Disclaimer: I don't make any claim to them, but I'd be willing to give them a good home if they were up for adoption.
Chapter 4
Heero surveyed the warehouse carefully from his position on the roof of one of its taller neighbors. Dressed in charcoal-gray shirt and trousers, with a black coat throw over them, he was fairly confident in his invisibility. He had been at his post since sunset, observing the target carefully. He glanced at his watch. The building's only watchman (the only visible one, at least) had just made his rounds on this side of the building and it would be another 5 minutes before he came this way again. Time to move.
He set off down the fire escape, taking pains not to make any betraying noises on the rusty staircase. As he reached the highest landing, it occurred to him that it would save time to go across rather than down. Buildings were close together in this part of town, and it wouldn't be hard at all to reach the ladder's counterpart on the other warehouse. He might make some slight noise landing, but the watchman should be well on the opposite side by now. Without hesitation, he climbed up onto the railing and launched himself into space.
He landed neatly on the opposite landing. Luckily for him, this one was slightly better maintained; there was no betraying squeal of metal, just a muffled thump as he hit the solid surface. He now had three minutes to get the door on the landing open before the watchman came back around. However, it seemed his luck had run out for the evening. The lock was a new one, and unexpectedly sophisticated. He would have to disarm an alarm before opening it. Pulling a pick and a tiny pair of wire cutters from the inside pocket of his coat, he set to work.
Prying off a plate and locating the right wire to cut without triggering the alarm took him another two minutes. The watchman's step was becoming audible around the side of the building. Frowning, he shoved the plate back into something resembling its original position and hunched down on the corner of the landing, blending with the shadows as he waited tensely for the footsteps to pass. People never looked up; that was one of the reasons he'd chosen the fire escape as his means of entry.
After a minute or so, the watchman turned the corner and he could resume picking the lock. It was another three minutes before the door swung open. He turned on the tiny pocket torch he'd been carrying and took a careful look around. The second floor seemed to be largely empty.
Once he'd made his way down the rickety, disused staircase it was a different story. Quatre's information, as usual, had been right on target. The ground floor was littered with crates that carried an unmistakable smell of machine oil and gunpowder. Heero smirked into the blackness. They'd made his job easy. There was so much ammunition in this place it would probably go up like a powder keg with the slightest encouragement.
Destroying weapons caches was old hat to an apprentice of Odin Lowe. They had performed any number of similar missions in the years they'd spent wandering the immense battlefield that was Europe. Heero and Lowe were two of a kind in a sense; they were both men without a country, loyal only to each other and to the law of common survival. And there had been plenty of work for men with Lowe's skills.
It was ironic that Lowe's luck had finally run out just a few months before the end of the war that had provided his livelihood. After his death, Heero had wandered aimlessly for a time, a weapon without a purpose. He could probably have found a market for his skills, despite his youth, but somehow, in some remote corner of his mind it had begun to sicken him. War was all he remembered, but in retrospect he was tired of fighting other people's battles. He was still a weapon, but he could choose to fight for something he believed was worth it. And finally had that opportunity...
He had placed sticks of explosives at the base of three of the likeliest looking stacks, on slow fuses. He might as well leave by the front door. The watchman should be at the back of the building at the moment, and in about ninety seconds he was going to have more on his mind than trying to chase down an intruder. And Heero definitely didn't want to be here if there was any gunpowder on the floor near the fuse.
It was much easier getting out than getting in. He stepped out into the cool night air. He was rather glad the wind had died down. Most of the buildings in this block were empty except for watchmen, who could easily get out, and if the fire did spread, it could be contained before it reached any more populated area.
He had barely gotten to the corner of the building when the telltale click of booted feet on pavement made him turn. "Well, it looks like they were right. We have a vermin problem," said a low, sardonic voice from the shadows. "What were you doing in that building, rat?"
He mentally cursed himself for not hearing their approach before. There were six of them, three on each end of the street. All wore nondescript, concealing clothes, but their boots all had the same distinctive tread. Heero decided they couldn't have gotten someone inside without his hearing them. Which meant he had to keep them from entering the building until the slow fuses did their job. Relatively easy.
Instead of answering, he threw himself across the narrow street, into the dubious shelter of a neighboring doorway, drawing his gun as he went. He heard a bullet hit the pavement where he had been a moment before, and another buried itself in the wood near his arm. Forty seconds to go.
"Don't play games with us, rat," said the supercilious voice. "You may have put one over on these lazy London boys, but we're the Specials. Surrender immediately and we'll keep you alive a little longer."
Instead of answering, he shot the man nearest to his shelter. Twenty seconds. He fired another shot intended to drive them back towards the building. Three of the men fell back as he had intended, two, including the spokesman moved in closer. Ten seconds.
Heero fired one more shot from cover, then dived out of the doorway towards the two men. His sudden change of tactics caught the nearer one by surprise, and he managed to send the man flying into the farther three.
And then all hell broke loose. The explosion was even more spectacular than he'd anticipated; a large section of the front of the building was blown out, effectively crushing the four men who'd been in its shadow. Even Heero was momentarily stunned by the violence and closeness of it.
His ears were still ringing from it when he felt the sudden, stinging pain in his side. The leader must have managed to get off a shot just as the blast hit. With a low snarl, Heero lunged. The last man, who had been a fraction slower to recover, wasn't prepared for the force of the punch. He doubled over, clutching his stomach, and Heero took the opportunity to land a sharp blow to the temple that succeeded in knocking him out completely.
That, unfortunately, was when the pain seriously started to hit. With an effort of will, he managed to choke it down long enough to think for a moment. He had to reach one of the safe-houses, and he had to put as much distance as he could between him and the site of the explosion. With clenched teeth, he managed to twist part of his shirt into a crude tourniquet to hold back some of the bleeding and staggered off into the night.
"Well, I can take some comfort in the fact that nothing else can go wrong tonight," Relena told herself wryly, hugging her inadequate wrap tighter against the chill. And she had no one to blame but herself.
She had agreed to go to that party with Hilde and some of her friends last week, but when she had gotten home that afternoon, there had been a message waiting for her. "Wretched luck! Relatives showed up unexpectedly and Mother won't let me go! But I fixed it up with Julia to pick you up, so you go on and enjoy yourself in my place! Hilde."
Ordinarily, she might have begged out of the engagement, but it seemed rude to do so when Hilde had gone to so much trouble for her. Also, she had wanted to do something frivolous and normal to take the bad taste left by that morning's meeting out of her mouth. The party had been a disaster. She hadn't known anyone except Hilde's friend Julia, who had gotten dragged away fairly early in the evening. The few people who had approached her seemed to have been drawn more by her title and her family's status than a wish to make her feel welcome. Too polite to brush them off, she had been stuck listening to their chatter all evening.
And then, when she finally thought it was time to escape, she discovered that a message had gone astray somewhere, and Julia had accidentally left without her. The hostess had kindly called her a cab. Halfway home, however, the engine had started to make ominous sputtering noises, and promptly died. The driver offered to help her find a telephone so she could call her family, but Relena had declined. A phone call at this time of night would probably alarm her parents, and possibly curtail future outings
And so here she was, tired, cold and decidedly out of sorts (and also beginning to wonder if she was lost), wandering the streets in the middle of the night. She didn't even want to think about the results of her parents finding out about this escapade. Well, it probably wasn't as dangerous as they might think. There were sure to be policemen walking their beats within shouting distance, and the glow of electric streetlights made the idea of footpads seem something from the last century.
She had just managed to convince herself of this when the dark figure staggered out of a side street ahead of her. Before her heart had stopped racing, the man collapsed on the sidewalk. "Is he drunk?" she wondered, approaching carefully. The harsh, labored breathing didn't sound like it. She took another step forward, and the glow of the streetlamp revealed the spreading dark stain across his side. "Oh no!"
Relena sank down onto her knees beside him, trying desperately to think of something she could use to stop the bleeding. If this was a novel, she would have had petticoats to sacrifice, but the length of her skirt rendered that idea absurd. Suddenly, the perfect solution hit her. She unwound the long white silk scarf from around her neck.
Trying to remember everything she'd learned about first aid from a nurse during the air raids, she started to wrap the scarf around his middle. As if her touch had suddenly woken him from a daze, his head snapped up and a hand fell across hers. Relena suddenly found herself staring, at uncomfortably close range, into a pair of intense, deep-blue eyes partly screened by wayward dark hair. A distant part of her mind registered that he couldn't be any older than she was. "What are you doing?" he demanded dully.
"Maybe he's in shock,' she told herself. "You're hurt. I need to get this bandage on to stop the bleeding."
"Don't...need...help." The words were choked out through clenched teeth.
Relena tried again, speaking soothingly as she would to a wounded animal, hoping to calm him down. "You're losing blood. If it isn't stopped, you'll get much worse."
The blue eyes blazed at her. "GO AWAY!"
"Nonsense! I'm not leaving you like this!" Ignoring the alarming look on his face, she reached determinedly for the makeshift bandage. The hand tried to push her away, but she refused to be budged, and at last he stopped. Relena proceeded with the bandaging, keeping her hands steady with an effort of will.
She heard him mutter a second later, something that sounded like "It doesn't matter..."
He watched her mutely after that, not even making a sound when she tightened the scarf and knotted it. Relena leaned back to survey her handiwork. She just hoped it would last until she could get him to a doctor. Should she try to move him herself, or leave him here while she tried to find a telephone?
Incredibly, he solved the problem by heaving himself to his feet. 'That's impossible!' Relena thought. She stood up sharply, ready to steady him if he started to topple. Somehow, he remained standing. "If you tell anyone about this-" His voice was icy and inhumanly controlled. "I'll make sure you regret it."
While Relena was still trying to process this incredible statement, he somehow disappeared. The hair stood up on the back of her neck. How could someone hurt that badly make such a swift recovery? Yet here she was, on a perfectly empty street, with nothing to prove the bizarre incident had ever happened except the absence of her scarf...and a speckling of blood on her white evening gloves.