Chasing Impossibilities
Part Five: The Trip to L1
Triton crept around the building. He couldn't believe he was doing it.
He couldn't believe that he was listening to Odin's crazy story. But
now he was back at the Riverside complex, trying to sneak into J's
office. When he had been there earlier he didn't see any security
cameras he had to worry about, but he knew the doctor lived right
upstairs.
Triton pulled a long, steel rod out of his pocket and stuck in into the
door lock, moving it back and forth in an expert manner. Soon he heard
a familiar click and pushed the door open. It was dark, as to be
suspected, and he let his eyes assimilate to the change while he closed
the door. In a little bit he could see fairly well with just the light
from outside, and he moved toward J's office.
He wasted no time in prying open the drawers, looking through the
papers at the fastest rate he could. Surprisingly, he didn't find many
files on the doctor's patients, and he wondered how the man got by with
such little business. Still, it seemed like forever until he found
anything he thought was related to his situation. It was a thin sheath
of papers stuck in a manilla folder. It was filled in long and short
entries, handwritten and undated.
Completed construction of the device
based on O's changes to the prototype. Will effectively utilize the
electromagnetic net naturally induced by the colonies...
There was scientific information Triton didn't understand, but he
deduced that it was about the device J had built with his colleagues.
Called in the gundam pilots to test,
everything successful so far. Will employ on Earth and the rest of the
colonies.
Everything is going according to
plan. No one has any memory of the gundams or the war. No one has yet
to react negatively to the mind alteration.
Quatre Winner suspects something is
wrong. Cause suspected to be empathic abilities. Will wait and see if
problem persists.
Winner knows somehow. Will no doubt
try to contact the other pilots. He must be taken care of before that
happens, will have to try again.
Heero Yuy has come in for sudden
memory loss. Suspect his real memories will come back rather than the
mechanically implanted memories.
Triton's head flew up as he heard a noise from above him, having no
doubt that it was J. He held his breath as J moved around, but jumped
off the seat when he heard the footsteps coming down towards him. J
must be on the staircase. He dropped the papers back in the desk,
running out of the building as quickly as he could without making any
noise. He closed the door, jarring the lock pick once so that it locked
itself, and thanked god he had those skills before he ran to his car
and drove off.
* * *
J walked down the steps. It was obvious to him that some one had just
run out of his home, he just didn't know who. Or more specifically, he
just didn't know which of the gundam pilots had been there.
He walked to his office, scanning the area. Finally, he walked over to
his desk, opening the bottom drawer. His reports on the memory device
was on top. He had placed them in the bottom.
J tapped his fingers along the desk, thinking, and coming up with a
conclusion. It must have been Trowa.
* * *
Everything was falling apart. The most ridiculous thing was that that
morning everything had been fine. Max closed his eyes, trying to forget
and examine the events of the last twenty-four hours at the same time.
He was sitting on a bench a few blocks away from the police station,
waiting for the bus to get there so he could go home.
He couldn't believe Odin. Maybe he was crazy, he didn't know any
more... no. No, Odin had seemed fine, despite what he had been saying.
He just wished he knew what was going on. The lack of knowledge, the
lack of control, was killing him. He just wanted everything to be
normal again. He just wanted a normal life.
A noise sounded behind him, and Max spun around, cursing his nerves
that evening. There was no one there. Max turned around again, facing
the street, a little unnerved now. He realized for the first time how
empty this area was. Then, before he knew it, an arm had moved around
his head and a wet cloth held against his nose and mouth. Then his
world went black.
* * *
Triton skidded into the parking lot of the police building, mind
racing. Gundam... Quatre... Heero... those words sounded so familiar.
Even the thought of war seemed familiar to him, even though he knew he
had never experienced it. Or rather, Triton Bloom had never experienced
it. The idea still would have seemed ludicrous, except that it kept
tugging at his mind, and he knew the familiarity had to mean something.
It was as if there was a dark cloud at the back of his mind, hiding
something. It was just a presence, sitting there, telling him that
everything he knew was wrong. And he knew it hadn't just developed
today; it hung on all his memories.
But he had a purpose now. Triton walked through the police building
with his usual confidence, ignoring the hustle and bustle of his peers
and coworkers. He eventually ended up in the cell holding area,
stopping in front of the guard in charge of Odin's wing.
The guard stood at attention, nodding to his superior. "Can I help you,
Mr. Bloom?"
"Go ahead and take a break, I'll take care of things here."
The man nodded to his superior before leaving. Triton watched as he
disappeared around the corner before entering the corridor, marching
past all the cells until he stopped in front of Odin's. The other man
was seated on his cot, back against the wall, head bent slightly back
and eyes closed.
"Heero?" For some reason, Triton wasn't surprised when Odin looked up
at that name. "Get up. We're going to that colony."
* * *
"So. What's with the change of heart?"
Triton looked over at Heero as they sped to the spaceport. "You were
right. I think. J and some others built a machine to change every one's
memories, but it didn't work with you or Quatre for some reason."
"And the machine's on the colony."
"Yeah."
"And how do you propose we get there?"
Triton turned sharply, coming to a sudden stop in the spaceport parking
lot. He untied his seatbelt as he stared at Heero. "Do you know how to
pilot a shuttle?"
Heero blinked. Odin Lowe had been a computer geek. His artificial
memories all showed him behind a computer, working on encryption or
software or what-not. He had never done anything remotely like piloting
a shuttle. "Sure."
The two of the snuck into the port fairly easily. Granted, no one was
looking for them yet. The traffic in the port was fairly moderate, no
one traveling so late at night. They scouted around the port, Triton
playing close attention to the computer and information screen while
Heero scouted security. They met together after only a few minutes of
the reconnaissance.
"The security's pretty light. There are guards at the entrances to the
port and at the security checkpoints, but only workers near the
shuttles, and even that's not bad."
Triton nodded. "See that gate over there? There's a shuttle that won't
be leaving for an hour."
The two made their way over to the gate, easing inside with stealthy
grace. Triton drew out his gun, creeping towards the one man that was
there. The worker was looking over the machinery of the engine, and it
didn't take long for Triton to dispatch him. Just one well-placed hit
with the butt of the gun and he was out of the way.
Heero pulled open the door of shuttle, striding inside and towards the
cockpit. As long as he didn't think about it too hard things seemed to
come to him with a natural ease, and it took him less than a minute to
start the shuttle. He was vaguely aware of Triton sliding into the seat
behind him.
"Well." Triton's voice was dry, unamused. "That was easier than I had
expected."
Heero put the shuttle into movement, rolling it down the runway.
Workers dived out of the way while staff off to the sides were yelling
at them. The control tower tried to make contact, something Heero put a
stop to by cutting off communications. In no time they were off,
launching into space and towards X-00198.
"Damn." Heero cursed as he looked at the control panel, and Trowa
looked down to see what was the matter. The gas tank was only three
fourths full.
"Do you think we can make it?"
Heero ran through the calculations in his head, checking them with the
measurements in the computer. "Barely."
There were a few nervous moments then, before they exited the
colony outer hull, where they wondered if any one would be sent after
them. Everything went wall, fortunately, and soon Heero set the course
in the shuttle mainframe and they were coasting on autopilot.
"What do you think they were hiding?"
"What?" Heero looked up as Triton broke their tense silence before
shrugging it off. "Who knows, maybe we were just a science experiment."
"Then what were the gundams?"
Another image flashed in Heero's head, and he recognized it from one he
had before. A huge mechanical figure, huge and white, lay on a stretch
of metal, right next to a matching black machine. Then the image left
his head. "I'm not sure."
Triton shifted back in his seat, closing his eyes. It would be two
hours before they reached the colony, and he didn't mind a little nap
before they got there.