Work Text:
Premonition
Halloween 2018
By Vel
“So, how’s it looking?” Duo asked as he fiddled with knob on the radio in his jeep. The device crackled but the reply was unclear so he adjusted the dial a little and asked again.
“I don’t think it’s working to the Idea Labs expectations,” came the tinny reply and Duo frowned.
The W.I.E. labs had been working on this new navigation computer in collaboration with the Preventers for almost two years now. Thousands of man hours and millions of dollars had gone into it, if the test run failed again they may have to go back to the drawing board to figure out why it wasn’t working as they felt it should.
Duo tilted his head back and visually tracked the small plane as Wufei made another pass. The radio in the jeep crackled with interference for a few seconds before going quiet again.
“Okay Fei, bring her in.” He watched as the plane far in the distance smoothly turned and started back towards the Preventer testing facility landing strip.
Wufei flipped a switch and tapped a few buttons in the panel. There certainly was something wrong with the new computer. It was malfunctioning and the small screen kept flickering in and out, maybe wasn’t installed properly. Perhaps it was just simply not compatible with this particular plane.
Either way, a lot of people were going to be unhappy that another test run had failed.
The radio crackled and he sighed expecting Duo to start nagging him to bring the plane in. It was close to lunch and he knew Duo was hungry and they had skipped breakfast thanks to an early morning meeting with Une.
As he pressed the button to reply, a blinding light flashed through the cockpit and out of reflex he threw an arm across his face to protect his eyes from the burning light. He immediately could feel the loss of altitude and forced his stinging eyes to open so he could try and right the plane.
He couldn’t stop the freefall. He couldn’t eject. He was going to crash and nothing could stop it.
Seeing Wufei’s plane dropping like a stone, Duo slammed his foot on the gas. His jeep sped along the access road that ran parallel to the landing strip, the other agents not far behind him. He knew they weren’t going to make when he saw the plane reach the ground.
Then everything went white.
After the near constant crackling and squealing of the radio, it was the silence that Wufei noticed first.
The hatch was cracked so he was easily able to push it open. Just a few yards away he could see the maintenance truck and the jeep that the other agents who were monitoring his test run were using, but didn’t immediately see Duo or his jeep.
Groaning at the pain that the rather abrupt landing had done to his back, he pulled himself up and out, landing on the tarmac with a thud.
“Hey,” he called to the man standing beside the jeep. “Grab a fire extinguisher, this plane may catch fire.”
The man didn’t reply. He didn’t even move, apparently frozen in place.
Wufei was about to call out again when a sound broke the silence.
“Mother fucker,” Duo’s voice carried up from the drainage ditch to the side of the access road.
Sliding down the side through the weeds and cattails, Wufei rushed to his side and found him trapped in the jeep, bleeding from a large gash in his forehead.
“Hold still,” he called out when he saw Duo struggling against his jammed seatbelt. Wufei looked at the safety device closely and saw that buckle was too damaged to force open. “Give me your knife,” he requested and easily cut the nylon strapping after Duo complied.
“What the fuck happened?” Duo asked as the pressure eased and he was able to take an unrestricted breath.
“We both crashed,” he replied in a dry tone, as if Duo should know the obvious.
“If you crashed,” Duo asked softly, “why is your plane still in the sky?”
Fearing that his friend’s head injury was worse that it looked, he looked around for someone that could help them and froze as he too spotted his plane seemingly trapped in the sky and to his shock he could spot himself still seated in the cockpit.
His mouth dropped open to reply but the words caught in his throat as his eyes fell on something else.
Duo followed his line of sight and paled. Just off of the road, not even a car’s length down the side of the drainage ditch was his jeep, just as the down wash of Wufei’s plane had forced him off the road.
He was sitting in the driver’s seat, his hands clutching the wheel in an effort to keep control of the vehicle.
“Are we dead?” Wufei asked.
“I don’t know,” Duo replied. “I doubt it though, my head hurts too much.”
There was nothing graceful about the way Duo exited the jeep and it was only Wufei’s hand on his arm that kept him from falling on his face into the shallow water at the bottom on the ditch.
As they got back up to the road it was luminously clear that everyone and everything else around them as somehow frozen. The three agents that were monitoring the test stood as if in a photograph. Their bodies and expressions spoke of urgency, yet they were still as death.
“Okay, so we’re not dead and I don’t think I’m dreaming,” Duo said as he poked one of the men in the shoulder. “So what do we do?”
Running a hand over his hair, Wufei was quiet for a moment before getting an inspired look on his face.
He held up a finger, silently asking Duo to wait moment before he hurried back to his plane and fished out his phone. He had turned it off for the test and to his disappointment; it would not turn on again.
“What about the radio,” Duo called out.
“It wasn’t working before, I doubt crashing helped it any.”
“Maybe we should head back to the office then,” Duo suggested.
Wufei tossed his phone back into the plane and the pair started the trek back towards the compound of buildings that made up the testing facility. It took them nearly a half an hour to reach the gate and to their dismay, the guard posted there was as motionless as a statue.
“It’s like a ghost town,” Duo whispered as if speaking too loudly was inappropriate and Wufei nodded in agreement.
Where it had been a bright hot day with hundreds of people actively working, it was now hushed and eerily overcast, bathing the compound in dull shades of grey.
“Let’s go find Heero.”
They had to lean into the door to get it to open, for reasons unknown to them they couldn’t move anything easily. When they entered the building they came to the realization that there was no way they were going to get up to the temporary office they three had been sharing. The elevator wasn’t working and the fire doors at the stairwell were impossible to open.
“Shit,” Duo cursed. “What now?”
“We should go back to control,” Wufei replied. “They were recording everything there, something might be able to tell us what happened.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
It looked even darker out as they left the office building. It should not have been. They chose this day for the test specifically because the weather was supposed to be clear and sunny all day.
As they rounded the building Duo gasped then took off at a full run.
“Duo!” Wufei called out but the other man ignored him so he ran to catch up. When Duo stopped Wufei realized why he had looked so upset.
Heero stood unmoving in just beyond the cafeteria building. He held a Styrofoam cup in his right hand and a cell phone in his left. His face was downcast as his eyes read the small screen on the device.
“Baby?” Duo said softly. His hand trembled as if he wanted to touch his boyfriend but was afraid to do so. “Fei, what do we do?”
“We should continue to the control center. Something there has to help us figure out what is happening.”
Duo looked hesitant to leave but after an urgent tug on his arm, followed Wufei into the other building.
Fortunately the door to control was open enough that they were able to squeeze through. It was like everyone was posing for an action shot. It was clear they were in a panic before time stopped, freezing them all in place.
“Something definitely happened,” Duo stated as they began looking over the stats and readouts.
“That’s odd,” Wufei pointed out, “This timer is behind the one in the plane by seven seconds.”
“Was the clock was damaged when you crashed?”
“I don’t think so,” Wufei replied. “I saw the clock right before I went down. The timer was at exactly twenty point ten. This one is twenty point zero three.”
“What else do you remember before you went down?”
“Just a flash of light, it was bright enough to make my eyes burn. The next thing I knew I was on the ground.” He replied, and then asked, “What do you remember?”
“We could tell you were going down and tried to get to you as fast as we could. There was a wash of air from your plane that caused me to lose control for a moment, then you were there helping me out of the seatbelt.”
“This may sound crazy but I think that flash must have thrown us out of the current timeline somehow.”
Duo nodded at Wufei’s hypothesis as he examined the computers, and then turned to face his friend. “By three seconds,” he added as he tapped the clock. “We’re three seconds before everyone else.”
Wufei frowned, before crouching to read a screen lower to the floor. It was dark, the sun appearing to fade as their timeline continued to move. “I need some light here.”
Duo patted down his pockets and found a Zippo lighter. It belonged to a friend that was trying to quit smoking and had asked Duo to hang on to her lighter for her so she wouldn’t be as tempted.
He turned back to the computer after taking the lighter and looked at the device in confusion. There was a tiny red light shining on the console that he could have sworn was off just a moment ago. “I can’t explain how but somehow that flash in the plane caused me jump ahead and you were caught in the jump too,” Wufei reiterated while trying to look at the computer in the darkened corner. “Now we need to figure out how to fix it.”
Almost the instant he stopped speaking a movement from the other side of the room caught Duo’s attention.
“What the fuck is that?” he exclaimed and Wufei rose quickly, the light still aflame in his hand. The vaguely human shaped figure made a sound resembling a hiss and faded away as if it had never been there. “I…” Duo swallowed roughly. “I want to go back outside.”
Wufei agreed and soon they were walking back towards the building where Heero was.
“Fei!” he slapped his friend hard on h arm in his excitement. “He moved, I’m positive he moved.”
“Are you sure?”
“Both of his feet were fully on the ground before but look,” he knelt down, “his heel is up!” He stood back up and looked it his hands. “His phone hand is a little higher too.”
Wufei looked closely and he could tell that Heero’s phone was up as if he was raising to his ear. “You’re right, he isn’t frozen he’s just moving very slowly. That means that light on the computer did blink on too.”
“So how long until time catches up with us?”
“I haven’t a clue. It feels as if we have been going for at least an hour, but looking at Heero’s hand it couldn’t have been more than a second for him. It is does seem like it’s catching up with us, becoming resynchronized.”
“What about that ghost thing in the office?”
“It looked like it was afraid of fire,” Wufei replied. He pulled the lighter out only to find that it would no longer light. “I don’t understand, it worked perfectly well before.” He frowned as he continued. “The clock in the office is working so we should go back in, apparition or no.”
They decide to go up the alley way between the buildings, rather than walk the long way back around and as they did they passed a large white delivery truck sitting beside the cafeteria dock door. Wufei paused and looked back at the truck. Something about it bothered him but he just couldn’t put his finger on it.
“Fei wait, I have flares in my jeep. We could use then in case that ghost thing comes back.” Duo said suddenly. “How fast do you think we could get there and back?”
“We could probably get there fast enough for the trek to be worth it.”
Agreed they turn back to the crash site, reaching it again in what felt like about fifteen minutes for them.
“Fei look!” Wufei turned to look at where Duo was pointing and to his shock the plane up in the sky was significantly closer to the ground than it had been when they left before.
“Shit.”
“Yeah, the plane is closer to the ground and the jeep is farther down the side of the ditch than it was before.”
Wufei felt ill when he finally realized what it was that had been bothering him. “And that delivery truck is closer to Heero.”
Duo’s head shot up from where he had been digging the flares out of the storage locker in his jeep. “What?”
“When we passed the truck there was something about it that was bothering me but I didn’t realize what it was until just now. The truck is moving closer to Heero.”
Duo collapsed in the driver’s seat in the jeep. They needed to try to come up with a plan.
What they knew was that time catching up with them and they were standing still, not the world.
As they tried to come up with anything, Wufei went back to the plane to check his phone. Perhaps it was moving just as lowly as everything else around them.
“Duo, the plane's instruments are still frozen at twenty point ten, they haven’t moved.”
“If we can get back in sync with time before the crash, then maybe we can stop the truck before it hits Heero.” Duo suggested.
“We should head back, at the control center we can find out how many seconds there are left for us.”
Taking the flares they head back to the compound, rushing double time to get back as quickly as they are able.
They check on Heero to see how close the truck is now and to their shock it had moved significantly.
They were now absolutely certain that the truck was going to hit him before they were meant to crash out on that field. Heero’s hand had moved again the phone now almost to his ear. They both realized that the hand holding the phone was blocking his view of the truck. There is a very real chance that he never even saw it.
Duo threw his arms around Heero waist and with all his strength he tried to drag him back towards the building, but it was like he was on pulling the truck itself. Heero didn’t budge at all.
“Come on,” Wufei said with urgency. “The sooner we get back to the office, the better the chance we have to find a way to help him.”
Upon returning to the office they see everyone has moved just slightly and the clock is now at 8 seconds.
“I knew the clocks were still moving in here,” Wufei said and he rapidly began scanning the computers again. “By my calculation it will be about another hour and a half of our before we time syncs again.”
“But what will happen when we do?” Duo asked, but before Wufei could reply the ghostly person appeared again.
Duo immediately lit a flare and the ghost person backed away, throwing an arm across his face.
“Please,” it rasped, “put the fire out. Please.” It backed up to the wall, looking as if it were trying to flee.
“Explain yourself,” Wufei demanded taking the flare from Duo and swinging it at the being.
It bared its teeth."
“Wufei stop, you’re scaring it.” Duo said, putting himself between his friend and the ghost.
“I am what you are,” It said in a deep, masculine voice. “Trapped in this world between the present and the future, l am what you will be if you can’t return to the true timeline the instant it syncs with this one. You will forever remain in this time rift you made.”
“What happens when time catches up?”
“What happened to me will happen to you.” He rasped. “At that instant you have to be where you were when the rift was made. I didn’t get back in time but since there are two of you, I will be able to go back, this is my chance; l can’t miss this chance!”
Duo and Wufei shared a horrified look and began backing away from the specter.
“You want to take one of our places?”
“If you miss your chance to return even second behind the sync, time will pass you by and leave you here. I can go back, I can go back.”
Wufei threw the flare. “We will not be stuck in this limbo void forever,” he shouted as they skirted past the man and back outside.
They didn’t stop their mad dash until they made back to where Heero stood.
“What are we going to do?” Duo asked. “If we go back and wait for time to catch up that truck is going to hit him, there’s no doubt about that now.”
The cup now almost to his lips and at the speed the truck is going and how their time is progressing, it was painfully clear that Heero and the truck will absolutely meet before time catches up.
“Duo, go back to the jeep, I’ll stay here and find away to keep Heero alive.”
“Not a chance in hell, Fei. You’re coming back to the crash site too.”
“Duo, one of us has to make it back.”
“All or nothing Fei.”
Knowing his stubborn friend wasn’t going to back down he conceded. “Very well. Perhaps we can find something to block the wheels.” He said as he walked over to examine the truck.
“We can’t move anything though,” Duo reminded him.
“But we can move things at the crash site,” Wufei replied quickly. “If we hurry we may be able to get there and back again before the sync.”
“I have blocks in the jeep,” he announced excitedly, and without another word the pair bolted back towards the crash site.
As they sprinted down the access road Duo didn’t see the small branch, normally it would not be an issue but in a world where things were nearly immovable it was like tripping over a brick wall and he went down with a painful thud.
“Fuck,” his hands instantly went to his ankle and he knew from the swelling that it was seriously injured.
“We’re almost there,” Wufei reminded him as he helped him to his feet. “You can wait there and I’ll take the blocks back.”
“No way,” he tried to interrupt but Wufei countered quickly. “There’s no way you’ll be able to make it all the way there and back on that ankle, and I can’t carry you. Trust me; I’ll get there in time.”
Duo growled loudly through gritted teeth but nodded anyway and allowed his friend to help him back into the jeep. As Wufei moved to the back to grab the blocks the ghostly man reappeared and started towards the downed plane.
“Fei!” Duo shouted and the other man grabbed another flare. He lit it as he ran towards the plane swiping it back and forth to chase him away.
He disappeared from view again.
To ensure the being didn’t take his place, Wufei leaned over the side of the plane and carefully wedged the flare between the seat and the back.
“I’ll be back.” He called then grabbed the blocks, and then as quickly as he could he ran on tired legs back to the base.
Though he could barely breathe now, it only took a moment to wedge the blocks in front of the trucks wheels, then gave them each a kick to make sure they wouldn’t move.
“If I don’t make it back,” he panted breathlessly, “take care of him.” He spared a second to pat Heero’s shoulder then started back to the crash site.
As he approached the plane he could see the specter lurking there to stop him but he was slow and Wufei was easily able to get around him. As he got to the plane he pulled out the nearly spent flare and threw it towards where he last seen the ghost, then he hopped into the plane.
Duo flashed him a peace sign, just as he reached up to close the hatch. As it locked shut there was a deafening roar and everything shuddered, a blinding flash of light washed over them and everything went white.
Wufei staggered from the plane reeling from the impact, the smoke wafting up from the seams making his eyes water.
“Are you injured?” A voice concerned called and he turned to see one of the agents that had been monitoring the test run running towards him with a fire extinguisher. One of the other men was hurrying down the side on the drainage ditch. He turned to see why and saw Duo in his jeep at the bottom.
“I’m fine,” he replied. “See to the plane.”
The man seemed confused but did as instructed as Wufei slid down to help Duo who was obviously bleeding from a wound somewhere on his face.
“Are you okay?” they both asked in unison and Duo grinned.
“I think I’m okay,” he said. “But the belt is stuck.”
“Give me your knife,” Wufei instructed and Duo complied.
“Maybe he should stay put,” the other agent suggested, “At least until the medics get here.”
Duo turned to his friend, “Fei, get me out of here. I really need to see Heero.”
For some reason Wufei also felt this urgent need to see his friend and without a word helped Duo from the jeep and back up to the road.
“Hey!” The man who had the fire extinguisher shouted as they climbed into his jeep and gunned it.
The guard barely had the gate open as they screamed through.
“Go left!” Duo shouted, and even though the office they shared was to the right Wufei went where Duo instructed. Almost immediately they spotted Heero standing on a walkway talking to a deliveryman that looked very upset.
Duo leapt out of the jeep and pulled Heero into a fierce hug that was returned with equal force. He offered a hand to his friend and clasped it firmly Wufei accepted.
“Une said you were going to crash,” Heero said to Wufei over Duo’s shoulder.
“I did.”
“We did,” Duo added with a soft chuckle. “The wash from the plane forced me off the road, but we’re both fine.” He felt Heero relax in his arms.
A squeaking sound drew their attention and Heero realized he still had Une on the line. He put the phone to his ear and listened for a moment before disconnecting the call.
“Une wants both of you to go to the infirmary then we can go home. The reports can wait until tomorrow.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Duo said, then shook his head the feeling of Déjà vu inexplicably strong.
As they sat alone in the exam room Wufei turned to his friend, “Why did you need to get back here so fast?”
“I don’t know,” He replied, then countered. “Why did you drive us back here so fast?”
“I don’t know either, just a premonition I guess.”
“Yeah,” Duo agreed.
Owari.