"And you are absolutely certain that you don't know any 'Rai Hodges'?"
"Positive, Viceroy."
Suzaku felt his face twist in frustration. Okay, so Rai's workstation was cleared of anything linking him to the Academy, the staff records relating to him had been wiped and the Club had been stolen. That much he could understand, but how was it possible to alter the memories of two men so that they no longer remembered anything about him? Just how could that be done? And, for that matter, why not do the same thing to himself, Lloyd and Cecile? Or-
Shouts pulled him from his mind. The guards were being bent over their stations, cuffs slapped around their wrists.
"I must act as though you are conspirators," Viceroy Cornelia said flatly. She made a jerking motion with her head and the two were pulled off to imprisonment. "And you." She turned to Suzaku, head held high. Suzaku didn't miss the way her nose scrunched up, lip curling in mild disgust at addressing him. "You say you met him at your school, Warrant Officer?"
Suzaku nodded, his throat thickening with guilt. A pair of violet eyes widened accusingly at him from the back of his mind. "Yes, Viceroy. Ashford Academy." He saw a flash of recognition wash over her face. Oh, yeah; Milly's family were friends with Lelouch's mother, weren't they? "Should I call them and tell them they're going to be investigated?" If I can get Milly on the phone she can get Lelouch and Nunnally out of the way.
"No, I think not." Dammit! "If the school holds one terrorist it can hold more. We will go immediately."
"Sister, can I come?"
"Princess Euphemia," she warned her younger sister firmly.
Euphy snapped to attention, clearing her throat. "Viceroy," she tried again. "I would like to accompany you, to become familiar with the duties I must take on one day as your successor." The words were recited, the tone dull, but she couldn't hold back the slight excitement in her voice.
"..."
Viceroy Cornelia held her sister's gaze, violet eyes searching, demanding. The moment stretched on, and on.
"... very well." The light in her eyes shifted, became sympathetic. When Euphy's face brightened she allowed herself a quiet smile before becoming the Viceroy once more. "Princess. Warrant Officer."
Suzaku stood at attention, ignoring the stabbing pain from his wounds, and followed.
oOo
The ride in the... well it wasn't a car - Lelouch would know what it is, he reminded himself; his best friend knew everything. A stab of guilt shot through him. He even knows about - well, anyway, the ride in the... transport was an uncomfortable one. He was sitting opposite the Viceroy. Directly opposite a woman who did not trust him, did not respect him and certainly did not like him. Euphy's warm presence beside him was a comfort but it didn't completely allay the impulse to start scratching at something. Scratching... perhaps Arthur was having an impact on him after all.
Or maybe it was just how much he wanted to take out his phone and call Milly.
Damn it! I hope Rivalz has taken Lelouch out to gamble again. Not that Suzaku approved, mind you, but with Nunnally at the middle school the only one to worry about was the Vice-President of the Student Council, who just so happened to be the Viceroy's little brother, who she just so happened had believed for the past seven years to be dead. If they were both gone, and Shirley could keep her mouth shut about Lelouch and Rivalz not being there, and he could get that photograph of Lelouch and Nunnally talking together in the garden away from its spot in the dining room-
-no, wait, there was still the fact that he lived with Lelouch and Nunnally. The Viceroy was definitely going to want to talk with his roommates. He supposed he could pass Lelouch's room off as a room for him when he stayed at the school (despite the fact that he never stayed at the school) but who was going to pass off as Nunnally? Especially with that spare wheelchair sitting in her room?
Damn it, we are so screwed! Suzaku stiffened. Unless... that was his plan? Was his amnesia a cover to infiltrate the school and expose them?! Bastard!
After a few seconds Suzaku realised the idiocy of that theory.
"Kururugi..." Suzaku snapped to attention, meeting the Viceroy's eyes. The word lingered on her tongue. "Earl Asplund mentioned that you're the son of the late Prime Minister?"
Suzaku swallowed. The Viceroy's voice had become threatening. Well, more threatening than usual. "Y-yes, your highness."
Princess Cornelia's face twisted into something ugly, her eyes narrowed, flashing dangerously as her grip on the armrest tightened. "You... lived at the Kururugi Shrine?"
Suzaku felt his mouth dry up. "Yes, your highness."
"I see." The Viceroy's slowly warped from disgust to anger, then from anger to hate.
Suzaku wasn't sure which was worse: the way Cornelia was looking at him, or the way Euphemia was looking at him.
oOo
"Your highnesses, welcome," Milly said, reciting a phrase learned from childhood. "To what do we owe the honour of your presence?" Suzaku squirmed. The respectful, polite words sounded wrong coming from Milly's irreverent, casual voice.
Princess Cornelia looked down at the student council, imperious and powerful. For a few seconds she seemed to weigh what to say on her mind, speaking demandingly and purposefully. "I am conducting an investigation into a known terrorist threat, Miss Ashford. A member of the Black Knights infiltrated the military and betrayed a science team to the terrorist leader Zero." Suzaku's eyes stayed fixed on the ground as his friends' eyes turned to him. Milly, Rivalz and Shirley looked at him, confused. Nina shivered in fear. Kallen stiffened, staring right at the Viceroy. "A student here, by the name of Rai Hodges."
The obligatory round of gasps made Suzaku grit his teeth.
Shirley spluttered. "R-Rai? But he was just here yesterday! He and Lulu had a game of chess and then he went off to work-" She froze at Suzaku and Milly's heated glares.
"Lulu?" Princess Cornelia sounded the word out. Suzaku could feel Euphemia freeze beside him. Oh, no. Oh God, please no. The very thing he dreaded, it was happening right in front of his eyes. "Is that a friend of his?"
No! Suzaku wanted to shout.
"Uh-huh." Rivalz looked betrayed, his face scrunched up and scowling. "Uh, I mean yes, your highness. Lelouch Lamperouge. He was here a minute ago but I think he's left."
A thick silence descended on the room.
"...Lelouch?" Princess Euphy breathed, eyes wide. The Viceroy didn't say a word, her mouth open by just a fraction. Suzaku could feel himself shaking, Milly looked terrified and the others were visibly confused.
Rivalz blinked. "Uh, yes. He lives here with his sister, so he might be in his rooms-"
"Nunnally?"
Shirley looked between Suzaku's horrified face and the reluctant excitement of the royal sisters. "...yes. The three of them live a two floors up-"
"Which rooms?" the Viceroy demanded, burning a hole into Milly Ashford's face.
Milly shrank into herself, retreating from the princess' gaze as eight years of lies and secrets burst open in the space of a few seconds. "...23 for Lelouch and Nunnally and 24 for Rai-" She didn't get to finish as the princesses rushed from the room. Suzaku locked eyes with her for the longest second, nodded solemnly and spun on his heel to march after his best friends' sisters.
He wanted to turn back around for a moment and scream when Shirley asked, "What?"
oOo
"You said nothing," the Viceroy snarled venomously when he caught up to them. "Lelouch and Nunnally were alive all these years an you said nothing, Kururugi. You filthy Eleven, you work for me and you had a royal duty to inform me that my brother and sister were alive."
Suzaku didn't argue - even Euphy wasn't looking at him, eyes fixed forward with a breathless expression.
"You keep our siblings secret," Cornelia raged. "You keep their survival hidden, you vouch for a terrorist and a traitor, march him into the most advanced science division in Area Eleven, you let him bring Zero of all people into that base with his soldiers, let them destory our technology, steal our schematics, kill our men... and then you fail to capture this double-agent you're so friendly with. You fail to catch him, you are defeated by him, and now one of the most technologically-advanced knightmares in the world will be out of commission for days if not weeks while Zero runs around carrying out operations with the other knightmare by his side! I've never born witness to such incompetence!"
Suzaku stayed silent. It was nothing he hadn't already told himself.
"I ought to have you court-martialed for treason."
"Sister!" Euphy snapped, the authority Suzaku had seen at Gottwald's assassination bleeding through. "That's enough - they might be up there!"
The Viceroy said no more, reaching the floor she wanted and turning into the correct hall.
Suzaku followed silently. His guilt was, for once, not soothed by Princess Euphy squeezing his arm and offering a sympathetic look. When he nodded she seemed to buy it, anyway, and rushed past her sister to room 23.
"Lelouch! Nunnally! Are you in here?!"
Suzaku's heart jumped up his throat. A few seconds passed as he and the Viceroy entered. The room was unchanged from yesterday. The tea set had been cleared away by Sayoko, but the book she and Rai had been reading to Nunnally was left on the dining table. Lelouch and Rai's chess match was left, unfinished, at the living room table. Even the photograph of Lelouch and Nunnally, laughing together in the garden, sat atop the fireplace.
And the sisters had their wide eyes fixed on it.
He sighed quietly. He supposed it must have been a shock, seeing their dead siblings after so many years, even through a picture. The last time they had seen them the Lelouch had only been nine and Nunnally six; now Lelouch was seventeen and Nunnally fourteen. Before, they had been a pair of traumatised children grieving the loss of their mother, adjusting to the sister's crippling and blindness and tossed off to the far end of the world; now scared, broken Nunnally had grown into a cheerful, smiling teenager and petulant, angry Lelouch was a stern, mature young man.
Euphemia reached up and stroked her siblings' faces through the photo. "Lelouch... Nunnally..." She plucked the photo from the mantelpiece huddled in with her sister for a closer look. After a few seconds Cornelia breathed and turned to look around while Euphemia looked directly at Suzaku.
"I... think I knew already," she admitted. "Especially after- ...still, why?"
Suzaku's mouth opened, then closed.
"...do they hate us, for what happened?"
"No," he said firmly. "The emp- his majesty, yes. But you? No." He was not about to let Euphy think her siblings hated her. She took a breath and turned to Cornelia walking back in.
"Just their belongings." Then the Viceroy straightened up and cleared her head. "Guilford, search the spy's room."
"Yes, your highness."
"Euphy, stay here and you, don't leave her side." Suzaku nodded obediently and the Viceroy strode determinedly from the room. He wanted to go in. He wanted to see that rat squirm in the corner as he was dragged away in cuffs, but he had his orders. No matter; he'd get his satisfaction seeing him dragged through the corridors.
"Can't be a traitor to something you never loved," eh? Well, we'll see how that holds up in court, traitor.
"Suzaku?" Euphy was staring at him intensely in that way that made his insides turn to goo, only stronger. "What are they like now?"
"Oh! Uh... well-"
"Dammit!"
The shout made them jump, watching as the door was thrown open.
"He's not here," the Viceroy hissed furiously. "Didn't even come back to pick up his spare weapon." She dangled the pistol in midair. "Under his pillow. He'll still be at their precious headquarters." She took a deep breath at the alarmed look on Euphy's face. "No matter. We'll find him. We'll find them all, and exterminate the vermin from Area Eleven." Her eyes turned to Suzaku and hardened. "Did he know?"
"Yes." The Viceroy's eyes snapped to slits. "He overheard them talking and promised to keep quiet."
"So Zero might have them?!" the Viceroy demanded.
"Nunnally-"
"Princess Nunnally to you, Warrant Officer."
"Princess Nunnally should be at the middle school right now, across the-"
And they were gone again.
oOo
By the time he caught up to them the sisters were marching through the corridors of the Ashford Middle School, Guilford and Darlton ahead of them.
A thousand thoughts ran through Suzaku's head. What was Nunnally going to do? Say? Think? Was Lelouch about to rush in behind them and stop them, or had Milly smuggled her out before they arrived? At any rate, the determined stride told him the Viceroy was not stopping for anything, with her Sub-Viceroy beside her.
"This is the room, Princess."
"Thank you, Darlton." Cornelia took a breath and rushed through the door. "What... what happened here?"
Suzaku burst in after her, and his fears came true.
There was nobody in there that shouldn't have been. The teacher and students were sitting still at their desks. No, not still - frozen in place. Eyes wide with fear. Their breaths came in short, fast bursts. They looked utterly terrified. And Cornelia was standing in front of a desk with a wheelchair.
An empty wheelchair.