Title: Preventors' Case 84309: Splicers

Pairings: Main 1x2, others may show up

Warnings: Yaoi, Language, blood, gore, lemon, lime, angst

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Splicing idea taken from a Batman Beyond episode.

Summary: Heero is working for the Preventors on a case dealing with genetic mutations gone wrong. When he finally manages to make a break in the case he finds Duo, whose been missing for four years, right in the middle of it. Where has Duo been and what has he done to himself?

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Opening the door to Interrogation Room 5, Commander Yuy was greeted with a fiery green glare from Lanie Damure. Having arrested her himself, he wasn't surprised by the look nor the her strange appearance. Skin as white as fresh milk, peppered with large black spots all over her body made her look like a Dalmatian to him but she insisted that she was a snow leopard. Though Heero had never seen a snow leopard in person he was sure they were no where near as hostile as Ms. Damure. From the moment he'd seen her she'd been trouble. First resisting arrest, then clawing two officers and cussing out every officer sent in to interrogate her, Heero would have thought her a cold-blooded terrorist rather than a protest starting college grad.

"You can cut the good cop, bad cop bullshit. I don't believe for one second that anyone's died from splicing. You military pricks are just looking for ways to keep us down. And just like I told your little flunkies, I'm not telling you shit."

"Then I have no problem with charging you with aiding and abating and accessory to murder," he answered.

"That's a bullshit charge," the leopard woman snarled straining forward where she sat cuffed to the metal chair. "I didn't kill anyone and I sure as hell didn't help anyone commit murder."

"But you are helping, Ms. Damure. The longer you withhold information, the more people this man will kill and if another one dies I'm charging you with third-degree murder."

"You don't scare me. You think you can come in here and threaten me and I'll just break. Well you can go and fuck yourself." She smirked, settling back in her chair.

Heero replied by opening the slim folder he'd brought with him, drawing out seven photos. He walked behind Damure setting the pictures down across the table one by one. He felt more like a school teacher handing out tests rather than pictures of the bloody remains of teenagers.

"What the fuck is this?" She asked flinching away from the pictures.

"Photographs, Ms. Damure. These are the photographs of the few who've died in the past week from splicing," Coming to stand on the side of the table, he looked down meaningfully at the pictures, drawing Damure's gaze back to them. She quickly lifted her head, staring at the opposite wall, her black, lipless mouth set in a tight line.

In the last four months he, himself, had gotten used to seeing bodies turning up like this. Blood seeping from every orifice, collecting in a pool beneath the body, waxy disfigured faces, a mixture of pain and horror, part human, part animal. All in the name of splicing. It had started out as a trendy fad amongst high school kids, cat's eyes, scales and horns, and had been harmless up until Vince Kursaw committed murder using his newly adapted claws to kill a school rival. After that, parents wanted their children back to normal, but a side effect of the splicing was increased aggression and suddenly there were more deaths on their hands as many fought back, refusing to be purely human. When the local governments couldn't handle the world and colony-wide scale challenge to control splicers, outlaw, and shut down all splicing the matter had been turned over to the Preventors.

"And what does that have to do with me?"

"Do you see it Ms. Damure?

"See what?"

"The mark on the side of their neck." He tapped his finger against the picture and watched her struggle, gulping down air before she forced her gaze down again. The mark was the very same that Ms. Damure had on the side of her neck. The injection site for the splicing recombinant, a livid red that stood out like a beacon against her white skin screaming infection.

"That doesn't mean anything," she said breathless.

Straightening his tie, Heero sat across from the woman, noting the wide green eyes made striking by the thick black lines surrounding her lids better than any mascara.

"Do you know how Splicing is done, Ms. Damure?"

"I know."

"Then you understand that your DNA must be broken down for the animal DNA to attach itself and create a new hybrid DNA strand."

"I know that, I was there."

"What you may not know Ms. Damure, is that the man who gave you your injection has given you and others a spoiled batch of recombinant. Your DNA begins to refuse the new DNA, breaking down. And as your DNA breaks down your body begins to break down."

"So what? Hm?" she replied trying to gain back some of her cockiness. "Are my arms gonna fall off?"

"No," he replied, watching her smile widen with relief, before continuing, "Your internal organs will shut down long before you lose any limbs."

"That's not true. You're just trying to scare me."

"Do you think I came here to scare you, when there are people out there who need my help. People I can save before there bodies begin to breakdown, before their organs shut down and they start to choke on their own blood. Trust me, Ms. Damure I have better things to do with my time then try and scare you." His voice was cold and unflinching as his dark blue glare bored into the leopard-woman.

"I-is that what happened to them?" she asked motioning towards the photos.

He nodded.

"Oh God! A-am I going to die?"

"Maybe," he shrugged as if her death meant nothing to him.

"Maybe? Maybe? What do you mean maybe? You can't just let me die! It's your job to help me! You have to do something! You have to help me. "

"You're an accessory to murder Ms. Damure, a criminal, I don't have to help you."

"But I didn't do anything!"

"You're refusing to give me information Ms. Damure. Right now your friends could be dying because you won't give me a name, a location. And if they die I'm putting their deaths on you."

"I don't know his name. He was just some old guy with glasses. A friend of mine said we could meet him at 44th street, in the back of the nail shop. He said it was safe, that the government just wanted to keep us from expressing ourselves. I didn't know anything about this."

"You're lying to me, Ms. Damure."

"I'm not! He told us to call him Dr. M, that we couldn't know his real name because you guys would come and shut him down. I didn't know that he was killing people! This shit...this shit is supposed to be harmless!" She was fairly screeching by the time she finished, her face a mottled red, chest heaving. "Please, please tell me you can fix this, please, I don't want to end up like them."

"Then tell me everything you know."

Looking at the pictures on the table below her, Heero watched whatever little fight Lanie Damure had left inside of her die with a sigh.

"Okay."