"Knowing" - 4/4

[calic0cat]

I barely glanced into the rooms I passed. Just enough of a check to ensure that Heero wasn't there and there was no threat waiting to nail me the instant that I turned my back. The first couple of rooms just contained boxes of the type used to ship the wine. Whether they were empty or filled with drugs, I didn't know and I didn't waste time checking. I just kept moving. Much more slowly than I liked - but moving.

The next rooms were filled with chemical drums and gas cylinders. Shit. Even a cursory check was enough to make it quite clear that if they torched the place, it was going to be one hell of a big bang.

Pressing onwards, I could see a bend in the corridor ahead of me. Comparing my location to the blueprints and the map of the area, I realized that this was where the cellars turned to run along the edge of the cliff overlooking the river. Jackson had remarked that according to local legend, they'd been used by smugglers back when the water level was higher and the cliff less unstable. Now, however, the caves along the cliff had almost all collapsed and the river was so low that it was at least a thirty foot drop from them.

The section of cellars running along the cliff had been condemned and ordered sealed years ago; Jackson's sources hadn't reported anything about them having been reopened and put to use. But they obviously had been. The actual drug lab had to be down there. As did Heero. I could hear anxious, excited voices coming from down that corridor. I was going to have to get down there fast. But first, I had to report in. This was too big to leave for those behind me to discover on their own. They needed to be forewarned.

I ducked back down the hall and into one of the chemical storage rooms. "Shade to Command. Come in. Over."

The response was gratifyingly prompt. "Command to Shade. Go ahead. Over."

"There's enough chemicals here to blow the whole damn place off the map. And the condemned cellar section is open and in use. Believe lab and Sky both in that area. Voices confirm presence of suspects. Over." I gritted my teeth and eased my weight off of my bad leg. Maybe I'd have to take the support bandage off; the swelling around it was getting pretty bad. I wasn't sure it would hold me without the bandage, though. And if I took it off, there was no way I'd ever get it back on again; there was too damn much swelling. Hell, there was too much fucking swelling to get it *off*, I'd probably have to cut it off.

"Warning acknowledged. Putting fire and rescue on standby. Will advise teams to proceed with extreme caution. Your status? Over."

While Command was speaking, I was busy transferring smoke and teargas grenades from the backpack to pockets and belt. I wanted them out and ready for use. There wouldn't be time to be digging for them once I started around that corner towards the drug lab.

"Continuing search. Shade over and out." My breath hissed out sharply as I put weight back on my bad leg. I'd have popped another painkiller if there was any chance it would kick in soon enough to do any good. But it wouldn't. I bit my lip hard enough to draw blood, the sharp pain from that providing enough distraction from my knee to get me through that first agonizing step. Once that first one was out of the way, momentum and sheer mulish stubbornness kept me going.


As I walked - well, limped - towards the corner, I donned the protective goggles and readied the thin, self-adhesive membrane that would serve as a gas mask. It had a pretty short useful life; the teargas would saturate it to the point of uselessness fairly quickly. But it was better than nothing and a hell of a lot more convenient than the more effective but very bulky breathers that provided the next level of protection.

I peered cautiously around the corner. There was a lot of frantic activity taking place but it seemed pretty disorganized. I pulled the pin on the first gas grenade and started to count as I walked towards the activity. By the time someone noticed me, I'd already tossed the grenade and slapped the membrane over my nose and mouth. It immediately adhered, conforming to the shape of my face. Breathing through it was like trying to breathe through a heavy blanket. Possible but stuffy.

Shouts started. I threw a couple of smoke grenades and forced myself to a faster pace. The pain in my knee flared - it felt like I was grinding it into broken glass with every step that I took and at the same time the muscles and tendons were tightening dangerously, twitching and threatening to spasm. The silhouette of a gun barrel had me firing instinctively. The man's forehead blossomed red and he dropped. Someone reached for the dropped gun and I shot again. The chest shot flung her against the wall. She slid down it to lie in a crumpled heap.

Ahead of me, at the edge of the area affected by the grenades, someone got smart and disappeared from the hall for a moment. When he returned, he was using Heero as a bodyshield. If the asshole could have seen my face under the mask, he'd have wondered why I started to grin at the sight.

Heero didn't look so hot; he was damn pale and the bandage wrapped around his head was stained with dried blood, a lot of it, but then that was typical of scalp wounds. His hands were bound behind him and his shirt was torn and stained on one side. A hint of bloodstained gauze showed through the tear. He obviously wasn't too steady on his feet - it looked like the arm wrapped around his throat was actually holding up some of his weight. His captor had a gun pressed against his temple. Heero's eyes met mine and I could see him struggling to focus. His lips moved silently, counting down. On one, he went limp. Staggering slightly under Heero's weight, his captor swore and was forced to shift his hold. The gun left Heero's temple for an instant and I fired.

My first shot shattered the man's gun hand. The second silenced his shriek of pain permanently. Heero went down with him and rolled to pin the gun down and prevent anyone else from grabbing it. I was at his side in an instant, one hand keeping the gun ready for use despite the hall's sudden emptiness, the other pulling a knife from an ankle sheath. Heero raised his hands away from his back and I sliced through the plastic bindings around his wrists with a certain amount of difficulty. His wrists were so swollen that it was difficult to slide the tip of the knife between skin and plastic without cutting skin in the process, especially with only one hand and half of my attention on our surroundings. I managed to only nick him slightly with the tip.

Hands freed, Heero rolled over and sat up slowly, wincing as his arms dropped limply at his sides. "Your knee?"

The smoke and teargas were already clearing, sucked away by the ventilation system. I pulled off my membrane mask; its usefulness was pretty much gone anyway.

"Don't ask," I muttered grimly. "Gonna need a hand up." I'd dropped down on the good knee in order to cut Heero loose but I really didn't think I could make it back up again.

"Don't take this the wrong way," Heero said as he struggled to his own feet, "but what the hell are *you* doing here?"

I knew what he meant. At the start of this, I'd been far from field ready. At this point, if I looked half as bad as I felt, I probably looked at least as bad as Heero. "Stone's an asshole and Une's an ice-cold bitch with a conspiracy fixation," I told him flatly. "I'm - not exactly here officially. Jackson and the local cops are making the bust. Jackson's smart enough to know what questions *not* to ask. He'll get the bust and I'll take the heat. Une's gonna be real pissed. If I'm lucky, she'll only take my badge."

I grabbed Heero's outstretched arm and he managed to drag me to my feet. I clutched at him and swayed for a moment before the nausea and dizziness faded. "Shit." I blinked a few times and the spots finally faded.

Abruptly, the headset crackled to life. "Command to all units. Evacuate immediately. Repeat, evacuate immediately. Fire in chemical storage. Repeat, fire in chemical storage. Please acknowledge in order."

Swallowing hard, I held up my hand in a "wait" signal as Heero started to question me. I headed back to the bend in the corridor, Heero following close behind. He'd appropriated a gun and had it in his hand but I doubted he could use it yet; the circulation in his hands had been pretty damn restricted.

We didn't really need to look around the corner; the heat was intense enough to curl the hairs on my arms before we even got there. But a glance around the bend was enough to confirm that the passageway was completely blocked by flames and they were spreading rapidly.

I listened as the other units all acknowledged the warning and reported their positions. They were all on the other side of the fire. Finally, I was the only one left to report in. "Shade to Command. Located Sky, injured but mobile. Acknowledge evacuation order but cannot comply. We're on the other side of the fire. Over."

There was a long moment of silence, then the response came back, "Acknowledged. Will send fire crew in immediately. Over."

"*NO!*" I shouted desperately. "Do *not*, repeat, do *not* send in a fire crew. It's too dangerous." I thought rapidly, searching for a way to convince them. Jackson wasn't the type to abandon anyone but those chemicals would blow long before a fire crew could contain the flames enough for us to pass through. "Check the lab analysis for details on chemicals involved. Fire department will confirm hazard level. Over."

Heero caught my elbow and turned me away from the fire. He prodded me into motion so I limped along beside him, still monitoring communications. Finally, a reluctant response came back from Command. "Fire department confirms. Jackson wants me to ask..." The voice broke off and I could hear a faint, horrified demand, "*What?* I will *not*..." There was some crackling from the headset and after a moment, Jackson's voice came over it. "You still have your gun and ammo? Over."

Oh. No wonder he'd freaked out the dispatcher. "Yeah," I answered. "We won't go slow," I assured him. And we wouldn't. We both knew how to make it quick and virtually painless. Better that than burning to death. But the speed that Heero was forcing me to match was giving me a faint hope that maybe we wouldn't "go" at all. He knew how bad I was hurting; he wouldn't be asking me to practically run if he didn't have a damn good reason. No point in mentioning that to Jackson though until we knew for sure that there *was* another way out.

"Don't forget to mail those envelopes," I added as an afterthought. "Shade over and out."

As soon as I slid the headset off and draped it around my neck, Heero said, "There's been heavy rain for the past few days. One of the men was complaining that there'd been another cave-in down this way. Somebody else made a crack about taking his girlfriend down to watch the sunset through the gap. I don't know how big it is but..."

"It's definitely worth a try," I agreed readily. Behind us, there was a boom and a blast of hot air washed over us. A quick glance back showed the flames spreading down the hallway towards us, licking hungrily at the wood flooring and spreading up the walls. We both managed to force our battered bodies into a jolting run.

Everything from that point on was a complete blur. I have the very vaguest memory of finding the gap. Of frantically digging with knives and bare hands to enlarge it. Of looking at that god-awful drop and hoping like hell that the water here wasn't *too* shallow.

But I have no memory whatsoever of jumping. And although the water wasn't too shallow, it *was* full of rocks and I had the incredibly bad luck to crack my head on one underwater. So it's not surprising that I have no memory of anything that happened after that. Nothing until I woke up in someplace that felt a hell of a lot like a safehouse. I had a pounding headache and a throbbing knee and I felt like I was going to throw up any second. But Heero was sleeping restlessly beside me, alive and looking at least marginally better than he had before, so absolutely nothing else mattered. I closed my eyes and willed myself back to the healing embrace of sleep.

***

"I - you said you'd be lucky if Une just took your badge. I wasn't sure how much trouble you were in..." Heero hesitated uncertainly, avoiding my eyes. He took a deep breath, then blurted out, "No one knows we survived. We're in one of J's old safehouses. The supplies were still usable so I haven't had to leave since we got here. Your concussion had me worried, though. I was afraid that I'd have to take you to a hospital..."

Holy shit. We *were* at a safehouse. And everybody thought we were dead?

"Umm, I don't think I was in *quite* that much trouble with Une..." I ventured hesitantly.

On the other hand, I *had* essentially stolen a fucking *shuttle*. Not to mention a whole shitload of teargas and smoke grenades... I'd violated a direct order... Wrecked Une's plans for further investigation and ruined any chance of finding a link between the narcotics operation and rebel activity... Put the credit for a major drug bust in the hands of a bunch of local cops instead of Preventers...

"On second thought - maybe I was," I admitted. It simply hadn't been an issue worth worrying about at the time. Getting Heero back was all that really mattered. I propped myself up a little further on the window ledge and stifled a yawn. Damn, I hated concussions. The effects lingered for fucking *months* sometimes. Especially the headaches and general weariness.

"We're legally dead. We could - start fresh. I still have accounts from the war. Blank identities that were never used..." Heero said, watching me carefully as he restlessly paced the room.

A fresh start. Well, it wasn't like we'd be leaving anything worthwhile behind. Jobs we'd learned to hate. A handful of casual acquaintances that were at least polite and a lot of other people who hated or resented us because of who we were. A few former comrades who'd drifted out of touch due to the passage of time and physical separation.

I took a sip of hot chocolate from my mug to delay my response a bit longer. It seemed strange that there really weren't any reasons *not* to stay dead and start over as someone else. Just a lot of reasons why we *should*.

Turning my head, I said softly, "Heero." He stopped his uneasy prowling immediately and turned towards me. "Yes."

He smiled, bright and beautiful, and crossed the room in two quick strides, kneeling on the window seat and leaning over to kiss me so gently and tenderly that he left me yearning for more. "We'll need new names," he murmured quietly. "You pick for me and I'll pick for you?"

I nodded my agreement. That would be better than trying to choose for ourselves. I swallowed hard and closed my eyes for a moment, testing my resolve. Yes, I was sure. "Haircuts," I stated firmly. "Drastic ones. You cut mine and I'll cut yours."

Heero gave me a look that was part shock, part horror, and also just the slightest bit intrigued. "Duo?"

I pulled my braid over my shoulder and stroked it lightly. "It's way too recognizable, Heero. And... it's part of the past." I struggled for the words to explain more clearly.

Heero stopped me with another kiss and a soft, "I know."

And meeting his eyes, I could see that he did. I managed a smile and informed him, "Buzz cut for you."

He laughed.

"I'm not joking," I warned.

"I know." The asshole laughed again. "Jaw length, I think," he said, tilting his head thoughtfully.

Yikes. Well, I'd said "drastic". "Okay," I agreed. "Go get the scissors." Before I could lose my nerve.

Heero gave me an understanding smile and started out of the room. He paused in the doorway to look over his shoulder and murmur, "Love you."

I smiled, slow and soft and loving. "I know... And I love you."

"I know."

And with that, he was gone. Only this time, I knew that he would be right back again. Back to take the first step towards our new life together.

I could hardly wait.

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