Chapter Text
"Everyone, I need to see you on the bridge. Now."
Sumeragi's voice, crackling over the intercom, was the first input from the outside world that had broken in on Tieria's communication with Veda in hours. Tieria disentangled his mind from Veda's knots of code. The ruinous effort that now represented his communion with Veda left his mind pounding, his heart sore and empty, answerless. The Trinity girl would have much to answer for, the next time they met.
Outside the terminal, he reached out to catch his hand on one of the handholds to propel himself toward the hatch to the Ptolemaios. Outside of Veda, input was different; physical, visual, and bright, instead of the soothing dimness of the computer's operations.
Not so soothing, now that it wouldn't allow him access. Better than the harsh glare of the Ptolemaios, attempts at artificial sunlight still more jarring than the fusion of the sun could ever cause.
There was no mission; even now, Veda would never keep something so relevant from him. All the Meisters should have been accounted for, since Dynames had docked safely an hour ago.
Tieria curled his hand around the guiderail handle, hand squeezed firmly on the lockgrip to increase his speed. Panels and consoles flashed by, nothing more than a blur to the human eye.
He was not the last to arrive, despite Veda's terminal location, far at the other end of the ship from the bridge. Allelujah Haptism walked through the doorway an instant after Tieria had settled himself on the ground, arms crossed. "You're late," he snapped, impatient for Lockon's arrival.
Sumeragi ignored Tieria's comment, just swept her eyes, bloodshot and tired, over everyone. She nodded to herself and turned away from them all. She crouched down, and Tieria noticed Lockon's orange Haro for the first time, hidden until then from his line of sight.
His eyes narrowed.
"Show them the message you showed me, Haro," she said, and stayed crouched down, one knee planted on the ground, just a moment too long. Haro bounced away and settled into the port connected to the viewscreen.
"Lockon..?" Feldt asked, as though to herself, as the screen lit up and the message began.
They watched in silence, which remained after the message stopped, suffocating.
"Unacceptable," Tieria said, quietly as though to himself. Then again, louder: "Unacceptable! You cannot resign from Celestial Being. You cannot stop being a Gundam Meister!" he said, voice growing louder still.
"Calm down, Tieria," Sumeragi said, tired, as she moved over to lay a hand on Feldt's trembling shoulder. "There's nothing we can do about it. Lockon wiped Haro's memory banks -- there's no way to find him."
"What could he have found out in the desert?" Allelujah asked, frowning at Haro, still connected. "That was weeks ago."
"Nothing good," Lasse said, leaning over to run a hand through his hair.
Ian, leaning quietly against the wall, chose that moment to pipe up. "Dynames' records were wiped. There was some sand gumming up the feet -- nothing that could help."
"We should just let him go, shouldn't we?" Lichty asked, elbows on his knees, face cupped on one hand. "If he wants to leave, we should respect that. Right?"
"You don't leave Celestial Being, Lichty," Christina said, voice wavering. "Tieria's right about that."
"We don't have the time to search for him," Sumeragi said, cutting the conversation short. "We need to focus our attention on finding a replacement Meister -- and that could take months. We have some breathing room, because of those new Meisters, but not enough to find a man who doesn't want to be found."
The room was silent.
"I will find him," Tieria said, quietly. "Veda's plans have always involved four Meisters-- not those impostors, but the four of us, including Lockon Stratos. We were all chosen for a reason," he said, eyes flicking briefly over to Setsuna, "and we are all necessary."
"I will find Lockon Stratos, and bring him back. His duties to Celestial Being are not complete. Until they are, he remains a Meister."
Feldt sniffed quietly. The room was silent.
"Don't force him to come back," Sumeragi said, and walked over to Tieria, laying a gentle hand on the console behind his back. "He won't do us any good in our brig."
Tieria stared at her, face blank, then nodded firmly. "I won't take Virtue," he said.
"I wouldn't expect you to," Sumeragi said, the lines on her face disappearing into her smile.
"Tieria Erde," Setsuna said, speaking up for the first time. "Bring Lockon Stratos home."
Tieria didn't answer. He left.
***
Everything was salty.
Neil wasn't surprised at the air -- they were on the ocean, of course it would be salty -- but everything on the boat, from the water (from licking his lips) to the food (which used the old method of preservation, rather than the more nutritious food-blocks that had become the norm as space-living had increased). Even the knots and bolts that held the ship together were corroding, bleeding red lines from the joints.
Mallory and Brown were good at their jobs: they slept in shifts, never leaving the bridge unmanned. Never leaving Neil unwatched, but the lack of trust was perfunctory, lacking the hostility any true lack of trust would elicit. To lesson the tension, Neil forced himself to sleep during the third shift, in the bright of day, so he could keep the other men company on their own shifts. Any type of sleep schedule was better than feeling like an unruly child under their mother's watchful eye.
It was a two man vessel. Neil's help, though unnecessary, was welcomed with a grudging respect and easing of tensions.
To pass the time, they mostly played cards. Even on a ship this old, the controls were largely automated and required little attention. Their cargo was not so valuable or volatile enough to require more than the occasional checks. Keeping the men company provided a welcome distraction, and helped stave off the nagging loneliness Neil could feel creep in at the edges of his consciousness when the sun was high and he could hear Mallory and Brown talking, laughing, on the deck above.
"Rummy," Brown said, a grin creasing the dark skin next to his eyes.
Neil laughed quietly, and slapped his cards face down onto the table before he started counting. The only thing that saved him from a painfully low point score was the run he'd gotten early on, fossil General down to the Major. Even counting the cards he had played against Brown's own groups, he was still over two dozen points behind this hand alone.
"You want to play to five hundred, or are we going to call it quits for today?" Brown asked, smug, as he wrote down their new scores.
"I think that's about all I can take for now," Neil said, huffing out a laugh and pushing back in his chair. Its front legs tilted off the ground as he stretched.
Brown nodded, and marked the score down carefully on the sheet, always careful to keep track. "We're going to be heading north, soon," Brown said, offhand, as he shuffled the cards quickly and tied them together with a band. He pushed the back of Neil's chair as he walked by, planting all four legs back onto the ground.
"I'd better pull out my coat, then," Neil said, touching his fingertips to the thin fabric of his vest, grains of sand bunching at his touch.
"Pack away what you don't need while you can," Brown said, leaning back against the storage cupboard, face shadowed with his back to the light, teeth bright in his dark face. "The seas'll be getting rough."
Neil allowed his thoughts to skirt the edge he'd made in his mind around his life as Lockon, sense-memory twinging in his stomach from the endless hours of nausea he'd first had to face, dealing with the G-forces in Dynames' cockpit. "I think I'll be able to handle it," he said, keeping his face deliberately still, against either smile or frown.
"We'll see, mystery boy. You might be able to run from some things, but you can't run from water on the ocean."
Neil made sure he smiled, then looked back down at his hands. They were clenched in fists, knuckles tight against the table.
The skin on his face didn't pull when he smiled anymore, he realized dimly. The burn from the desert had healed.
***
In Tieria's experience, the life of an ordinary human involved a great deal of waiting. One waited to use the electronic ticket-taker at the orbital elevator hub. Then one waited for security clearance. Then one waited for permission to board the elevator train. And then, once those preliminaries were over with, one waited for the duration of the journey itself, until the train reached the surface, where the waiting began all over again.
Perhaps that was what drove humans into war: a mental imbalance, caused by frustration with the inefficiency of their underlying socio-economic systems. At the moment Tieria could sympathize with such urges. He'd been stuck in line for at least four hours, surrounded by persons with overactive scent glands who insisted upon starting loud conversations about irrelevant topics. Each time he inched forward they shuffled up behind him en masse, effectively denying him any shred of peace or personal space; the reasoning behind this was entirely beyond him, but he suspected it was related to a sort of innate, primate sadism.
Tieria wanted to get to work as soon as possible. Lockon's trail was getting colder by the minute. Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up and wait.
"'Tieria Erde'." The immigration official shuffled through Tieria's documents. Tieria couldn't place the man's accent, but he didn't need to, in order to disapprove of it. The way he dragged his syllables -- Tee-yeeehr-eee-uh Ehhh-ruuu-daaaayuh -- was so slow as to be ludicrous. Tieria could feel the milliseconds being shaved off his life. "Hunh. What's that, Italian? You don't look Italian."
Tieria crossed his arms. "It means 'Earth Earth.' I believe that the persons who named me were attempting some sort of jest at my expense."
He didn't make any pretense of understanding humor.
"Right. Hippies. My condolences." The official grimaced. He stamped Tieria's papers and then returned them. "Welcome back to the Union, Mr. Erde. If you start to feel compression sickness, you need to follow the yellow arrows towards the nearest med station, or flag down a guide. I'll remind you that under Union law you're prohibited from operating heavy machinery or manual-drive vehicles for two days following landfall." He gestured towards the end of the exit tunnel, where a gleaming riot of shops awaited. "Have a nice day."
Tieria stalked through the passageway. Once order was established on Earth, he was sure that Veda would wish to improve upon this system. He would try to flag it as a priority.
In the mean time, he had more pressing matters to attend to.
Tieria made his way towards the baggage carousels with a minimum of delay; which was to say that he paid extra attention to directional signs, pushed past dawdlers on the escalator, and ruthlessly suppressed his gag reflex when walking by the fast food outlets. Naturally these efforts at making haste proved futile. When Tieria reached the claim area he found that the conveyors were surrounded by a throng of weary travelers. All waiting. More waiting. As though Tieria even needed the contents of a trunk that he'd packed for show, in order to pass as a regular space tourist.
He squeezed his way between various bleary-looking humans until he was within reasonable proximity of the baggage chute. Then he pulled out his comm-phone and set about hacking the local security monitors. Lockon had probably not been careless enough to personally deliver Dynames for pick-up, but circumstances demanded that Tieria make certain. He didn't have the luxury of a solid lead to follow.
Tieria was working his way through warehouse camera footage when his concentration was disrupted by a high-pitched screeching sound. A pair of twins were play-scuffling with one another, while their mother blithely ignored them.
Tieria frowned. He couldn't understand this. Humans had roughly the same audio-visual capabilities that he did, and frankly, they were packed together so tightly that they might as well be cattle lined up for the cull. Did the parent not grasp what was going on? Why was no one else responding? Those children were flailing around and bumping into people's legs. Bad enough that gravity was heavy, here, and the smell was even heavier, and he could feel all kinds of chemical irritants in the air, not to mention the oppressive humidity.
In the background, a newsreader chattered blithely on about the three new Gundams spotted in Morocco, as though the path to salvation wasn't vanishing beyond his grasp. The thought of being jostled around by unwashed prepubescents was too much to bear.
"Excuse me," Tieria said. He backed his words with the force of a moderate glare.
One of the twins froze in place. The other blinked up at him.
"Your hair! It's purple!" She pointed. "Can I touch it? Can I can I?"
Tieria's frown deepened. "That's not sanitary," he informed the girl, with all due seriousness. "Does your educational institution not brief you on public sanitation standards?"
"But I wanna." She toddled over, stretching her sticky hands out towards his pristine, well-pressed trousers, and-
"Stop this at once!" Tieria snapped. "You're making a spectacle of yourselves!"
Both children shrunk backwards, and suddenly, Tieria could feel the eyes of the crowd upon him, like a hundred separate surveillance cameras. Their mother looked up from her magazine. Her cheeks were red, and her face was twisted into a oily scowl.
"Hey!" She said. "What do you think you're doing with my kids?"
"You're not adequately supervising your children," Tieria said, slowly, as though he were speaking a password into a voice-recognition module. It was possible that this woman had become unaccustomed to adult annunciation. "They're an annoyance to everyone around them. I'm remedying your incompetence."
"Excuse me? What did you say!?" The woman snapped. She stepped in front of her children. "How dare you!! You're practically a child yourself. I'd like to see you try to parent twins."
He was about to ready a rejoinder -- Tieria had never been a child, in theory or in practice -- when he realized that the crowd was churning mutinously around him. And wasn't that typical. He did something reasonable in the face of mass ignorance, and instead of his intervention being welcomed, he was treated like a highly evolved form of vermin.
Tieria threw up his hands in exasperation, and swanned over to the railing at the edge of the claim area. His heart was beating too quickly. he had to bring his breath under control. Huge bay windows looked out over the scenery surrounding the elevator platform. It was lake, and sky, and Flags in defensive formation; a hundred shades of freedom, a whole canvas full of blue.
It was unfortunate that he'd have to travel by ocean to reach their island base. Tieria could easily come to hate the colour blue, if he chose.
***
Once they arrived, it was like stepping back into his own past.
Rex Mundi was still making use of the natural formations malcontents the world over had been taking advantage of for years untold. It was practically a cliché.
He wove through hallways like memories, unfamiliar faces in familiar halls.
He'd never been in deep enough to learn the faces of any but those he'd dealt with directly. That was a long time ago; a lifetime. Lockon Stratos' time was over, but Neil could feel his influence-- tracking the people he passed, noting their faces, their dress, their uniform. Will or nil, his time in Celestial Being had changed him.
"Come on, 'Snow," Mallory said, dragging Neil's attention back to his purpose here. "You keep Arturo waiting, none of you are going to be happy."
Neil tossed his hair over his shoulder and followed the other man through the crowds. He remembered the way, but there was no need to rub their faces in the fact that he used to almost be one of them.
When they ducked through the low entrance to the main chamber of this particular chamber of caves, even the cold, mineral taste of the air was the same.
Arturo was bent over his desk, shuffling through a stack of papers. Arturo never used computers, insisted on handling everything himself. Neil had considered the man a bit of an eccentric, before, when Arturo had spoken of avoiding the hidden ears of the government. Having seen the type of information Tieria had managed to pull from Veda, he couldn't help but think the man had had a point.
It was one of the reasons Neil had picked Rex Mundi for his gun-runner.
"Neil," Arturo said, pinning Neil down when he spared him a look over his square, wired spectacles, familiar as his favourite brand of gunoil.
"Thanks, by the way," Neil said, wanting to start out on the right foot. "For not using my old call-sign."
Arturo blew out hard through his nose, and took his glasses off to rub at the bridge of his forehead, thick fingers kneading burned, wrinkled skin. "You said under the radar."
"Knew 'North Snow' was a joke," Mallory said behind him, under his breath. Neil spared him a glance, and turned his attention back to Arturo.
"Still. Thanks. You didn't have to see me at all," Neil painted a smile on his face, and nodded his head in the direction of the back wall. "This what you've got for me?"
"It's what you asked for," Arturo said, and locked his eyes on Mallory. "Are you waiting for an invitation, or you going to get back to Brown?" he asked, ignoring Mallory's scowl as the man stomped out.
"You didn't have to do that on my account," Neil said, thinking with a twinge of regret about the blister he still had on his palms from where he'd helped Mallory with mooring the ship.
"He knows better than to loiter," Arturo said, dismissing it with a wave of his hand.
Neil shrugged it off, and turned his attention to the duffle Arturo was pulling out from a locked cedar cabinet behind his desk. He hadn't left Celestial Being to make friends; Mallory had fulfilled his purpose.
"You're lucky I still had these, Neil," Arturo said, pulling out a rifle case. "They tried to pull the Samson-242 off the market entirely a few years back."
"I knew you'd be able to handle it," Neil said, and reached out to flip the clasps open, the familiar, unique shape of the rifle's butt sending a wave of comfort and familiarity through him.
Arturo shot him a look and grunted, but let the comment stand. "That's the only specialty item you asked for. The digital scopes for upwards of three clicks are still legal in the Union, so you'll have your pick in the accessories room." He tapped a heavy plastic container with his food. "You still fond of the old Glock model?"
Neil eyed the box, but didn't move to open it. "No," he said, mind hovering over the sweet feeling of melancholy Glocks had brought him since he and Lyle had first learned to shoot with them. He could almost see the targets; always in perfect condition, in his memory, never hit. "The last one I had jammed once too often when I needed it. Turned me off the whole line."
Arturo nodded in understanding. "I heard the manufacturor let a bad batch through, a few years back. Nobody caught on until a bunch of cops got killed. Public outcry, protest-- you won't be seeing any cops in the AEU with Glocks anymore, that's for sure."
"Must've been some well-connected cops," Neil said, spreading his gaze out over teh rest of the room. "What else do you have for me?"
Arturo clapped Neil on the back, heavy hand rattling the breath in Neil's lungs. "Come on, kid. I'll show you my collection."
Neil followed, and held in his smirk; Arturo's son had been shot by a dirty cop. "I'll be my pleasure."
***
Tieria walked into the main residence's kitchen, and immediately recoiled. It was disheartening to see how their tropical safe-house went to shambles when no one was using it. Lizards skittered out of his path, there was a sharp smell coming from the sink, and the granite counter-tops were covered in a thin layer of dust.
"Retaining a full-time custodial staff would pose a security risk. That said, this level of wear on our equipment is completely unacceptable. All of this should be in operating condition in case of emergency," Tieria said to himself. It felt right to compose his thoughts in the form of a report, even when there was no one to report to. Information transmission was one of his primary purposes. "This facility isn't fit for a Gundam Meister to sleep in, let alone prepare food."
Which meant that he was going to spend the night hungry, with a wet rag in his hand. Tieria tried to work up some outrage regarding the situation, failed, and set off in search of cleaning products. He couldn't be angry at Wang's branch of the organization for wasting his time. The truth was that scrubbing these living quarters would be the most productive thing he'd accomplished since landing on this sorry planet.
Chasing Lockon Stratos was like hunting after vapourware.
As far as Tieria could tell, there wasn't anything left of Lockon Stratos here. Not a single personal object in his spare, spartan room. Not a scrap of data out of place in the memory of his private console. If it weren't for Lockon Stratos' death toll, and the memories he'd made with his colleagues, he might as well have never been a part of Celestial Being.
Like Veda's plan, now that the Thrones had arrived.
But Tieria believed in vapourware. He believed in logic that had not yet been fully explained to him, and the promise of innovation to come.
Tieria headed down the west corridor, encountered a balcony, and backtracked until he found the grey door of the maintenance closet. The handle was tilted slightly upward. Tieria pushed down on it, and found that it was jammed.
"Carelessness in regards to minutiae will compromise operational efficiency in the future."
How could maintenance have become this lax, over the span of a few meagre weeks? Tieria was not impressed. He braced himself against the floor, wrenched the handle as hard as he could, and gave the door a vigorous shove. The hinges made a cracking, crunch-crush sort of noise. Then the door swung open and Tieria stumbled forward.
Oh, my.
Only his hold on the door handle kept him from slipping in a pool of barrier cream and crashing down to the floor.
"Unbelievable. What is this?" Tiera pressed the sleeve of his cardigan to his nose. The stench of isopropyl alcohol was almost overwhelming. "A struggle? No, we've no indication of missing cell members, and Lockon Stratos would have reported any enemy infiltration." At least Tieria presumed so. On balance of probabilities. "I don't detect any signs of blood or other human tissue."
And there would be, if there had been a fight in here. The whole room was a wreck. A mop handle had been broken in two; its sharp edges used to gouge holes in the walls. All of the metal shelving had overturned, twisted into ruined mesh scrap, and the floor was covered with fine shards of shattered glass. Something had beaten dents into the body of the industrial vacuum. The damaged lighting unit flickered forlornly on and off.
"I- I don't understand."
The words sounded hollow, just like this sad little ruin. Tieria was starting to regret trapping the orange Haro in a closet to keep it from following him off the Ptolemaois in search of Lockon Stratos. Speaking to a processing unit was (slightly) less psychologically questionable than talking to yourself.
Tieria reached out and touched one of the fallen shelving units, only to yank his hand back when a sharp edge bit into his finger. Synthetic haemoglobin dripped down his knuckles to join the mess of spilled chemicals below. The fumes were starting to blur his vision.
"Enough," he cursed.
Tieria stepped back and closed the door as best he could. Then he left the area at a brisk pace, heading for the main console room.
It wouldn't help. He knew it wouldn't. Communicating with the flat outer layers of Veda, all surface and no depth, would only tighten the knot in his stomach. But what else could Tieria do? He'd been created as an interface between humans and computers. This island was so empty, and his footfalls were so loud.
Tieria was ashamed of how long it had taken him to realize that he'd never been truly alone before.
***
Neil would have to thank Arturo the next time he saw him. It had lulled him into a false sense of ease, working through Arturo's channels. It had almost felt like being normal; no fear of passing through borders, going through customs without wondering in the back of his mind if they'd spot anything.
It was like starting over, like purgatory.
Satisfaction lingered in the tips his fingers, in the crack of bones; aching with the knowledge that purgatory was a lie.
Walking through the gates of the last airport, meeting up with his last driver, saying goodbye to the last of Arturo's men; it was a relief. Arturo made things easy; too easy. Arturo would expect thanks.
Lille-Sud wasn't easy. The people were used to hardship; a dirty stain the AEU spent more time ignoring than trying to help. The people didn't have to shun outsiders because they were never approached.
Neil would have liked to gain the trust of a local, use them for information. The way the people leaned into each other, eyes fixed on him wherever he went, made him sure they'd have been the best witnesses.
But Neil didn't have time to gain that sort of trust. The information he'd received hadn't been time sensitive. Necessarily. The threat of Celestial Being sending someone after him made staying in any one place for longer than required a threat.
Which is where Louis came in.
Louis was a snitch. Not for the cops-- for everyone else. Neil had dealt with him before, listened to his chatter about rather facing the cops being mad at him than the underbelly of Lille.
Neil had never liked him. People like Louis-- people who'd sell their loyalty, tenuous as it was, to the highest bidder-- made him sick. They were the kind of people who'd kill families, ruin lives, for just a card full of money.
Made him think of himself, before Celestial Being.
"So you're back on the scene, huh, Recoil?" Louis asked, rubbing at his jeans. Louis wasn't a junky, but he moved like one; all shaky hands and nervous eyes.
Neil cringed at the old name. "Don't call me that," he said, rubbing the fingers of his gloves together. It always felt like dirt had gotten into his gloves, caught in the fingerholes, talking to Louis. All these years, and the world just wanted to slot him back into place.
"Whatever you say, man, whatever you say," Louis said, eyes bright and sharp. "So you're looking for someone? I might be getting old, but I haven't lost my touch yet," he said, throwing his head back as though to laugh, but no sound escaped his throat.
"I'm trying to find the pilot behind this Enact," he said, pulling out the data-pad he'd gathered all the information he'd copied from Haro on. "The public channels didn't help."
If he'd been able to search through Veda, he'd have found the information. But that would have left a trail too obvious-- a straight path that Celestial Being would be able to use to find him.
It was jarring, feeling like all that he wanted was just a few steps away-- in the wrong direction.
Louis clicked his tongue as he flipped through the info on the pad-- photos and specs on the mobile armor, the partial serial numbere their footage had picked up.
"Hmmmm," Louise said, turning the pad from side to side, as though that would give further depth to the two-dimensional image. "I'll see what I can dig up, meet back with you here tomorrow." He smiled, his teeth too-white, too-straight, for everything around him.
"Morning," Neil said, watching Louis tuck the pad away into his dirt-stained jacket. He'd memorized the partial, had copies of the images; it didn't make letting them go any easier. "Five AM. You're up that late, anyway, if I remember you."
Louis smiled, eyes like slots in his face, waiting for a money piece. "Half now, Recoil. You know I've never worked for free."
Neil gave Louis a dark look. "And I don't pay for silence. You'll get your money when I get my answers."
Louis grimaced, but nodded. "Whatever you say, Recoil. Whatever you say."
***
Neil didn't sleep that night.
He spent his time watching the streetwalkers; sad, hard girls and boys who'd give one whatever they asked for, for the right price; the mercenary's perfect mirror.
These children didn't fool themselves about the dignity of their trade, though. They lived with the shame, breathed it in with the smoke of their cigarettes.
They didn't try to approach him. Neil didn't fool himself into thinking it was for any other reason than that they could tell he was a man they didn't want to get involved with.
It started to rain around 0400 hours -- a cool, grey non-mist that slicked his gloves and curled his hair. He watched as the prostitutes abandoned their corners, drew his vest closed against the cold and walked back to the alley where he was meeting Louis.
He was early, but Louis was waiting for him. The man was hunched into himself, hair pressed flat against his face, too wet to be damp just from the drizzle.
"Recoil," Louis said, slumping. "You're here, good." He shook his head, and water flew off of him in all directions, invisible in the spitting rain.
"What'd you get for me, Louis?" Neil asked, impatient.
"Not much, Rebound. Like you said, it's an Enact-- but the armour doesn't tell you much more than that. It's the AEU-MA07013 Agrissa-- an old model from the fifth Solar Wars. It'd been modified to work with Enacts, obviously, but there's nothing special about it. The AEU gave that model to the French Foreign Legion-- but there's no record of it ever being modified, let alone used in recent combat."
Neil digested that information silently. "So basically all you've got for me is the mobile armour's model-type," he said, not bothering to hide his disgust.
Louis tried to shrug off the implied barb. "That's all there was to get, man. That's all the info that's out there."
"You're supposed to be good at this sort of thing, Louis. That's why I came to you. You can't mean to tell me that the AEU, an organization so bloated under its own bureaucracy they barely manage to function, doesn't have a record of who has been piloting their mobile suits?"
Louis flushed, angry. "If I'd had a serial from the Enact, I'd have had a better chance. But old mobile armours like this-- they're like ghosts in the system. Most of them were never even entered into the records. The only reason I found this one was its recent transfer. These armours-- the AEU spends most of the time pretending they don't exist."
"So you're useless, then. I should have gone to someone else," Neil said angrily. He turned to go, fists clenched tight at his sides.
"Don't be like that, Recoil!" Louis whined, reaching out to grab Neil's arm, twisting him back around. "I did good by you last time, didn't I?"
Neil tore his arm out of Louis' grip. "Last time doesn't cut it in our line of work," he said, and moved again to leave the alley.
"Hey, come on, man-- RECOIL, come on! You still owe me my money! Recoil!" Louis ran after Neil, grabbed him on the shoulder to swing him around.
It was sense-memory, to twist with the motion and slam his fist into Louis' face.
Pain ran through his hands, his knuckles throbbed. It was a shocking, sharp pain, after so many years of babying his hands. Years spent protecting them: making sure they'd stay steady when he fired his rifle.
He hadn't been in a fistfight since before he left Ireland, but Celestial Being had mandatory hand-to-hand combat lessons. Tieria had made sure they were well-attended.
He fell into the haze of well-practiced motions, forgettable for having been repeated so many times. Heel of the hand to the delicate cartilage of the nose, knee brought up to connect with the ribcage, slamming his foot into his opponent's knee to dislocate it, all while dodging the slow, futile efforts for retaliation. The pain in his hand faded to a dull throb, joined with similar twinges in his knee, elbows, forearm, foot.
He thought about low-gravity sim-fights, soft-impact spars with Allelujah. He thought about Tieria, always so strict to the traditional fighting forms, not accepting the rougher style that Setsuna and Neil had both learned on the streets of their homelands. He'd had a point-- whenever they had fought, Tieria had wiped the floor with him.
The sun shinning into the alley broke his reverie. The rain had washed away the dirt of the city-- it would have smelled clean, if the air didn't stink of copper.
Neil looked down at his gloves. The leather was dark, stained and tacky with blood. Louis was on the ground at his feet, curled around his midsection as though to protect it. His face was dark, swollen and nearly unrecognizable.
Neil crouched down, felt for a pulse. It was there-- strong and slow. Louis was only unconscious.
He felt along Louis's skull, neck, collarbone, ribs, checking for breaks or fractures. Louis didn't twitch, didn't flinch; he barely seemed to breath. After reaching the man's knees, Neil felt sure the other man wouldn't need a hospital.
He pulled his datapad-- cracked, the holo-emitter shattered-- out of Louis' pocket and slipped it into his own. He wondered if he should give Louis the money he owed him. It wasn't like he'd be coming back to Lille, after all.
After a moment's hesitation he propped the other man up against the wall, arranged him so the sun wouldn't shine in his face when he woke up. "Don't call me Recoil," he said, as goodbye.
He had a train to catch.
***
Tieria sat quietly at the bar and tried not to fidget with his drink. He didn't think he was fond of the dark stout that was commonly consumed in this country. Its taste was abnormally bitter, and it made him feel heavy and bloated.
"Rather have something with an umbrella in it?" The bartender smirked. He tilted his head, to indicate a large person sitting in the corner. He appeared to be sharing a ribald confidence with a companion. "Your new friend over there is buying."
Tieria's 'new friend' looked up from his conversation, and gave him a hopeful wave. Tieria did not wave back. Did he appear to require charity? Perhaps he should have had his clothing laundered after spending so many days on boats.
"That won't be necessary," Tieria said. "I have sufficient funds."
The bartender snorted. "Whatever you say." He ducked his head a bit lower, and leaned slightly inward. "But listen," he continued, voice subdued, "I hate to burst your bubble, but that bloke you've been eyeing since you came in here? He's a regular, and I've only ever seen him chat up women. For all the good it does him."
"I'll keep that under advisement."
The bartender shrugged and went back to work, his good deed for the day apparently done with. Tieria returned his attention to the television above the bar. On-screen, a member of the Argentinian football team flung himself to the ground, seeking a tactical advantage by feigning injury. The table of men that Tieria was monitoring broke into a loud round of protests.
Tieria couldn't say that he was happy about being reduced to this. He could think of much better things to do with his time than watching a group of young businessmen hoot at a sporting match. But in the absence of direct guidance from Veda, or any obvious trail of clues, Tieria was forced to work with the only source of information available to him: Lockon Stratos' file of background personal information.
A young woman slid out from the booth near the windows, checked her purse for a cigarette pack, and rushed outside to consume her poisonous fumes. As soon as she was out the door, Tieria's target stood as well.
"Well, gentleman," he said. He shrugged on his coat, which was made of expensive merino wool, and sported an excessive amount of buttons. "It's been a good game, but I think it's time I had a smoke. I'll be seeing you lot at work tomorrow. Late."
"Yeah, right."
"Say hello to your left hand for us."
"Oh, ye of little faith." The target sailed off, unperturbed by the bemused looks that his friends were giving him. He paused by the door to preen, slip on a pair of sunglasses (with twenty minutes left before sunset), and adjust his collar. Then he headed outside.
Tieria flashed his bank-card through the self-scanner, and followed.
Outside the air was chill, but not unbearable, and the chemical smells of the city were leavened by the scent of fresh rain. Tieria hung back in the doorframe to watch the target at work. He was smiling eagerly and carrying out a mostly one-sided conversation, steering her so that her back was against the building wall. And after a minute or two of having smoke blow in his face, he pulled his own cigarette out of a case he kept in his pocket, and attempted to light it by pressing the tip against the woman's own still-smouldering stick.
The woman looked confused. She was not the only one; Tieria couldn't fathom participating in such an obvious fire hazard.
He walked out from the entranceway and grabbed the target by the arm, forcing him to drop his carcinogen.
"Excuse him," Tieria said. Observation of Christina Sierra had taught him how to act in this situation. "He needs to get home to take his syphilis medication, before attending to the many support cheques he owes to young children that were once in his custody."
The woman looked back and forth between them, incredulously, then fled back inside with a high, sharp laugh.
"Hey, what the hell!?"
Tieria ignored the man's protest in favour of shoving him into the narrow alley next to the pub.
"Don't move," Tieria advised him.
The target stepped forward anyway, fist clenched, as though he felt entitled to leave, so Tieria forestalled any such nonsense with a hard punch to the abdomen. The target coughed and hacked and hugged ineffectually at his midsection. While he was stunned, it was a simple matter for Tieria to draw his semi-automatic from the shoulder-holster hidden underneath his cardigan, and press the barrel to his target's temple.
"I said: don't move."
The target didn't move.
"Look, mate, my wallet's in my back pocket, alright?"
"I'm not interested in your money," Tieria said. "Or you, for that matter."
"Then what the-"
Tieria was proficient in all major global tongues, but he had not yet achieved fluency in human body language. He therefore watched with due caution as the target cycled through a number of physical tells related to the fight-or-flight response -- tense back, darting eyes, white knuckles. Eventually the moment of understanding arrived, and his target let out the breath he'd been holding.
"Motherfucking son of a bitch," Lyle Dylandy concluded.
"Indeed." Tieria was pleased to see that his target was moderately quick on the uptake. The sooner he told Tieria what Tieria wanted to know, the sooner this situation could be resolved in a permanent fashion.