You Only Get One Chance

By battousaistrata

Rated R for language and mature situations. Duo POV.

The cell was dark save for a small window on the door. I hung limply from the ceiling, completely engulfed in chains. My arms were painfully pulled over my head and my feet barely touched the floor. The skin on my wrists was already badly chafed and bleeding from the tight mangles and from multiple escape attempts. All of which failed. How could that be? I was the best lock pick of all the pilots, no lock made by man had ever stopped me, yet these mangles had defeated me.

These soldiers were not your everyday bums, hired in batches of fifty and trained like robots. These guys were smart. After they put me through what even I admit was the worst torture session that I'd ever been through, they'd beaten me, chained me, and hung me from the ceiling like a freakin' rag doll. But I had to give them credit because all of that combined had thwarted my escape plan. Although, even if I did somehow miraculously find a way to free myself from these chains, I doubted that I could even walk, much less stand.

Dammit, how could I, a trained Gundam pilot, a professional killer, have been caught so easily by my enemy? It had just been another routine mission. Just sneak into Oz and steal blueprint designs for new Leos that they were planning to manufacture. However, there had been a problem. When we looked at the blueprints of the Oz base in which the Leo designs were supposed to be held, there turned out to be two operation rooms.

It was probably an extra precaution designed specifically to prevent anyone who might want to get their hands on any important documentation from actually attempting it. In our case, however, it just turned out to be more of a nuisance. It was too risky sending just one Gundam pilot into the base alone to search for the blueprints in both operation rooms. So, being the smart, brave soldiers that we were, we sent two.

Heero and I were sent together. His mission was to investigate the operations room on the east side of the base and mine was to check out the one on the west side. One of us would find and steal the Leo design plans and the other would stealthily sneak back out with nothing. We both were to report back to our Gundams, hidden deep in the woods surrounding the base, in 14 hours and that would be it. Mission accomplished. Easy, right?

Well, that's how it started, but I, of course, had to get the operations room that was the decoy and they were ready for anyone trying to sneak in there. It was a trap, and I walked right into it. It was already too late when I realized that they already knew I was coming.

The moment that I'd picked the lock on the door of the operations room, my sixth sense told me that something was wrong. The fact that there was no security alarm system was suspicious, but the part that really got my instincts screaming was the fact that no one was in the room. Oz officials may not always be good examples of military intelligence at its finest, but even they would not keep important documents in an unsecured, unmanned room.

The next thing I knew, the other two supposedly locked doors in the room flew open and I had myself a room full of Oz soldiers. With the odds definitely against me, my combat instincts kicked in automatically. I immediately kicked out at the closest soldier knocking him unconscious and relieving him of his weapon in the process. I fired off two shots at two soldiers who had moved closer and raised their guns, thinking that I was distracted. Idiots.

I usually have a good sense about when it's time to fight or flee and at that moment, my instincts were screaming at me to flee. So I fled. Guns went off behind me and bullets were ricocheting off the walls around me as I ran. I made it all the way to the end of the hall, mentally running through the blueprints trying to formulate another way out, when one of the bullets lodged itself in my leg. I managed to dart into a corridor before I was bombarded with more bullets, but the sharp pain caused me to stumble and I fell to my knees, barely catching myself with my arms. I looked down at my injured calf. It was gushing blood and I noticed that there was no exit wound, meaning the bullet was still in the leg. Great.

Now it was really gonna suck trying to escape from here with a leg injury. Suddenly, my senses tingled and my body tensed sensing danger. I turned around, but it was too late. The butt end of a rifle smashed the side of my face and my vision went white. It took me a moment to recover and by that time a group of Oz soldiers had completely surrounded me and proceeded to beat the living crap out of me. A few painful moments later, I was dragged up by my arms and flanked by two soldiers. A man in a uniform, whom I presumed was an officer, walked up slowly, withdrawing his gun. He asked me which Gundam pilot I was. I kept my mouth shut, but he was very persistent. When I finally got annoyed and told him to go to hell, I got pistol whipped across the face. You would not believe how much that hurts. I guess that's what I get for opening my damn mouth.

One of the soldiers restraining me said something about making sure I was properly restrained because he'd heard of a Chinese kid escaping from a high security prison cell and single-handedly blowing up the base. Heh. That's Wufei for ya. The officer grunted and then shoved his gun into my stomach as hard as he could. I felt the air leave my lungs and heard something inside crack. Shit, not the ribs. I doubled over gasping from the pain and trying to get some air back in my lungs. It was not meant to kill, just to maim. When I'd regained my voice, I said, "You think that hurt?" Me and my big mouth. When I glanced up to see his reaction, he had his gun raised and struck me above the eye. That was the last thing I remembered before my vision went black.