was also part of the ritual.
"Henry? He hates the world. He lost a lot of his contacts during that Pig crackdown in the Black Nines."
Duo made a sympathetic sound while Wufei chalked up one for the Good Guys.
"Fucking Pigs, heh? He was one of yours, wasn't he?"
"No, no, we only run dope," Darbois reassured him genially. Wufei took a second to engrave Darbois' features and history onto his list before bringing his attention back to Mako. The killer had done nothing more sinister so far than listen, contribute a few names of friends Duo knew, and pick his fingers with a fifteen-inch hunting blade he'd somehow produced from his tight gear.
"Henry's one of our regular associates, though," Darbois added. "We're not happy to see him in trouble. He peddles hardware, small caliber stuff, and that means we have customers in common. Was he who you wanted to know about?"
The switch to business was abrupt. Duo took a sip of beer before answering. Wufei had the feeling that this turn in the conversation was unexpected.
"I don't know, Dar. If I knew, I wouldn't be talking to you, now, would I? I'm just looking for contacts. I'm sure you heard I have a deal getting set up. I want to unload some delicate cargo."
"This intended for family or friends?" Darbois asked, which was the underworld way of asking 'mob or terrorists'. Wufei would give a year's salary to be able to arrest Darbois and hold him for twenty four hours in an interrogation room.
"Friends. It's that kind of cargo."
"Do you want names in the Nines? Are you looking for a partner or are you just cutting the deal?"
"Just fixing. I don't want to run these myself. You know that's not my style, and Scythe ain't that big. But this customer's a friend of mine, I have to be sure the guys who run his cargo are good mooncursers. I want their CVs. I want references. I want a letter from their moms saying these are serious guys. I want to know every little bump and trouble they had in the Nines in the last six months, and any dealings they had that might queer my trade."
Darbois was silent for a few seconds. Mako glanced up from his manicure. Wufei wasn't sure how to interpret the brief flash of interest in his eyes.
"I see...I guess I could put you in touch with a few people. We've got some canny young lads who just set up new routes, taking advantage of all the disorder-"
"No thanks," said Duo. "I'm sure they're a fine bunch of kids, but I go with experience any time. I want someone who operated before the riots, not some young punk who thinks the shake-up is a good way of getting a rep and some pocket money."
"I see," Darbois repeated.
In the brief silence that followed, Duo's hands fell away from his beer to lie on either side of the brown bottle, fingers loose on the table's surface. The gesture was innocuous, but Wufei didn't like it, or the slight increase in tension it betrayed.
"I have a few names for you," Darbois finally said, fingers crossing over his round belly. "Who did you say your customer was?"
"I didn't," Duo answered shortly.
"You know, a lot of my lads and my associates don't like dealing with a black box. Especially after all the fuss and muss in the Nines. Maybe a name...?"
"You can call him Mr Long," Duo answered, his voice taking on a dangerous edge. "On account of him having a long arm, if you see what I mean. He's got a lot of guns behind him and he don't like questions."
Wufei took a sip of his beer, face carefully neutral. He remembered how Duo had asked him what 'Shenlong' meant, during the war. Apparently Wufei wasn't the only one with a long memory. He wondered what would happen if you ever forced Duo, gun to his head, to tell an outright lie. He'd probably hand you the truth in such an underhand way you'd buy right into it. Then he'd kill you.
"Terrence."
Darbois blinked and looked up at Mako. So did Wufei and Duo.
The killer sheathed his knife, slipping it under his jacket into a scabbard in the small of his back. "Ter, I'm not a freetrader, but even I know you don't ask that kind of question. This is Duo's deal. Why should he hand you the info to allow you to talk to his customer directly and cut him out?"
"But...Rav said we got to be careful with new deals to the Nines-" Darbois started, voice uncertain, eyes searching Mako's.
"Yeah, sure. But this is Duo Maxwell. He's got a good rep. I know him, Ravachol knows him. He's neither stupid nor a stoolie. Capiche?"
Wufei kept himself entirely relaxed. At his side, Duo radiated trustworthiness.
"So get the deal closed already. Preferably outside. This place..." Mako glanced around in distaste at the bar and its row of barflies.
"Right, right. Sorry, Duo. You know how it is. Come on, let's go outside and get some fresh air."
"...This is Freeport, dude. The air don't get much fresher than this." Duo's hands were firmly anchored on either side of his nearly-full bottle and he looked unwilling to move.
"I meant, let's go somewhere where we can hear ourselves talk."
Darbois stood. So did his goons. Mako glanced at Duo with a reassuring nod. The latter took his time taking a last swig of beer. Wufei was probably the only one to notice how Duo's eyes were not closed as he drank; they were darting from Darbois to Mako and back again. Wufei felt Duo's edginess. It echoed the prickle of instinct across his back. The bar was noisy, noisome, and another fight had broken out in the far corner, but Duo and Wufei would have preferred to talk right here in front of witnesses. Still, they had to follow their one lead.
Duo slowly stood up. Wufei imitated him. They followed Darbois outside, the goons preceding him and Mako walking behind them all...Wufei idly scratched at the rub mark from his Blade's collar, and shifted his sword at the same time, making sure it was positioned where he could get it out of its scabbard and into an enemy's guts in one sweep.
The sniffers let everybody out two by two after their three minute wait. When Wufei and Duo walked out of the airlock, Darbois made a gesture to Mako and the goons to stay behind. His eyes included Wufei in the order. Then he walked away, already talking. Duo followed him after a small hesitation and a flick of the fingers signaling Wufei to wait with the other bodyguards. Wufei tried to tell him with his scowl just how much he didn't like the idea of Duo wandering away without Wufei's protection, but the smuggler's back was already turned.
Wufei would have followed if Duo had gone out of his sight, but the two went no further than the far corner of the building. Wufei's eyes swept from Duo to the open space around him and Darbois, then back again. His friend had his back to him, forty yards away, leaning over to listen to Darbois who was speaking in a low voice. They were under a streetlamp, harsh blue-white neon picking up highlights in the leather of Duo's coat. There were no dark alleys nearby, Duo would see anyone approaching from miles away, and Wufei was at Duo's six, guarding his back. No-one would get the drop on Maxwell, not before Wufei could be at his side.
Mako also watched the pair for a moment and then he turned towards Wufei. The killer looked him up and down, the Freeport appraisal to the nth degree. Wufei concealed his surprise and met the stare full on.
A scuffle of boot to his left. Wufei instinctively took a step to the right, then stopped as he felt another of Darbois's goons move to block him off on that side. Mako glanced over his shoulder at Duo, and then took a step forward, placing himself between Wufei and his friend.
Wufei took a step back and found himself in the shadow of the bar. The fourth man was between him and the building's airlock. There was a chain link fence behind Wufei, protecting a hydroponic pod.
It was a trap, Wufei realized with sudden, icy clarity. But Duo wasn't the target.
End Part 10
Part 11
Dun dun dun...I'll try to post the next bit on Sunday night, I swear.
Link to all chapters
"The canals and the bridges, the embankments and cuts,
They blasted and dug with their sweat and their guts
They never drank water, but whiskey by pints
And the shanty towns rang with their songs and their fights...
They died in their hundreds with no sign to mark where
Save the brass in the pocket of the entrepreneur.
By landslide and rockblast they got buried so deep
That in death if not life they'll have peace while they sleep."
---The Pogues, 'Navigator'
Freeport by Maldoror
Chapter Ten
"Will you relax?" Duo sighed.
Wufei treated that suggestion with the contempt it deserved and continued to scrutinize every shadowy corner and dark hallway they passed. They were back in the docking ring section on their way to board Scythe. The sound of their footsteps scattered and multiplied, chasing them down the long empty corridor. Each dark intersection had a great potential for ambush.
Duo walked as if he owned the place and Erickson hadn't tried to kill them less than twelve hours ago. Wufei still had bloodstains on his jacket's cuff, but the incident was apparently Over as far as Duo was concerned. Wufei was told repeatedly that Erickson would no longer be a problem, but he was having a hard time forgetting the man's rabid eyes, not to mention the fact that at least one of his thugs had managed to get his hands on a gun.
The room with the Customs desk was empty and dark, with only an emergency light above the door and the airlock, but the sniffers were operational and opened for them after a three-minute wait. The docking ring was a pool of shadows through which Duo strolled as if he hadn't a care in the world. Wufei only relaxed when Scythe's airlock hissed shut behind them.
Duo didn't waste any time. He was more interested in repairing his malfunctioning O2-meter than jumping at shadows. He dismantled the dial from the control panel in less than a minute. Then he took it to the bunk to work on, sitting cross-legged on an old towel to catch any oil, grime and small loose pieces that might fall. He absently waved Wufei towards the comms board.
"Since we're here, go ahead and type up a progress report for your bosses. I'll encrypt it and send it out when you're done," Duo mumbled around the small screwdriver in his mouth. "Then we can unload some boxes from the cargo hold."
Wufei stared at the blinking cursor of the text editor on the comms board. What exactly was he supposed to put in his report? 'Dear Trowa. I've been in Freeport for eighty-five hours. Duo and I have done a little groundwork, but the investigation as such hasn't actually started yet. We killed somebody yesterday. How are you doing?'
Finally he typed the code for 'still alive, investigation on track' and went to unload the boxes while Duo finished with the dial. He concentrated on the dozen or so boxes near the cargo hold entrance at Duo's request; they wouldn't empty Scythe's cargo hold in a day, not just the two of them, but this was a start. Wufei stacked the boxes on a cart near Scythe's ramp and rolled them over to customs. But since there was no Karl there to pass them through, the hole in the wall through which they'd shoved the cart and boxes last time was sealed shut.
"Just leave them on the cart. Sooner or later someone will show up and give them the inspection and the rubber stamp," Duo informed him, coming up behind Wufei with the last two boxes.
"What's in these?"
"Some stuff I got from Hilde. Junk that she doesn't want because it's so old only Freeport still has those kinda systems, and spare computer parts for the mainframe. I also got a good deal on discarded clothing from Clothco on L3. I got a contact there. He puts them aside for me, and sells them for a dozen cred a box. The boxes with my name on them is my stuff. There's hardware in here for my workshop, and a few creature comforts."
"And when will you get these things, if they have to be passed through customs?"
Duo made a wide and cheerful 'your guess is as good as mine' gesture. Then he started digging through one of the boxes labeled 'Maxwell'. He took out a small tin and a couple of books. "Here, hold these, willya?"
Wufei checked what Duo had plunked into his arms. A tin of bay leaves, a jar of paprika, collected essays by Emma Goldman and a book in Russian. Duo piled some bowls, vids and cheap garlic concentrate on top of what he'd already deposited in Wufei's arms. Wufei shifted them around, trying not to drop anything.
"What is all this?"
"Just a few things for Babka, Gilla and some of my buddies."
"Why am I carrying them?" Wufei grunted as Duo looped a bag full of something that clinked over one of his fingers.
"I forgot to bring a duffel," Duo explained, crouched by yet another box and stuffing computer circuits, micro-tools and a camera into the pockets of his long leather coat. "I think I have a bag in here somewhere that we can use...We'll bag the stuff while we're going through the sniffers, might as well use those boring three minutes."
Wufei stared down at the pile in his arms and then at Duo as he realized the latter was suggesting they walk out with these goods without passing them through customs. "Are we allowed to do this?!"
Duo looked up at him with unconcealed amusement. "What part of 'lawless anarchy' did you not get, Wu?"
"But-"
"It's not like the Freeport police are going to spot us. Hell, you're the nearest thing we got to that right now. Tell you what, though-" Duo added, straightening up in one fluid gesture and leaning over to pat Wufei on the cheek, fingers warm through the glove, "-if it makes you feel any better, you can always arrest yourself," Duo whispered in his ear like it was some sort of naughty suggestion.
Wufei stood frozen for a second, startled by the unexpected contact, the warmth of Duo's hand and breath that cut right through Freeport's usual chill - then he caught up with what Duo had actually said, and spotted the impish grin from the corner of his eye. The bowls and other sundries in his arms rattled as Wufei fought down the urge to drop the whole lot and sock their owner. He leveled a glare that could scorch steel instead. Duo chuckled and wandered off towards the sniffers. Wufei hesitated, and then for lack of any other choice he followed in a bit of a huff, though he preferred to think of it as justified irritation.
Beneath the annoyance, Wufei was puzzled, even a little scandalized. Duo had been so adamant about customs when he'd mentioned it before. He'd called it one of the colony's founding principles. Wufei had been raised to respect the law; even Freeport's. To see Duo flout regulations like this, even over such small, negligible items, ruffled him more than he wanted to admit. Particularly the way Duo seemed to think it was perfectly alright to do so. Wufei was trying to fit this into a coherent picture of how Freeport functioned, since function it did, and had been doing so regardless of all sense and logic for decades.
Okay, Chang, Wufei told himself; think about this rationally. The sniffers would stop anything truly dangerous from coming onboard, and they were automated. But then why were there customs... ? Couldn't all his boxes be automatically screened for dangerous items? Duo had mentioned hoarding. Said it could cause riots. Maybe that meant that small quantities were not regulated - hell, the whole place was run on volunteers, they probably couldn't afford to track the small stuff. But anything big, like the complete content of Scythe's hold, well, that had to be tallied and... what? Shared? Redistributed? How the hell did all this work?!
Freetraders like Duo 'paid' their way with things they bought on the outside. Wufei was holding currency in his arms in the form of spices and bowls and the books which Duo was putting into a plastic bag he'd scrounged from one of the boxes. Freeport only bought the bare necessities for its inhabitants. The Freetraders made life nicer by bringing in little luxuries and raw materials that the cart vendors could transform into goods. Then Duo and his ilk received the goods in exchange. But how could an equitable system be derived from this?
Wufei could just ask. There was absolutely no valid reason not to ask. Right.
The perfectly subjective and invalid reason he didn't feel like asking was the way Duo's eyes took that teasing slant whenever Wufei couldn't figure something out for himself, as well as the look of surprise and grudging respect he got when he did deduce something on his own, or ask a pertinent question about an aspect of life here that Duo had not thought he'd notice.
And beneath the trappings of that unworthy and totally useless competition of 'one-up' with Duo which Wufei just could not seem to refrain from, there was another motivation. Wufei had to admit he was intrigued, and challenged as a scholar and a student of people and societies for the first time in years. Though he disapproved of most of the aspects of this culture he'd seen so far, he just wanted to figure out how it worked.
His cover story was an unexpected windfall in that regard: as a Blade, and a newly arrived one at that, Wufei wasn't really supposed to know how this place functioned, and the no-communication rule made it hard for him to trip himself up. So he could take his time and make his own observations and deductions.
Wufei wasn't used to doing things just for the pleasure and knowledge it brought him, not since his marriage. But he told himself his research had an important and practical application as well. He looked forward to making a complete report to Trowa at the end of his mission. It was essential that the Preventers collect better information on Freeport than that issued by Duo, who was obviously too partisan to be objective. Proper understanding of this society would be a necessary first step to one day putting Freeport to right-
"Stoooop it," Duo muttered. The sniffers hummed and tasted the air, ignoring them both.
"Stop what?" Wufei looked up, trying to make out Duo's features from the gleam of the emergency light in the airlock.
"Thinking. I can feel you do it in the dark with my eyes closed. It's annoying."
The sniffers opened and Duo dodged any comeback by darting out of the confined space. He swung the plastic bag he'd filled with the spices, books and other sundries and walked away with a cheeky grin.
"What are we doing today?" Wufei grumbled as he followed. Hopefully Duo wouldn't drag them into another hostile sector full of one-time enemies.
"On our way back we'll stop and talk to a few people I know. Sweepers. I don't have to pussy-foot around them, these guys sort of know what I'm up to. There's no saying if they'll help me or not, but they won't tell anybody what I'm after either. Well, not once I give them a few presents." Duo patted the bag, which clinked again. "These guys sweep around that L3 colony Carver was on six months ago. They might have some info on him. Sweepers have a long memory. If he's used them or their friends to travel, he might have left tracks. Should take us a couple hours, assuming the guys we need aren't all on the outside doin' their own business. After that, we go back home. I got to reinstall and config the CPU of the mecha we fixed. Its whole core got wiped. Sorry man, I know you don't understand-"
"I do," Wufei grunted. Yes, he was annoyed at yet more delays in the investigation, but after that incident in Zapata, he finally understood at gut level why they could not move faster, why Duo had to pursue his usual routine as much as possible. This was a tight community; people watched each other with a mixture of neighborliness and paranoia that made Wufei's shoulder blades itch. Duo - and his Blade - had to be discreet.
Duo was looking at him out of the corner of his eyes. The remnants of the smug grin were still clinging to his lips, but the quirk of his eyebrows was puzzled.
"You'll probably be bored. I won't need your help," the smuggler added as if trying to judge just how far Wufei's unexpected streak of patience would go.
Wufei was about to wave off Duo's probe when he remembered a small detail. He glanced at his watch.
"Don't worry about me. In fact, it's good you have something to keep you busy today, Maxwell. I forgot to tell you I have to help fix the vent mechanism near Center Street with a couple of acquaintances in a little over four hour. We'll be at it until the sector's night cycle, I imagine." Hopefully Mirael and Kolia were going ahead as scheduled with the repairs they'd mentioned, and wouldn't mind his silent help.
Duo hid his astonishment well, but he was wide-eyed and silent for a full ten seconds before he gathered himself enough to marshal a question that didn't sound too flustered. Wufei swallowed his own smirk. Justice was sweet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The man's nose took the brunt of the blow with an ugly crunch. He staggered and his eyes rolled back in their sockets. Sitting on the sidelines ten feet away, Wufei tried to unclench his teeth and look away.
At almost the same instant, Duo's hand dropped beneath the table and landed on Wufei's thigh. This did nothing for the Preventer's equanimity. His fingers nearly shattered the bottle he was holding.
"Relax." Duo was very good at smiling widely and talking discreetly at the same time. "It's none of our business."
Wufei knew that. He hadn't been about to interfere in the fight. Really. He'd stiffened in reaction, true, but that was perfectly normal...He shifted, then discreetly tried to shove Duo's hand away. Duo removed it while reaching for his beer; a natural gesture, as if he hadn't noticed Wufei's efforts. But there was a little smile hovering around the neck of the bottle that looked too angelic to be true.
The wounded fighter shook his head like a maddened bull. Blood and mucus splattered the floor. Wufei wondered what the man was on. His fingers tightened on the bottle again. He took a deep breath of the thick, sour air and forced himself to relax from his center outwards. He had to stay focused. This was their first break in the case. He was not going to mess this up.
Five days after the fight in Zapata, with some more Scissorman work and a few discreet inquiries behind them, something had finally 'shaken loose', as Duo put it. An email message came through on Duo's beaten-up old laptop; a rendezvous to meet with one of Ravachol's middlemen to discuss some possible business. The man had given Duo a time and a place, a bar a few sectors away from Makhno.
Wufei had followed Duo with steely anticipation. Finally he felt they were moving forward with the case. They were going to talk with a man who almost certainly controlled the ship and crew who'd smuggled Carver out of L2- X953. He might even know Carver personally. They just had to get him to talk.
On another, less important note, Wufei had also been looking forward to seeing the flipside of Freeport. So far he'd ventured through dorm sectors and industrial zones, meeting somewhat upstanding citizens of a tight community. Granted, he and Duo had been attacked once, had killed in self-defense and witnessed two other completely unrelated 'duels', but this was still far from the sink of iniquity he'd pictured Freeport to be. But now that they were meeting a known criminal in a bar, Wufei was about to see Freeport's seedy underbelly.
It wasn't at all what he'd expected. Somehow Wufei wasn't all that surprised.
The 'bar' was a five-story tall building covering an impressive surface area. Space was at a premium in Freeport; Duo's one-room apartment was the norm for bachelors all over the colony, particularly in sectors like Makhno where a good amount of space was taken up by junkyards and mechanics' shops. The size of the bar was not the only unusual detail, its location was unexpected as well. It was in a zone which was otherwise used for cargo and hydroponics. There were no prostitutes, peepshows or other bars, no other sign of anything dedicated to the business of sin and pleasure. Just this ugly five-story structure stranded in an empty sector near the industrial zone.
There were no beckoning lights in the bar's windows. Indeed there were no windows. Presumably because, as sectors went, this was probably one of the most boring and hardly worth looking out upon anyway. Staring up at the building's blank walls, Wufei felt a shiver of claustrophobia crawl up his spine, compounded when he realized that the door was in fact an airlock complete with sniffers. He had to force himself to follow Duo, praying to his ancestors that there were emergency exits somewhere out back. As a minute trickled by in the dark, with Duo humming tonelessly under his breath a foot away, Wufei tried not to imagine what a blaze would do in this closed-up building. It made his burns itch.
"Why are there sniffers into this...place?" Wufei muttered, trying to distract himself from the thought. He'd avoided the word 'fire-trap'; it made it too real. "What are they afraid we'll bring in?"
The one-note humming stopped. Wufei waited. Duo took a breath, but the sniffers opened before he could answer. Wufei stepped out quickly from the confining airlock, getting his back to the wall and taking stock automatically.
The ground floor was one big continuous room, the lighting so sparse that even after the sniffer's darkness, it took Wufei's eyes a few seconds to be able to make out any details. When they did, two words formed themselves in his mind as if they were being chiseled out of ice. Opium den.
The first snarl of revulsion faded as his eyes and nose corrected him. The men and women occupying the beds weren't smoking or injecting anything; most of them were asleep. He saw no pipes, needles or any other drug paraphernalia, and there was no heavy smell of opiates and death in the air. He did smell vomit, piss, unwashed bodies and the thick, fermented odor of sleeping drunks, as well as alcohol, disinfectant, mildew and the smell of cheap food, the kind you found in soup kitchens.
Wufei forced himself to follow Duo as his Handler made his way through the rows of beds. His steps slowed as he examined the slack-jawed faces of the sleepers he passed. Most of them looked drunk, but some were twitching and jerking in a way he was all too familiar with. It seemed that alcohol was not the only poison you could obtain here. So he'd finally found Freeport's wino and junkie population, all in one place. Wufei's lips tightened as his gorge rose. Were they locked in here?
No, of course not. After all, there were sniffers - and hopefully fire escapes - out of this sedated, stinking hell. But the smell...it reminded him of the lockup in Rotterdam, that's why he'd jumped to that conclusion. There was a memory he didn't need, particularly here. He'd had to plunge into the local drunk tank to look for an informant. He hadn't realized that Relena was visiting Rotterdam that day. More to the point, he hadn't realized that, in most civilized areas, the cops rounded up all the drunks, the beggars, the mutterers and the crashed-out junkies, and locked them away during the President's visit. Wouldn't do for a TV camera to accidentally capture a shot of the darling President Peacecraft next to an old, dead-drunk veteran sleeping under a commemorative statue.
Wufei skirted a puddle of vomit and glanced down at the soiled camp bed and the junkie who looked all of sixteen. This was bad. But Rotterdam...the Rotterdam drunk tank had horrified him, and that took a lot of doing after all he'd been through. There were too many people who'd fallen through the cracks of the Peace, and to find them all in one place, locked up ten to a three-man cell...He'd also learned that a lot of cities poisoned the local pigeon population before Relena showed up for a peace march, in case one of those disrespectful birds decided to take a dump on her. Wufei had been all the more disgusted knowing that Relena would have been scandalized at these precautions her entourage were taking. Or at least he thought she'd be. The young girl he'd met and protected that first mad year after the Last War, who'd calmly stared down an armed gunman who'd slipped past Heero and Wufei, that girl would not stand for it.
He wondered how much of that girl was left now; it'd been two years and one election since Une and a presidential attaché had formally forbidden him from going anywhere near Relena.
Wufei shook his head and breathed out heavily, trying to clear the smell from his nostrils and the memories it had triggered from his mind. Duo was already on the far side of the huge open space full of beds, one of them with a couple having unabashed sex right in the middle of the drunk and unconscious. Wufei picked up his step. Duo, who'd not glanced either right or left as he'd crossed the room, started to climb the stairs to the next floor. Loud music filtered from above. Wufei ran three steps to catch up and grabbed Duo by the elbow.
"Duo," he whispered sharply in the ear that was turned his way, "do people have access to hard drugs in here?"
"Define hard. You got pot, booze, some fun chemicals, shit and-"
"What chemicals?" If he was likely to run into a guy hopped up on some of the disinhibitors they sold these days, Zerks, he wanted to know about it. He'd seen one of those junkies in the terminal stages break and mangle his own hand ripping it out of a cuff to strangle the officer who'd arrested him.
"Boosters," Duo informed him casually. "Party pills. Crackers. Acids. Sugars, white, brown and blue. Anything that can melt your brain for a few hours without being highly addictive."
"And they sleep it off here," Wufei concluded, mind jumping quickly from conclusion to conclusion. "What are the sniffers calibrated for? All of those? This ensures that they can't leave under the influence?"
Duo gave him once more that appraising look that meant that Wufei had guessed more than Duo would have given him credit for. "Yeah. Mainly it's to avoid people taking shit outside, but they're sensitive enough where they won't let you out if you're junked up to the eyeballs. And alcohol. The sniffers won't let you out if you're completely toasted. We already have more fights and rapes in Freeport than we need."
Wufei wasn't surprised by any of this. When Babka was talking about Tolstoy and the Haymarket Eight, one could almost forget that most people in Freeport were psychotics, free spirits, sociopaths, idealists, bitter ex-soldiers, criminals, terrorists, radical anarchists or an interesting combination of several of the above. Violence hung in the air as thick as Freeport's miasma. These people labored long hours in highly dangerous conditions in the shipyards, mines and factories. Then they'd come home and work on maintaining their sectors, or creating goods, food, clothes, utilities, things they and their neighbors needed, and then when that was done they'd take care of the kids or do odd jobs or collect the trash...
The Preventers came down hard on all sorts of drugs, but no government had ever successfully legislated alcohol and violence, the poor man's sedation. And this lawless and overworked population was tailor-made for it. Wufei had been constantly amazed at how relatively peaceful Freeport was compared to the L2 slums. But they'd just encapsulated the drunken violence and aggression and locked it away here, where people went when the toil got too much for them. They'd get it out of their system in a place where they were the only ones who might get hurt, and then they'd leave when they were clean and ready to pick up the burden again.
Duo led him up the stairs. The first floor was a soup kitchen, a huge cooking area with pots upon pots of stew bubbling on them. Half a dozen people stirred them, opened cans, cleaned bowls and served up the cheap fare to anybody who approached the counter. Long rows of metal tables under neon lights seated people in various stages of inebriation, eating quietly. The music was still muffled. It was coming from the next floor up.
Wufei gave in. He just had to ask.
"Food's free, I'm guessing. The beds as well." Of course they were free; everything was free in Freeport. "So are the drugs and alcohol?"
"Yup."
"They'll give them to anyone who asks? Does anybody control quantities?"
"Nope."
"...What's to stop someone from living here? Drinking and injecting upstairs, sleeping in the beds, eating in the kitchen and then doing it all over again?"
"Absolutely nothing," Duo answered.
Wufei thought of the Rotterdam drunk tank, of Neo-Tokyo's child-trade, of methadone clinics for ex-soldiers with so few funds that some of them cut the stuff with illegally obtained heroin just to avoid a riot...
...but no. No, for Chang Wufei, there was never any choice between two evils.
"That's repulsive," he said firmly.
"That's suicide," Duo corrected him. There was a hard edge to his grin.
"Nobody stops them?"
"A good man has buddies to talk him down and out. Ain't easy when he's fallen off the deep end, but we don't- I mean, when it's a friend-...Ah, music's fucking loud in here, the sector's Red Band should come down on that. Nobody could hear the breach siren in this fucking racket."
Wufei examined what he could see of Duo's profile in the gloom and decided he didn't want to know what Duo had nearly said there.
"Does this place push a lot of people to suicide?" The stairs were sticky beneath his boots. He felt contaminated.
"Fair amount." Duo's words were unusually clipped. It might be because he had to talk over the music thumping and screaming out of the speakers as they headed towards the stairs to the next floor. No drinks and drugs here, but the flashing lights, muggy air, the heat and the vibrations in the floor were enough to make one dizzy. People were gyrating and throwing themselves about with the same violence with which they fought in the streets outside.
Duo's voice rose above the racket, hard and apparently uncaring. "You have to keep in mind, some come to Freeport by choice, others end up here because it's their before-last stop."
"Then what the hell's their last?"
"Recyc."
After that final word, an uncomfortable silence settled between them once again, a distance that put Wufei firmly on the 'outside' and Duo 'inside'. Wufei thought that the divide felt a bit artificial today, a bit more defensive than it had on previous occasions. Or maybe that was his own interpretation. Unlike Heero, Duo didn't hide his emotions and thoughts behind an impassive mask; he wore his feelings on his sleeve. And other feelings beneath those and yet more others, ever-increasing finesse and nuance that was at once open yet hard to make out unless, presumably, you knew him very well.
Wufei had become quite good at reading people these past five years. It helped him understand some of the emotions darting through Duo's eyes, across his face, twisting the mobile lips, putting a hunch in his shoulders. But there were always more just out of reach, some of them deep and powerful, dark undercurrents to the bright, brazenly open personality. He remembered wondering the day after his arrival which, of the cheerful friend or the sinister Scissorman, was the 'real' Duo. Now he was starting to think that they both were. Though he couldn't be sure. When Wufei plunged too deeply into those blue eyes and embroiled, nuanced emotions, he'd end up unsure whether he was understanding Duo better or only reading a reflection of his own thoughts, as if he were staring at a Rorschach blot perpetually shifting before his eyes.
No matter. Today he didn't have the leisure to poke at the mystery that was Duo Maxwell, and that was all for the better...
The third story was the bar where they were to meet their contact. The music shivered the floor, but it was muffled, a cacophony beneath their feet, easily ignored. Nobody danced here. There were all sorts of patrons, from friends enjoying a casual chat over beers to the heavy drinkers at the bar or sitting in corners, nursing it.
Duo led him to the bar. "We got at least thirty minutes before they show up. Beer?"
"I'd rather not." Wufei wasn't at ease. This place was noisy, volatile and more dangerous than the big dorm sectors like Makhno, and they were thirty minutes away from dealing with a middleman for organized crime who might give them crucial information regarding Carver. Wufei could feel a subtle tension from Duo, and it was keying him up. He had no intention of drinking anything.
Duo stepped up to the bar, which was nothing more than a long metal table similar to the ones on which people were eating downstairs. "Two beers please, mate."
The man behind the bar was looking Wufei up and down with the usual Freeport scrutiny, so Wufei hid his irritation as well he could. Presumably Duo didn't want them to stand out by not ordering drinks in a bar.
Two beer bottles thumped onto the table. Big liter bottles, brown glass with the prosaic word 'Beer' on the plain white labels. Nothing else was legal about that label; no clue as to alcohol content or provenance. Wufei had by now deduced that anything without a commercial label - N-bars, frozen dinners, beer, medicine, hardware - had been made in the local factories or been bought ultra-cheap from other colonies by the shipload, packaged in Freeport and distributed in commissaries.
Duo turned and walked away, hands in his pockets. Fortunately Wufei reacted quickly and grabbed the bottles to follow his Handler.
That set the pattern for the next twenty minutes once they'd found a booth deep in shadow where they could both sit side by side, backs to the wall. Duo treated Wufei like his Blade. Everything in his attitude, the way he sat right in Wufei's personal space, which he normally respected, the way he calmly put that restraining hand on his thigh when the ugly fight started, everything was an elaborate act. The beers were part of their roles too. As Wufei had half-expected, Duo was only sipping, with a gesture that made it look like he was drinking more deeply. The level in his bottle barely budged. Wufei imitated him without prompting.
"So, what's upstairs?" Wufei asked quietly, trying to move past the feel of Duo's hand on his thigh. It made him uncomfortable for a whole host of reasons, some of which Duo was probably not even aware of. Duo had meant nothing by it, apart from restraining Wufei from interfering in a sudden fight between drunken patrons...with a little teasing thrown in as bonus.
"What do you think?" Duo countered, taking another exaggerated swig of beer. Great. They were back to the 'entertain me with a guess' game.
"Drug den, brothel," Wufei answered, because he just had to rise to the challenge each and every time.
"Right and wrong." Duo's eyes were tracking every movement, every person coming up the stairs. The fingers that had squeezed Wufei's thigh now tapped lightly on the table before Duo caught and eliminated that unusual nervous gesture. "Drugs and stuff, yeah. But prostitution don't work so well without currency."
I don't see how anything works without currency, Wufei wanted to say. He could understand how a small area functioned; Babka fed Duo, and Chris and Madir gave him 'candy' and fixed his boots, because Duo would probably fix something for them one day, or bring them spices and books and other gifts from outside, or defend them against criminals. The sector was its own little community where everybody knew each other and relied on each other. But Wufei still didn't understand why Hyun had fed them that Korean food the other day when she didn't know Duo from any other hoodlum. There was something here, something that underpinned a lot of how Freeport worked, that Wufei still didn't understand.
Some bystanders had separated the two fighters. One of them was staggering with, at the very least, a badly broken nose and concussion, but he was still willing to fight, straining madly against the arms that held him back. Drunk or drugged for sure. More people stood up and walked over to help keep the two apart. Quite civically inclined for a bunch of lawless anarchists bent only on survival. Then again, they could be in that pinch tomorrow, engaged in a drunken fight and needing cooler heads to stop them before they got themselves killed.
Another fight nearly broke out between two of the peacekeepers, which the two fighters paused to watch. Then everybody got separated, drinks were produced, the bleeding man was carted off to a room to one side, and ten minutes later everybody looked like they'd become fast friends.
Wufei felt the tension radiate from Duo, though he was certain he'd be the only one to notice. Duo's long lashes were brushing his cheeks, apparently looking down at his beer, but his attention was elsewhere.
"Incoming, eleven o'clock," he breathed. His voice was nearly lost in the ambient noise.
Wufei didn't look right away, but he tracked the movement he'd caught in his peripheral vision to keep a bead on the target.
"Small thick guy is Rav's middle man." The words were a quick mutter behind the beer bottle's mouth. "Others are-...shit."
Wufei glanced obliquely at Duo. The latter's tension had ratcheted up, but his discreet gaze wasn't directed at the new arrivals.
"Guy coming up the stairs. Watch him. Ex-commando. Kills for Rav."
It didn't take a mind reader to figure out that this man's presence was very much unexpected and not at all welcome.
The middleman's name was Terrence Darbois, according to Duo's quick briefing. A colonist and, as Duo would put it, a spacer through and through; the set of his jaw spoke of an unusual teeth pattern, probably extra molars, a common mutation among spacer populations. He was smaller even than Duo, which accentuated his rotundity. He dodged around groups of drunks who towered over him, his demeanor good-natured and mild. The three men with him, comically taller, didn't look good-natured at all. Bodyguards and walking intimidation. Wufei dismissed them to concentrate on the man following them by a dozen paces. Even without Duo's warning, Wufei would have spotted him.
He was three inches taller than Wufei. His hair was grey, probably dyed, falling in thick spiky locks sweeping away from his face; gelled stiff, or else he had a quite unusual follicle pattern (when one knew that Trowa's hair fell that way naturally, one no longer judged these things without information). His eyes were wide, heavy and almond-shaped. Some Asian blood in there. Indonesian, maybe. His features were regular; straight, small nose, high, well-defined cheekbones, lips firm, pale but sensuous. Probably not a colony mix, more likely originating from the Pacific rim melting pot. His body and stance screamed 'killer'. Tight, well-maintained muscles under form-fitting biker jacket and pants, wide shoulders on a lean, mean frame. The man moved like a tiger and didn't try to hide it.
Darbois and his men made a side-trip to the bar. The killer approached Duo and Wufei directly and leaned casually against the side of their booth.
"Hi, Duo."
Wufei had expected some form of intimidation. He was surprised by the openly amicable tone and look that went with it.
"Hiya, Mako. How's things?" Duo's tone was friendly too, all signs of tension camouflaged. "You come here to hang out?"
"Heard you'd be here tonight. Just thought I'd say hi. I haven't seen you in nearly a year."
"I didn't think my little meeting with Terrence would reach the high-up of Rav's organization," said Duo, sounding totally casual and relaxed about it.
"Well, it did. Rav sends his regards, by the way."
"Be sure to say hi for me."
"Will do."
Mako's eyes had flickered ever so briefly over Wufei. Too briefly. Wufei felt a prickle of tension across his shoulder blades. That had been nowhere near the Freeport scrutiny that usually dissected him. There was no overt hostility in Mako's stance, though. Maybe the man had heard about him beforehand, judged him unimportant and had just dismissed him from consideration.
"Ah, Maxwell! Long time no see!"
Wufei barely spared Darbois a glance. Let Duo take care of him. The goons were not really that much of a problem either. Wufei kept his attention apparently on his beer, his head down and his arms loosely folded across his chest, and every instinct centered on Mako who'd settled idly leaning against the side of the booth.
The civilities that followed were long and elaborate. Both Darbois and Duo asked each other about a long list of mutual acquaintances. Wufei's impatience peaked and then subsided as he realized this was more than courtesy. This was a delicate prenegotiation, situating each other on the map of the underworld as it were.
"And how's Henry Schwimmer these days?" asked Duo after taking another gulp of beer and belching lightly. Darbois took a sip of his ale and did the same. Wufei managed to keep his fastidious distaste from showing; maybe this was also part of the ritual.
"Henry? He hates the world. He lost a lot of his contacts during that Pig crackdown in the Black Nines."
Duo made a sympathetic sound while Wufei chalked up one for the Good Guys.
"Fucking Pigs, heh? He was one of yours, wasn't he?"
"No, no, we only run dope," Darbois reassured him genially. Wufei took a second to engrave Darbois' features and history onto his list before bringing his attention back to Mako. The killer had done nothing more sinister so far than listen, contribute a few names of friends Duo knew, and pick his fingers with a fifteen-inch hunting blade he'd somehow produced from his tight gear.
"Henry's one of our regular associates, though," Darbois added. "We're not happy to see him in trouble. He peddles hardware, small caliber stuff, and that means we have customers in common. Was he who you wanted to know about?"
The switch to business was abrupt. Duo took a sip of beer before answering. Wufei had the feeling that this turn in the conversation was unexpected.
"I don't know, Dar. If I knew, I wouldn't be talking to you, now, would I? I'm just looking for contacts. I'm sure you heard I have a deal getting set up. I want to unload some delicate cargo."
"This intended for family or friends?" Darbois asked, which was the underworld way of asking 'mob or terrorists'. Wufei would give a year's salary to be able to arrest Darbois and hold him for twenty four hours in an interrogation room.
"Friends. It's that kind of cargo."
"Do you want names in the Nines? Are you looking for a partner or are you just cutting the deal?"
"Just fixing. I don't want to run these myself. You know that's not my style, and Scythe ain't that big. But this customer's a friend of mine, I have to be sure the guys who run his cargo are good mooncursers. I want their CVs. I want references. I want a letter from their moms saying these are serious guys. I want to know every little bump and trouble they had in the Nines in the last six months, and any dealings they had that might queer my trade."
Darbois was silent for a few seconds. Mako glanced up from his manicure. Wufei wasn't sure how to interpret the brief flash of interest in his eyes.
"I see...I guess I could put you in touch with a few people. We've got some canny young lads who just set up new routes, taking advantage of all the disorder-"
"No thanks," said Duo. "I'm sure they're a fine bunch of kids, but I go with experience any time. I want someone who operated before the riots, not some young punk who thinks the shake-up is a good way of getting a rep and some pocket money."
"I see," Darbois repeated.
In the brief silence that followed, Duo's hands fell away from his beer to lie on either side of the brown bottle, fingers loose on the table's surface. The gesture was innocuous, but Wufei didn't like it, or the slight increase in tension it betrayed.
"I have a few names for you," Darbois finally said, fingers crossing over his round belly. "Who did you say your customer was?"
"I didn't," Duo answered shortly.
"You know, a lot of my lads and my associates don't like dealing with a black box. Especially after all the fuss and muss in the Nines. Maybe a name...?"
"You can call him Mr Long," Duo answered, his voice taking on a dangerous edge. "On account of him having a long arm, if you see what I mean. He's got a lot of guns behind him and he don't like questions."
Wufei took a sip of his beer, face carefully neutral. He remembered how Duo had asked him what 'Shenlong' meant, during the war. Apparently Wufei wasn't the only one with a long memory. He wondered what would happen if you ever forced Duo, gun to his head, to tell an outright lie. He'd probably hand you the truth in such an underhand way you'd buy right into it. Then he'd kill you.
"Terrence."
Darbois blinked and looked up at Mako. So did Wufei and Duo.
The killer sheathed his knife, slipping it under his jacket into a scabbard in the small of his back. "Ter, I'm not a freetrader, but even I know you don't ask that kind of question. This is Duo's deal. Why should he hand you the info to allow you to talk to his customer directly and cut him out?"
"But...Rav said we got to be careful with new deals to the Nines-" Darbois started, voice uncertain, eyes searching Mako's.
"Yeah, sure. But this is Duo Maxwell. He's got a good rep. I know him, Ravachol knows him. He's neither stupid nor a stoolie. Capiche?"
Wufei kept himself entirely relaxed. At his side, Duo radiated trustworthiness.
"So get the deal closed already. Preferably outside. This place..." Mako glanced around in distaste at the bar and its row of barflies.
"Right, right. Sorry, Duo. You know how it is. Come on, let's go outside and get some fresh air."
"...This is Freeport, dude. The air don't get much fresher than this." Duo's hands were firmly anchored on either side of his nearly-full bottle and he looked unwilling to move.
"I meant, let's go somewhere where we can hear ourselves talk."
Darbois stood. So did his goons. Mako glanced at Duo with a reassuring nod. The latter took his time taking a last swig of beer. Wufei was probably the only one to notice how Duo's eyes were not closed as he drank; they were darting from Darbois to Mako and back again. Wufei felt Duo's edginess. It echoed the prickle of instinct across his back. The bar was noisy, noisome, and another fight had broken out in the far corner, but Duo and Wufei would have preferred to talk right here in front of witnesses. Still, they had to follow their one lead.
Duo slowly stood up. Wufei imitated him. They followed Darbois outside, the goons preceding him and Mako walking behind them all...Wufei idly scratched at the rub mark from his Blade's collar, and shifted his sword at the same time, making sure it was positioned where he could get it out of its scabbard and into an enemy's guts in one sweep.
The sniffers let everybody out two by two after their three minute wait. When Wufei and Duo walked out of the airlock, Darbois made a gesture to Mako and the goons to stay behind. His eyes included Wufei in the order. Then he walked away, already talking. Duo followed him after a small hesitation and a flick of the fingers signaling Wufei to wait with the other bodyguards. Wufei tried to tell him with his scowl just how much he didn't like the idea of Duo wandering away without Wufei's protection, but the smuggler's back was already turned.
Wufei would have followed if Duo had gone out of his sight, but the two went no further than the far corner of the building. Wufei's eyes swept from Duo to the open space around him and Darbois, then back again. His friend had his back to him, forty yards away, leaning over to listen to Darbois who was speaking in a low voice. They were under a streetlamp, harsh blue-white neon picking up highlights in the leather of Duo's coat. There were no dark alleys nearby, Duo would see anyone approaching from miles away, and Wufei was at Duo's six, guarding his back. No-one would get the drop on Maxwell, not before Wufei could be at his side.
Mako also watched the pair for a moment and then he turned towards Wufei. The killer looked him up and down, the Freeport appraisal to the nth degree. Wufei concealed his surprise and met the stare full on.
A scuffle of boot to his left. Wufei instinctively took a step to the right, then stopped as he felt another of Darbois's goons move to block him off on that side. Mako glanced over his shoulder at Duo, and then took a step forward, placing himself between Wufei and his friend.
Wufei took a step back and found himself in the shadow of the bar. The fourth man was between him and the building's airlock. There was a chain link fence behind Wufei, protecting a hydroponic pod.
It was a trap, Wufei realized with sudden, icy clarity. But Duo wasn't the target.
End Part 10
Part 11
Dun dun dun...I'll try to post the next bit on Sunday night, I swear.