THE
HOUSE OF BOYS
A Gundam Wing fanfiction
By Cabbitshivers
EROSION
Prologue One – Can You Even Hear Me?
It was cold and smelly in the cell that he had been thrown in, but in his current state of awareness Wufei really didn’t mind at all. He was alone now, and that was all that really mattered to him. He knew vaguely somewhere in the back of his mind that he should be doing something, something rather important if that little voice chittering away madly in his mind’s ear was anything to go by, but he couldn’t seem to figure out what it was trying to tell him. It was like it was speaking in a language he didn’t understand. He closed his eyes and pressed his cheek into the floor, feeling it strangely give way beneath his skin as if it was made of something other than steel and reinforced concrete. He knew he should hurt, he remembered very clearly being taken to the ground by a heavy fist against the back of his head and remaining there by a few very well placed kicks to his abdomen and sides. He might have been a little fuzzy at comprehending his current physical condition at the moment, but he knew for a fact that when you had a steel-capped boot buried unceremoniously in your lower abdomen it was supposed to _hurt_. So they must have given him something for the pain otherwise why wouldn’t he be able to feel it… oh.
“Bastards drugged me.” He mumbled, shifting lethargically and rolling over onto his back. He was a little stunned when the whole cell rolled with him. It probably would have been a truth serum, or something to that extent. This meant pretty soon someone was going to be coming to fetch him and drag him away to be questioned. An image flashed in his mind, one of a tall middle-aged man with dirty blonde hair and mismatched eyes leaning over him, a weeping syringe held in his hand. Wufei thought he looked a little like someone had grabbed Winner’s and Maxwell’s head in each hand and pushed them together – his eyes were that odd. He could vaguely recall a voice to go with the face, a smooth baritone in soothing tones slurring words that he couldn’t understand – no more than the voice in his head. For some reason he felt a small pang of fear when he recalled that voice, and the way it changed to something slightly more threatening when it had to repeat questions he wouldn’t answer… wait a minute. Was he going to be questioned soon, or was what he was feeling the after-effects of having already _been_ questioned?
Oh shit.
So, if they had already run him through the interrogation programme, why was he still alive? He couldn’t recall what had happened, those memories seemed to be completely absent from his consciousness, but maybe they hadn’t been able to retrieve anything of any importance to them. Wufei felt a smug sort of pleasure at that thought. He was too stubborn for his own good, he knew that, but sometimes it came in handy, especially when said stubborn moron manages to get himself captured by the enemy. How had that happened, anyway? He remembered being beaten down, but before that? That was another of his memories that were absent from recollection. Whatever drug they’d given him was certainly disadvantageous to his intelligence. How could he possibly discern the reasons for his capture if he didn’t even remember _being_ captured? OZ was getting smarter – he’d give them that.
Wufei rolled over again, finding the sluggish swimming of the dimly lit ceiling above him to be extremely nauseating after a few minutes of staring. He closed his eyes when the room jolted around him again, curling up on his side and letting out a heavy sigh. The strange taste of metal pricked at the inside of his cheeks. If the interrogators had failed to extract any significant information out of him, and had left him alive, it would only be logical to presume that they would try again with a different drug, probably something a lot stronger and more than likely in the experimental stages, to use on him. Which meant that he was right, and they would be coming to get him soon.
No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than the distant sound of footfalls reached his ears. Voices followed shortly, none of which sounded familiar to him, and Wufei sighed again. He didn’t know just how long it had been since his capture, but certainly not long enough for Barton to preform his infiltration tactics and neatly smuggle him out of there. Then again, if the tall pilot knew that he’d been drugged and interrogated he’d more than likely shoot him or blow him up with the entire base. He really shouldn’t get his hopes up. After all, he wasn’t exactly the favoured pilot out of them all. _That_ would be Yuy.
The steady steps halted outside the door to his cell. A short conversation and what sounded like a gun’s safety being clicked off later, and the huge hulk of steel that was the door slid aside, spilling extra light from the corridor beyond across the floor and over Wufei.
Wufei lifted his head, opening his eyes and trying to fix them on the three silhouettes’ that stood haloed by the light behind them. They didn’t say anything as two of them entered the cell, hauling the lethargic boy onto his feet between them and dragging him out into the corridor. Wufei didn’t even notice as the third man moved to his back and followed behind the other two as they half-guided and half-dragged him through the halls of the base, his head was swimming madly and his ears rang with tinnitus from the sudden shock of being upright. He did wonder vaguely why they hadn’t bothered to cuff his lower arms, but then considering how pathetically his body was reacting at the moment it would have just been a waste of time.
Before he knew it he was standing in front of another huge steel door, this one with a small, plexiglass window set at head-height, and the words SEU Lab3 on a black plate below. Wufei had very little time to puzzle over the anagram before the door was slid open and the familiar blonde-haired man with different coloured eyes was standing there, looking down at him with a small, pleased smile on his face.
“Ah, welcome back, Wufei.” The cheerful, soothing voice greeted. The tall man stepped back from the door. “Bring him in.” He told the soldiers in the same tone of voice. Wufei tried his best to survey the room with his misbehaving eyes, but was promptly deposited in a tall-backed chair and left facing a table and an empty recliner. Suddenly, he felt a slight pressure on his arm, and he swivelled his head to see the strange-eyed doctor pumping a syringe full of something unidentifiable into his upper arm. The doctor looked up at him as he withdrew the needle, and smiled again. “It’s just some more of the serum.” He stated assuredly, making Wufei even more suspicious that it was not the original truth serum that he had first been given. At Wufei’s narrowed eyes the doctor smiled. “No need to be so suspicious, Wufei.” He chastised. “We’re only going to question you, not kill you.”
“I thought one usually followed the other.” Wufei replied, surprised that his voice was nowhere near as slurred as his body felt. Then again, the interrogator’s wanted to be able to understand what he was saying, didn’t they?
“Usually,” The strange-eyed man replied, turning to deposit the needle in a close-by rubbish bin. “But not today.”
“Hgn.” Wufei eyed him as best as he could as the tall man went over to the table and picked up a reflective clipboard, several sheets of paper pinned under the metal clip.
“So, what is your name?” The warm voice asked him once the owner of the odd-coloured eyes had sat himself down comfortably across from him.
“Chang Wufei. But Trieze has already told you this.”
The dark blonde head nodded. “That he has. But these first questions are just to test if the new serum is working or not. The last one wasn’t very effective, you know.”
“This one won’t be either.”
“We’ll see.” The man smiled. He looked back down at the clipboard in his lap. “And what nationality are you, Wufei?”
“Chinese.” He replied.
“Your height?”
“Five one.”
The blonde man scribbled something on the clipboard. “And how old are you?”
“Fifteen.” The following second Wufei froze. They didn’t know how old he was, he realized about two seconds too late. Not that his age mattered, but he’d told them something they DIDN’T know. What if he answered some of the other questions just as carelessly as he had that one? Some of the more important ones like the location of the others, and whom they reported to?
The blonde man smiled even broader this time. “Ahh, I see it’s working, then.”
Wufei wisely stayed silent. Inside, however, he was cursing himself very loudly.
“And are you a Gundam pilot, Wufei?”
Wufei ground his teeth. “Yes. But you already knew this as well.”
“That we did.” There was more scribbling on the clipboard. “What is the name of your Gundam?”
“Shenlong.”
One of the man’s brows rose. “Why that name?”
“I didn’t choose it.”
“Who did?”
Wufei ground his teeth. Finally, a question he could not answer. He felt the urge within him, only slight, to reply truthfully to the question, to blurt out that it was Master O who had chosen the name Shenlong for his Gundam, that he called her Nataku, himself, in honour of his dead wife, but he bit it all down, swallowed the truth he wanted to let fall free from his mouth. He was not going to give them anything more than his age. No more.
“Who chose the name ‘Shenlong’?”
“I don’t know.” Wufei bit out.
“Yes you do.” One of the soldiers beside his chair spat, making him jump. He had almost forgotten they were there. “It was the person who built it, wasn’t it?”
The blonde-haired man shot the soldier a stern stare. “Lieutenant Collins. Please wait your turn.”
The Lieutenant ignored the doctor, leaning over and gripping the Chinese Gundam pilot by the shoulders. “I’m right, aren’t I? It _was_ the person who built it.” He spat into his face. “Who was he, terrorist? Who built your Gundam?!”
Wufei stayed silent, but couldn’t keep back the whoosh of expelled air as a fist slammed into his stomach, causing a dull pressure to infuse his lower abdomen. Another fist flew at his face and Wufei abruptly found himself on the floor, the room spinning around him with his head as the point of axis. He tasted blood on his tongue, and immediately assumed that he had a split lip. He couldn’t feel it, but the blood was enough of a testimony for him. He lay there on the floor for a while, until someone bothered to pick him up and deposit him back in the chair.
“Don’t bother beating him; it will have no effect with the state that he’s in.” The doctor’s voice chastened, the man himself currently a donut-shaped whirl in Wufei’s vision.
“You don’t tell me how to do my job and I won’t tell you how to do yours.” Another voice, that of Collins’, retorted. Wufei caught the vague impression of a dark haired man wearing an OZ uniform.
“What are the names of the other pilots?” The smooth voice of the first man demanded, suddenly louder as the speaker turned to face him. Wufei felt his head roll forwards in a disturbing parody of a stringless marionette.
“Intel not living up to its name?” He murmured mockingly. He couldn’t be sure, but it felt as if he’d just salivated all over himself.
“What are the names of the other Gundam pilots?” The man with changeling eyes repeated, stronger this time, with the slightest hint of patience gradually being lost.
“Zero One, Zero Two, Zero Three and Zero Four.”
The different coloured eyes moved slightly closer. “So that would make you Zero Five?” The smooth voice questioned, a definite trace of amusement in its dulcet tones. “Lucky last, eh?”
“Possibly.”
“What colony do you hail from?”
Wufei kept his mouth closed. That was another of the questions he could not answer. Even if the colonies were not supporting him and the others at the moment they could not afford to have them used against them. The voice in the back of his mind started to speak again, but it was futile and wasting its time – he couldn’t understand it now anymore than he could earlier.
“What colony do you hail from?” Changeling demanded.
“Colony…?” Wufei frowned, the mad chittering in his mind growing slightly louder and more insistent.
“Yes! What colony?”
Wufei attempted to shake his head, his vision was starting to turn blue around the edges and the foreign voice wailing in his head was practically screaming at him now. “I’m from the…the cluster…”
The blonde man leaned forwards. “Yes? Which cluster, Wufei?” He asked eagerly, loudly.
“The L…L…”
“L what? L _what_?!”
“L…” Wufei’s voice trailed away. The strange voice screaming at him was starting to make some small amount of sense now. He could pick out some words from the other garbled sounds. It sounded like it was telling him to…
Large hands grasped his shirt at the neck and plucked him up from the chair. “L WHAT, Wufei?! What colony?!” The changeling’s voice shouted at him through the din in his mind, the large hands at his throat shaking him violently as if they could wring the answer out of him. “WHAT COLONY?!!!”
“The L F--”
Suddenly, the voice boomed through his head in perfect clarity, beating down the shouting of the blonde man with the force of a vernier engine.
/MEDITATE, DAMN YOU! MEDITATE! YOU TURGID WEAKLING, WILL YOU ALLOW THEM TO SHAME YOU?! MEDITATE!!!/
Wufei’s eyes opened wide, the painful pitch of his own voice slamming in his mind reminding him to do something that the mixture of drugs had completely shrouded from thought. Taking as deep a breath that the fists clenched in the neck of his shirt would allow, he completely calmed his mind, quieting the voice that after shouting at him had returned to a murmur, and shut his awareness down completely. With an exhaled sigh of mingled relief and pleasure, Wufei sank into the darkness and allowed his trained unconscious to take over…
Let’s see them try to get answers out of him now.