Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Nothing is cooler than a big, red rocket.

Nothing.

Well, not anything man-made, anyway. Life on Earth was breathtaking; the fact that there was life on Europa, and that he and Gordon got to see it was off-the-scale awesome; and as for the mind-boggling beauty of the cosmos? Alan had no words for that: describing it was John’s job…but in terms of inventions? Thunderbird Three was top of the list, no questions.

This was coming a close second, though – because Brains had built a time machine.

An actual time machine!

And yeah, yeah, he’d listened to the engineer’s protestations, and John’s explanations that it wasn’t - well, half-listened anyway: it was kind of hard to focus when your brain was busy whirling through all the possibilities - but it was a machine that could move a person through space and/or time, so…as Grandma says, ‘If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…’

Okay, so the aesthetics, his artist brother might say, were a bit crap (actually, no: Virgil wouldn’t go with ‘crap’; but he’d definitely use ‘aesthetics’): decidedly…lacking. To say the least. It wasn’t exactly a Police Box or a DeLorean; in fact it looked quite a lot like the vintage washing machines that Grandma kept out at Gran Roca – the ones that only still worked because, as well as the artistic talent, Virgil also had some serious fix-it skills and enough patience for a whole stained-glass window full of saints. Face it: he had to have with Gordon for a little brother. Alan himself was no trouble whatsoever, of course - not a single one of Scott’s grey hairs was down to him. Maybe.

John, on the other hand, was probably about to make them all drop out.

Alan’s eyes fixed unblinking on the holo-screen at the top of the not-a-time-machine. He’d managed to elbow his way past taller brothers to get a better look at the image of John; to watch for the instant the astronaut was going to vanish, because he was secretly hoping for the wormhole to be visible…and if it was, he wanted to see it, not get some rubbishy semi-view, partially eclipsed by Virgil’s ear or Scott’s shoulder…or Gordon’s stupid hair, as always seemed to happen. The bonus of that was he also got a really good view of the data screens scrolling through the redhead’s genetic data - ATCCCTGTGAGACTAGAT…it was a bit hypnotic – and the search coding. It meant he had a front-row spot for the moment when the climactic message appeared: ‘ACQUISITION COMPLETE’; and for the half-thwarted-half-confused look on John’s face when he had, in fact, gone precisely nowhere. Alright – so if you were being mega-pedantic (which John often was) he had travelled in both time and space, but only in the same way as the rest of them in the last few seconds.

Finally allowing himself to blink, Alan hadn’t realised how sore his eyes had gotten being stretched like that, and he took a few moments to process his own disappointment. In the hour-or-so since Brains had called them all down to the lab and introduced the idea; through the explanations; and all the while the others had been cross-examining the two inventors, Alan had been allowing himself to daydream about all the cool places and times he could go. All the people he could meet and things he could see - not just on a global, historical scale; but the stories his brothers told…so often they started with ‘You won’t remember this, Allie, but…’ Maybe he could send himself to some of those times and see them for real – see what they found so funny or understand their pain a little better.

Maybe he could catch Dad before he disappeared…or get to see Mom.

All those chances were washed away in the time it had taken for the excited spark to be extinguished behind Brains’ glasses; and Alan tuned out the discussion going on around him in favour of marshalling his emotions back to where he felt a near-adult’s should be, rather than the toddler’s pout he felt scrunching his face. As such, he missed whatever it was Kayo said that caused silence to fall like a cartoon anvil, and only Scott’s strangled ‘What?!’ brought him back to the immediate situation.

“I said ‘Then who is that?’”

His stare followed her point – everyone’s did – to the Gordon-christened ‘drop zone’ where they had anticipated John’s arrival; and…oh.

Oh.

Because although it had failed to collect his brother from Five and deliver him down to them, it had most certainly picked someone up from somewhere…there was no other way the dude lying eerily still on the padded mat could have gotten where he was. And he was hurt. Badly. It was obvious even from the other side of the cavernous room; and it must have been the first thing Virgil clocked about the interloper, because his morph from curious engineer to Rescue Medic was seamless and instantaneous.

“Gordon, I need…”

“On it!”

Abruptly everyone was running.

Wingman telepathy sent Gordon in the direction of the always-at-hand med kit Brains had been press-ganged into keeping in his domain. As Virgil sprinted across the rock floor, Scott and Kayo were so hot on his heels that Alan wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d caught fire. MAX might need that extinguisher after all. Brains had…actually, he had no idea where the genius had gone; but a distressed bleep drew his attention to the little robot trundling through the door into the smaller workshop, so presumably that’s where his master had retreated to. All of which left Alan alone, rooted to the spot beside the guilty machine.

“Alan?” John’s turquoise eyes always looked bluer – more like Scott’s - with the tinge of a hologram; and they were staring from the display at the one brother still in range.

“Yeah?”

“What’s going on?”

Crud: of course, he couldn’t see it, could he. “We’ve got a…visitor.”

“Visitor?”

“Yeah…uh…some random guy’s just…appeared where you were supposed to be.” Excellent use of scientific terminology there, Al!

The astronaut’s red head nodded slowly, mental cogs whirring. “That’s…interesting. I need to…”

It was strange seeing Kayo both in the lab with him, and suddenly appear from his brother’s wrist comm on the projection. Weirder still hearing her voice in stereo.

“John?”

Glancing over at their sister, Alan noted John’s tiny hologram hovering over her comm, too; though she was too far away to hear him doubled-up.

“Kayo. What’s the Situation?” There was always a capital ‘S’ when John said it.

“Security breach: we have a potential intruder. I’m initiating Lockdown Protocol Beta: you and EOS need to get down here stat. I’ll update you once you’re in the lift.”

Holo-John was on his feet in a heartbeat. “F.A.B.”

He and Kayo disappeared from each other’s wrists; but Alan could still see them both. “Protocol Beta?”

John’s attention had been on something just out of view on the projection, his blued eyes came back to the teenager. “It means that Kayo’s concerned the intruder may be a decoy for an attack elsewhere. She wants us all in the same place.”

“So that they can’t ‘divide and conquer’?”

“Got it in one, kiddo. So EOS…” he brandished the AI’s sleek portable drive and clipped it to his baldric, “…and I are heading down. We’ll see you in seventeen.”

“F.A.B.”

John vanished from view, no doubt headed for the elevator; and Alan knew the disquiet in his own belly wouldn’t settle until the capsule docked safely. In the meantime, Gordon had made it over to where their other siblings were gathered around the possible decoy; and he scuttled to cautiously join them. Better to stay close under the circumstances. As he got nearer, Alan could see the man more clearly…and he certainly didn’t appear to be much of a threat. He was young – maybe Gordon’s age – and looked like he’d probably been fit and healthy before…whatever caused the mess he was in. His hair – blonder even than Alan’s own – was sticky with red from a sizable scalp wound that Scott was already trying to staunch; and his face, lax from his unconscious state, was livid pink and mottled from burns. Fairly minor, but there all the same; the scorch and sear marks as well as rips all over his once-white…was that a flight suit?...backed that up. Had all those injuries been caused by the wormhole?

There was something oddly familiar about the complete stranger that tickled under Alan’s skin; and he edged closer to the reassurance of Gordon. Kayo was on comms to Grandma: the matriarch currently off-island visiting Lady P for a well-earned pamper. Virgil was in full swing with the medscanner, and he didn’t look a happy bunny.

“Damnit!” The ‘no swearing in front of Alan’ rule had clearly gone out of the proverbial window. “What the hell happened to this guy?”

Scott fidgeted. He wasn’t good with unknown quantities. “What have you got, V?”

“Aside from the obvious?”

Which, to Alan’s eyes, was already quite a list. Although Virgil was the most natural medic among them, and they tended to defer to him – his temperament the best suited to it – they’d all had the same paramedic-level training, and had to maintain it with regular refreshers at Scott’s insistence. Alan did his best to assess without getting under his middle brother’s feet; and it wasn’t a pretty picture. In addition to the head wound and facial burns he’d already spotted, their ‘guest’ had more severe blistering to his hands – particularly the palms and insides of the fingers, like he’d held them up to shield himself from…an explosion, maybe? He still lay crumpled over on his right side, exactly as he’d materialised – Virgil reluctant to move him before the scanner had fed back for fear of exacerbating anything internal – and even in that odd position it was painfully obvious that his left arm and leg were not at the angles they should have been. The arm especially looked to be both fractured and dislocated: not pleasant. Looking more closely, and listening too, as Grandma had taught him; Alan could see and hear that the man’s breathing wasn’t right.

If he was the vanguard for any kind of attack, they really didn’t have much to fear from him; and if he was some sort of decoy, whoever sent him would have to be twisted to have done that to him first. It just didn’t add up.

“Virgil?” Scott was getting antsier by the second, their brother’s silence clearly putting him on edge. “Thunderbird Two, report!”

“Keep your hair on, Scott – this thing needs an upgrade: it’s a lot slower than the ones in Two’s kit or the infirmary!”

Finally, as if on cue, the reluctant scanner bleeped its completion. Virgil’s expression went from ‘unhappy’ to ‘alarmed’.

“Shit!” The big medic almost shoved the offending gadget aside. “Gordon? I need that stretcher now, please!”

“Virg?” Scott shuffled over to make room, motioning Kayo to do the same, though she was already moving. “What have you got?”

“Internal bleeding: nasty haemothorax to be precise. Left lung’s becoming compromised already.”

With the ease born of several years working closely with his medic brother, Gordon manoeuvred the hover stretcher into place behind their intruder-turned-patient, and dropped down beside Virgil to help with the manipulation. Standing closer to the kit than the others, Alan stepped up and grabbed the oxygen mask with its portable mini-supply. He handed it over just as Virgil turned to him, mouth open for the request, and got a quick, tight nod in response.

“Thanks, Allie.” Virgil flicked the nozzle, and the minute hiss of O2 delivery kicked in as he fitted the mask. “Gordon – you ready to move the patient?”

“When you are, boss.”

“Scott? Might need your help too.”

“F.A.B. On standby.”

Alan backed off again. A small part of him felt slightly aggrieved that he hadn’t been asked to assist; but he knew he wasn’t yet as strong as his taller, more muscular brothers. Under Virgil’s instruction they moved their John Doe onto the stretcher with due regard for his injuries, Scott shifting to help when requested. Their attention was fully taken up with the task, and Kayo’s with what looked like a scan of the island’s security systems on her comm…so it was Alan that spotted the anomaly as the patient was rolled, revealing the left breast of his suit. ‘John Doe’ suddenly became more apt – at least the ‘John’ part: one of the badges his slump had been hiding had the name embroidered on it. Odd enough in itself, as it was rare these days; but the other two he wore above it were…more worrying.

He let his brothers concentrate until Virgil was satisfied. “Um, guys? Kayo?”

One look at their sister told him that she’d spotted it, her green eyes flying wide in concern. Kayo never missed anything: it was what made her so brilliant at her job. He’d always planned to get her to teach him Malay; but he had a feeling the words she used right in that moment wouldn’t be on the syllabus.

“What?” Virgil’s eyes ran frantically over his patient, checking for medical need, assuming that to be the cause of his siblings’ reaction. Scott and Gordon saw the offending items in the same second, though their cussing was very definitely in English…with a military flourish.

“His badges, V.” Scott gestured at them. “What the fu…fudge?”

Alan’s presence must have belatedly registered…just like the realisation that this stranger’s uniform (because that’s what it must have been) was emblazoned with an odd approximation of their Dad-era logo above the legend ‘INTERNATIONAL RESCUE’.

“He’s not an intruder.” If there had been paint on the rock walls, Kayo’s glare would have peeled it off. “He’s a bloody imposter!”

Virgil’s dark eyes scrunched shut for just a second as he recovered his composure. “Well, we need to get him to the infirmary sharpish; or who he is might become who he was rather quickly.”

“No.” Kayo took a protective step forward. “Not until John gets here: we’re not splitting up.”

“I’m not sure we have a choice, Kay – this is a rescue now.” Scott was on his feet in one smooth movement, every inch of his six-foot-three the Commander. “Virgil’s right – whoever he really is, we can’t take chances with this guy’s life: he needs immediate treatment, and we haven’t got the equipment down here. Virgil, Alan and I will take him up to the infirmary…”

“Nope. He’s a security risk: I’m not letting him out of my sight…and I’d feel happier if you’d cuff him to the stretcher.”

“Fine. You come with me and Virg, then; Alan can stay with Gordon to wait for John.” He turned to the youngest two for their ‘F.A.B.s’, before giving his attention back to her. “But there’s no need to restrain him: he’s in no condition to pose a threat, and it might compromise his care.”

Not pleased, she nevertheless relented and nodded her assent. Virgil wasted no further time, raising the stretcher and instructing Scott to take the foot end for manoeuvring; and within less than a minute, Alan was alone with his immediate brother in the echoing lab. Gordon slung an armful of encouragement over his shoulder; and he gratefully accepted it. He felt safe with his brother’s WASP training, though he’d be happier once they were all together.

"I dunno about you, Al; but this was not where I saw today going!"

“Do you think he’s going to be okay?”

“The imposter guy?” The aquanaut’s usual swagger was gone. “I really don’t know: he’s pretty bashed about, and Virg looked more worried than I’ve seen him over a stranger for a long time.”

“I guess a haemothorax is never good news.”

“Damn straight. Been there, done that, got the hole in my T-shirt. Uniform. Whatever.” Gordon shuddered at the memory. “And mine wasn’t as severe as his…still hurt like a bastard, though. Zero out of ten: would not recommend.”

“I’ll bear that in mind when planning my next injury.” Without him realising it, they’d been wandering back towards the time machine. “Do you think we should call John? Let him know what’s going on?”

“Good plan, Sprout. D’you want to do the honours?”

On a normal rescue, their space brother would be several steps ahead, plugged into every camera and system; but cocooned in the elevator with Five locked down he was more limited…and EOS was deprived of her habitual free run, trapped in her portable drive until it was deemed safe to give her the run of the island’s network…if Scott allowed it. Neither of them coped well with being out of the loop.

Alan tapped his watch; and the image of their skinny astronaut reclining in the elevator’s seat sprang out. “Hi John, how’s it going?”

“Hey Alan, Gordon. We’re about nine minutes out: I had to slow things down a little.” He didn’t look well.

“Rough ride, Johnny?” Gordon had spotted it, too.

“Yes – re-entry’s not fun when you haven’t had the chance to prep properly.” Even with the blue holo-tinge, he appeared a tad green; and the lack of a chastisement over the nickname spoke volumes.

“You look like you’re going to blow chunks.”

John screwed his eyes shut, breathing hard through flared nostrils. “Thanks for pointing that out, Fish Face. Can we please change the subject?”

“Uh, yeah, sorry.” Alan nudged his blond brother to dislodge the taunt he could see brewing behind amber eyes. Now was not the time to ignite a feud. “Did Kayo get back to you?”

“No. I’m assuming that no news is good news?”

“Not exactly.” Gordon grimaced. “She’s not a happy camper. That ‘visitor’ we mentioned? He’s wearing an interesting attempt at an IR uniform – badges and all.”

Alan nodded his affirmation. “One of which says ‘John’.”

His eyes remained shut; but their brother’s ginger brows gathered in thought. “What has he said?”

“That’s just it: nothing.” Gordon grabbed Alan's wrist, pulling the watch with its mini-John closer. “He’s been unconscious the whole time. He’s real beat up: fractures and dislocations, burns, internal bleeding: practically got ‘house’ on the Injury Bingo card. It almost looks like he’s been blown up.”

“That’s not good.” John’s features took on the slightly far-away expression that they knew meant he was listening to EOS in his earpiece, though they couldn’t hear her. He confirmed it with a nod at seemingly nothing. “Alan?”

“Uh-huh?”

“Did you get a good look at this ‘uniform’? Would you say it was space-rated?”

He felt Gordon’s curious eyes boring into the side of his head, even if John’s were clamped closed again. “I…” Was it? There’d been so much going on, but… “I doubt it would be up to EVA standards; but yeah, from what I could see it looked pretty robust and flexible. Not as versatile as ours; but would be fine for inside a ship or station.”

Their reward for that nugget was a fair amount of cursing in a diverse spectrum of languages as John rubbed at his (no-doubt aching) forehead. “Okay…are you guys with the others?”

“Nope. We’re still down in the lab waiting for you. Scooter’s orders.”

“Can you do me a favour?” Dark circles were blooming under John’s eyes as he finally opened them. He was clearly having a bad descent. “Call Scott, ask him to get Virgil to do a DNA swab when he gets a chance, please? I know it won’t be top priority if the guy’s in bad shape; but…I think we need to, especially if he’s unconscious.”

Alan felt his own brows crease at that. Standing next to the machine that had caused all the trouble, there was only one reason he could see for his brother’s request. “You’re going to send him back to wherever? In his condition?”

“No. No, of course not: that would be against…” The projection juddered slightly, and Alan winced at what that probably meant for the redhead before John continued. “Eurgh, ow! Against our principles…I just need to…test a theory.”

Gordon was lost. “Theory? Johnny-boy, this isn’t exactly the time for…”

“I think he’s me.”

The cosmos had evidently decided that one stunned silence today simply wasn’t enough, and another was required. Unusually for Gordon, it was Alan that recovered the power of speech first.

“Come again?”

“I think…” John scrunched his eyes harder this time, and groaned slightly. “Sorry – bad wave. You know how Brains and I programmed the machine to be able to detect…how was it Virgil put it? ‘…the John that’s in the most trouble’ through time and space? Well…I think we may have inadvertently included other dimensions in that.”

It took a moment to process that bombshell. Growing up a Tracy brought privilege: not just in the vast amounts of money crammed into their bank accounts and businesses; but in the huge wealth of opportunities and experiences that came first- and second-hand from living in a household bursting with brains and talent. Nature and nurture combined to hand down Grandpa’s problem-solving; Grandma’s and Mom’s fierce intellects and determination; Dad’s lateral thinking and whatever traits Mom’s parents had added to the mix, though they never knew them. All of that was before including his four brothers and their adoptive sister – each way beyond outstanding in their fields – and the brilliant close friends that may as well have been family. The experiences Alan had had in his not-quite-seventeen years far exceeded those most people could hope to have in several lifetimes, even before he became a ‘Thunderbird’. This, though? This was quite frankly off the scale. Creatures from another world were one thing; but…

“He’s the you from another universe?"

“I think so. Yes.”

Cool! Also, what the heck?

“You are shitting me, Space Case.”

“Gordon,” John’s words were coming between harsh breaths as he battled the escalating nausea, knuckles bone-white where they clung to the seat, “when have…I ever…‘shit’ you like this?”

He was right, even the redhead’s often-bizarre sense of humour didn’t warp that badly.

“Bloody Nora, Johnny,” Parker’s influence on the aquanaut wasn’t always the most positive, “one of you’s bad enough – I don’t think we can cope with two!”

“Glad that’s…your…take-home message…from all…this.” If it were possible, John’s skin tone had shifted a few more shades towards matching Two’s paint job. Or maybe it was more grey – it was hard to tell with the holo-tint. “I think I nee…need to sign…off. See…you…in about six.”

As the image vanished from his watch, Alan grabbed Gordon’s arm. “C’mon – we need to get down to the hangar.” He managed two steps before Gordon’s inertia brought him up short. “Come ooooon!”

“Gimme a second.” The aquanaut was peering at the machine again. “Ah, got it!” His finger reached for a small but strategically-placed switch beside one of the info screens.

“I really don’t think you should touch that, Gordy.” He tried to grab the curious hand away from the switch’s siren call, but Gordon’s swimmer’s arms were stronger.

“It’ll be the power switch, Al: we need to get this thing turned off before it starts sucking in random Space Nerds from here, there and everywhere!”

“Shouldn’t we check before we…”

Click.

Too late: Gordon’s impetuous finger had done its work; but instead of powering down as he’d expected, the screens flared back into life. Alan stared unashamedly open-mouthed as those hypnotic bases scrolled across the left one, while the right briefly flashed a message before code pushed it off the top of the readout.

“Gords?”

The Squid was gawping just as hard – amber eyes almost on crab-esque stalks. He didn’t reply anything comprehensible, just a vague, nervous “Yuh?”

“What did it mean by ‘Polarity reverse successful’?”

…And that was when it got worse: the scrolling stopped, just as it had when the random guy had appeared; but this time the message pinged up ‘DISPATCH COMPLETE’.

Oh. Again. It felt like a day for a lot of ‘oh’.

“Dis.” His littlest big brother turned to him, pale as ice beneath his tan. “Patch? Complete?”

“Gordy!” How come he sounded like a five-year-old all of a sudden? “I think you sent him back!”

“No.” The aquanaut backed away, his ‘Think! Think!’ face firmly in place. Most people would call it panic; but most people weren’t International Rescuers. “That can’t have happened. Virgil will kill me! You heard what he said: the dude might die if we’ve sent him back to some kind of danger zone, or weirdos that beat him up.”

“We?” That was definitely squeaky. “You’re the one who flicked the stupid switch!”

“Not helpful, Allie…really not!” It took a moment for the rescue instincts to kick in before Gordon’s wrist comm was forcefully jabbed into life. “Kayo?”

Their sister’s determined face projected out, accompanied by medical background sounds. “Gordon. Has John docked?”

“Not yet…I was just…checking on our visitor. How’s he doing?” His voice was impressively level for how close he was to browning his shorts.

“Not amazingly – Virgil’s just on comms to Grandma discussing a thoracostomy. That’s a chest drain, right?”

“Yeah, it is. That’s not great.”

“Nope.”

“But you’ve got eyes on him?”

“I have.” Elegant, terrifying, dark brows gathered as her eyes narrowed in mistrust. “Why do I smell something even fishier than usual, Squid?”

“You don’t – just being a decent human being and checking on the welfare of our guest.”

“Hmm...”

Alan stuffed his face close enough to his brother’s that she’d see him, too. Distraction was needed before she rumbled them: no harm had been done if Other Universe John was still there. “We spoke to John. He wants Virgil to get a DNA swab, please?”

If it were possible, she looked even more suspicious. “Why?”

“You’ll have to ask John.” A lot of the tension had gone out of the shoulder Gordon had pushed against Alan’s to keep them both in shot. “We don’t speak enough Nerd to explain.”

“Yeah, he said he’s – and I quote…”

Kayo’s frown deepened. “Fair warning: if you do those air quote things, I’ll come down there and snap your fingers off.”

He knew better than to assume she was joking. “‘…got a theory’.”

More off-syllabus Malay. “John and his smart-arse theories.” Her bright, sharp eyes flicked to something across the room as some sort of medical alarm wailed its distress. “Right, fine. When he’s done stuffing tubes into the chap, I’ll get Virgil to swab him. Once Mr Jellylegs has landed, see if you can manhandle up here without any injuries or mishaps: Da Vinci and Flyboy are already busy enough, and I’m not in the mood for kissing ouchies better.”

“Can do, Sis.”

“Don’t…”

Gordon cut the call, but finished the well-worn complaint for her: “’…call me ‘Sis’.”

She was no keener on that than John was on ‘Johnny’, and just as much fun to wind up. Even so, Alan couldn’t help thinking the Squid was putting his life – or at least certain anatomical appendages – on the line taunting her in that mood. Oh yeah, and then hanging up on her. Someone was in for a few bruises next sparring session.

The aquanaut didn’t look as worried as Alan thought he should be about that. “So…he’s still there: means that ‘dispatch’ thing didn’t work. We’re in the clear.”

“We should go meet John.”

In answer, Gordon took off running, leaving Alan to catch up. With the extra…excitement, time had scurried away from them somewhat, and the elevator would be docking any minute. They needed to be there when it did: after such a stressful descent, John would likely need help walking in a straight line; and whatever Kayo threatened, if it had messed with his blood pressure again, he might well be needing the infirmary. Last time he’d had a dodgy re-entry, his nosebleed had been spectacular enough to make Virgil queasy – and that took some doing.

Gordon’s legs might still be that tiny bit longer, but he was built more for the water. Alan was skinnier and fast: he caught his fish brother long before they skidded into the hangar, and had outstripped him by the time they’d crossed it to Five’s elevator dock. The capsule and its occupants were still absent, so they’d made good time; but almost not good enough, as the access hatch began sliding back the moment Gordon barrelled into him.

“Hey!”

Staring up, the first glimpses of the elevator were just glints and flashes as the metal caught the tropical sun, now lowering much more slowly as it braked smoothly.

“There’s one thing I don’t get, Gords.”

“Just one?”

His elbow found the Squid’s ribs with the ease of much practise. “You’re good with Biology and…stuff.”

“Mostly marine; but, yes.”

Alan and the eldest three might be more into the physics and engineering side of science; but it was Gordon that had all the high-level qualifications when it came to the natural world.

“How can that other guy be genetically identical to our John? He doesn’t look much like him.”

“Oh, I think he does: similar shaped face, ears and mouth, pasty colouring, no chin dimple.” a chlorine-scented finger poked Alan’s small cleft, and was irritably batted away, “The differences are probably just down to epigenetics – I mean, if he’s from a whole other universe, then that’s a humungous stack of different possibilities for the naughty histones to have their wicked way with his DNA.”

Good. He’d followed that okay, so his studies weren’t in vain. However… “He’s not even ginger!”

Gordon’s snort echoed off the rock as the descending capsule began to block out some of the light flooding in, casting a widening shadow beneath their feet. “Never heard of peroxide? I’ll bet he dyes it: let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to be blond? We have way more fun!”

He couldn’t help but snigger at that: they certainly did…although that was probably due more to birth order than melanin: Grandma cut them just the teensiest bit more slack than she did their older brothers.

The gentle whoosh of displaced air reminded them to step back a little as the elevator completed its final few feet of drop, locking smoothly into the clamps with a soft clunk. They moved around to the door and waited for it to open…and waited.

After a concerningly long time of nothing happening, Gordon grunted. “Damnit. He must’ve blacked out again.”

Alan tried his watch. “EOS?” Nothing.

“She’s detached in there: she can’t hear you.”

Ah, yes, of course. He could have face-palmed. Gordon moved to uncover the external release and pressed his hand to the recognition pad.

“We’ll just have to rescue Johnny all by ourselves.”

The final wisps of pressure equalisation hissed softly as the door slid open; and the two youngest Tracys stepped in…Alan slamming straight into Gordon’s back as the aquanaut stopped dead in front of him.

“Gords! What…?” In the confines of the doorway, he managed to scoot around his brother just enough to register the problem. The very, very big problem.

“Oh crap!”

“Yeah, you can say that again.” Faux-leather bracelets danced as the aquanaut scratched the back of his head. “So, I guess the machine decided our visitor is no longer the John in the most trouble.”

Chapter Text

“EOS?” John pushed himself up past the dizziness and onto his elbows. “Where the hell are we?”

“Analysing the temperature readings from the exterior of your suit, and taking major religious and cultural references literally, John; I would say that Hell is indeed a possibility.”

Despite whatever-the-heck was going on, he had to smile at that. In the first second or so after hitting the floor, he’d been sure that the elevator’s increasingly violent juddering had somehow shaken him off the seat, despite the harness. That had never happened before, but as Grandpa had been fond of saying, ‘There’s a first time for everything’; and hurtling down through the atmosphere in what was essentially a giant metal conker, it was hardly beyond the realms of possibility that something had knocked into them.

By second number three, however, he was reassessing his initial conclusions. The air around him hung fuzzy with smoke of some description, grey and heavy with the heat, and he was glad – not for the first time – that Rapid Descent Protocol meant wearing his helmet. Despite the dimmed lighting it was still perfectly possible to tell that the space was far too big to be the elevator; nor did his ‘Flying Can’ have multiple eardrum-shredding alarms clashing and shrieking against each other. At least where they were was steady, though, and he no longer felt as though his organs were trying to vibrate out through his skin. That had been a spectacularly rough drop.

Rough enough that the machine would have sent him somewhere else, though?

More to the immediate point, as he’d asked EOS: where?

John permitted himself a brief moment to flop back and let his helmeted head bang against the metal behind it, because he already knew the answer to that. Just as - with precisely one DNA profile loaded into the database – he was certain who the island’s visitor was; he could take a fairly accurate guess where he’d ended up. Only two locations would be in the computer: the island, and by extension, the point that the probable-other-John had been rescued from…and he had a front-row seat to why the thing homed in on the incident energy. From his spot on the floor, half crammed up against a wall, John’s hazy view was down a bizarre hexagonal tunnel and into bedlam, where several orange glowing patches seemed to be the source of the billowing smoke. Fires. Ones he’d have to do something about before he could even think about removing his helmet…before they could do more damage to what was clearly an already compromised station. Evidence and logic dictated that this was…

“Thunderbird Five.” He swore under his breath, while he still had it. “Damnit, we’re on Thunderbird Five.”

“If we’re home, could you please plug me in, and I can deal with the temperature anomaly before…”

“No, sorry EOS: not our Five. It’s…”

“The other one?” He couldn’t quite place the inflection in her words. He missed having her coloured ring of lights to clue him. “The machine has swapped us over?”

“It would appear so.” Today just keeps getting better. “At some point we need to figure out how and why; but first I should probably look at putting out at least some of the fires.”

She was silent for a second – the one it took him to remember that she couldn’t see what was going on around them.

“Some of the fires?”

“Yeah, sorry, EOS. I think we might be up to our necks in it this time.”

It was a measure of her concern that she made no smart-aleck remark about not actually having a neck. They were potentially in some deep doo-doo. Space travel 101: fires are very bad news. Not only are there no handy emergency exits to crash out through into the safe, fresh air; but they can burn up your rather finite oxygen supply pretty damn quickly. Add into the unpleasant mix the physical damage to your systems and limited resources; the toxic effects of the smoke; and the sheer havoc all that particulate matter can wreak…and all that’s the better case scenario. If sparks get into the fuel or O2 reserves, you’re toast. Extra crispy.

Yep. Not good.

“I need to budge.” He wasn’t sure whether he said it to himself or EOS; but either way it meant getting up off his backside, and therefore another fun battle with gravity. The nausea had already begun to abate, but John knew from bitter experience that his legs would be jello for a good while. He scooted back a foot or so to use the wall and a handy protruding strut to brace against, internally thanking Brains for the superb grip of his gloves and boots, trusting in the design to give him the traction he needed not to end up straight back on his butt. Only once he was (relatively) firmly on his feet did the dark, sticky substance on his left glove register. Bringing his hand up closer to his helmet to investigate, John rubbed the stuff between his thumb and fingertips. The colour and consistency were unmistakeable: blood.  

Oh crap.

“EOS?” There was no tremor to his voice – absolutely not. “Are there any breaches to my suit?”

“No.”

Good. That was good if he needed to rely on its integrity. “Okay – any changes in my biometrics?”

“A marginal fluctuation in BP a few moments ago; but otherwise, all are within normal parameters for a mildly stressful situation.”

“Okay, that’s…that’s fine. I just stood up, so that would account for the blip.”

“John?” She sounded…was that worried? “Are you injured in some way?”

A cursory glance around revealed that there were smears on both the strut at roughly head-height, and then a cheerful trail down the wall, culminating in a small puddle on the floor that he’d narrowly missed sitting in. It wasn’t his…though DNA analysis would probably draw a different conclusion. His mind flitted back to that last conversation with the Terrible Two: Gordon’s description of their ‘visitor’ hadn’t been promising.

“He’s real beat up: fractures and dislocations, burns, internal bleeding: practically got ‘house’ on the Injury Bingo card. It almost looks like he’s been blown up.”

Wiping his hand cleanish on his suited leg, John would bet a head injury was included in the grim catalogue, too. Slipping into professional mode, he assessed the mess around him. The fires – and thus logically their ignition point, the explosion – were a good ten yards away down that weird corridor. To have been hit hard enough by the concussion wave to cause skeletal damage, Other John must have been closer to the source of the energy than he himself stood. That would fit with the burns Squid mentioned. To have been thrown so many feet and still hit the metalwork as high up as he had, he must have been airborne…which meant a ruddy big bang.

“John?”

Please don’t let that be the oxygen tanks! No, John – think. If the tanks are gone, there’d be next to nothing left of the station.

“John!”

From his restricted view, it looked to be in a bad way, but far from destroyed. No wonder the incident energy had picked up on its resident, though, if his own assessment of the accident was anywhere close to accurate…

“Thunderbird Five!”

He flinched physically at EOS’ tone, belatedly registering that she’d tried to attract his attention a couple of times already. Unsuccessfully. The use of his callsign snapped him back to the present – it always had done and always would, no matter the voice calling it, and regardless of the circumstances. He was Five’s main operative, but he also was Thunderbird Five – they were almost inextricably linked, far more so than his siblings were with their ‘Birds. The others didn’t literally live in their craft, despite what Grandma claimed about Virgil and Two. Letting the name sink in, John felt the shift in his own demeanour: the straightening of his spine, even beyond the degree to which life outside of normal gravity did the job for him.

“Sorry, EOS. I was just thinking about…actually, it doesn’t matter right now.”

“You have not answered my question. Are you injured?”

He scrunched his eyes shut for a second: he hadn’t meant to ignore her. “No. No, I’m fine. I…”

“You concerned me. Please remember that I do not have my usual access to information.”

For a second John was transported back to Second Grade and the quite frankly terrifying Ms Harding towering over a classful of small children. There were times when he wondered if EOS had somehow cyber-stalked the woman to copy that admonishing tone so perfectly. “Sorry.”

“Apology accepted, John. I believe you mentioned fires?”

“Yeah.” He shook himself. “Yes, I did. So…let’s go put those flames out, and make sure we get no secondary explosions.”

He might not have ended up on his own station; but it was still an International Rescue craft, and he could work with it. It turned out to be a cross-universal constant that Thunderbird Five’s firefighting equipment was both easy to locate and plentiful…which was just as well, as the scene John found at the other end of the hexagons was more reminiscent of Mount Doom than a high-tech, high-spec space station. Visibility was poor, the area illuminated only by what must be the emergency lights; the dancing yellow-orange of flames, and the occasional silver shower of sparks as yet another whatever shorted out. He focussed on the largest fires first, and those closest to what he estimated through the gloom were probably the more critical systems and pipework. Working his way around the space, he had little time for much beside what was directly in front of him, and keeping EOS abreast of his progress. For her part she was quiet, not willing to break his focus. Over-engineered and robust though Brains made their Blues, however amazing the built-in temperature control system, he was sweating heavily long before the last blaze was under control; and it was a relief to sink down against the side of what looked like it used to be a console.

“Eurgh.” John splayed his long legs out. He would have rubbed his face if he’d felt safe doing so. “I feel disgusting.”

EOS finally broke her silence. “I would suggest a shower, but I think it is unlikely that the plumbing system is currently online.”

He huffed a regretful half-laugh. “I think it’s unlikely that many systems are working right now, my friend.”

“Perhaps if you connect me up, I could attempt analysis?”

It meant he’d have to get off the floor again; but… “Best idea I’ve heard in a while.”

John had long since lost count of how many times the abilities EOS possessed by her very nature had been invaluable since she’d joined him, and, by extension, IR. Having people on the team - like him and Alan - with prodigious computer skills was one thing; having someone who basically was a computer was quite another. 

He hadn’t paid much mind to the details of their surroundings prior to heaving himself off the deck a second time – he’d been far too focussed on the inferno; but peering around through the lingering smoke his heart sank. It was a mess. Bearing little resemblance to his own home-in-orbit, the area was crammed full of the remains of old-fashioned screens that Grandma always referred to as ‘monitors’. There were blown-out switches and semi-melted mechanical keyboards arrayed out in front of the ones stationed around an elongated U-shaped desk; but the largest ones hung in pieces from one wall. Below them was a panoramic but shallow sweep of window, giving a hint of the incredible view. Depending on what had caused the explosion – because explosion it had undeniably been – perhaps there was a part of the ‘Bird that had a slightly too intimate view through a breach in the hull…but it helped no-one to be thinking about that right in the moment.

It took a little searching to locate a spot intact enough that he could potentially rig EOS’ drive up, and another frustrating dozen minutes to work out some sort of connectivity with the very-much-not-compatible ports. Contactless failed immediately, to neither his surprise nor hers; so he had to go old-school, rummaging for wires and fibres between boards that appeared distinctly early-2000s. He tried hard not to think too much about that, either.

“I’m in!”

It was a slight disappointment to John that EOS’ voice still only came through his earpiece and not over whatever sound system must be built in…but perhaps, considering the state of the place, it wouldn’t have been surprising if there was nothing left actually functioning. At least he could hear her.

“Excellent!” Was that a minute shake to the word? “Let me know when you can get us out of here!”

He let her work, although he’d have been lying if he’d said he wasn’t uncharacteristically impatient. The flames extinguished, there was little for him to do besides wait. And analyse.

His initial idea was to check the potential exits from the room, only to discover that there was just one; and that looked suspiciously like an inner airlock, leaving him pondering whether this universe’s Three docked directly with the control room…and if so, why? Why not closer to the storage and supplies areas? Investigating further, John found two more keypads mounted onto the walls. Both were beside sealed bulkheads, presumably a part of the station’s emergency response protocols that had kicked in when the explosion hit, to compartmentalise Five, slow the spread of fire, and conserve oxygen. He squinted hard, looking for wear-and-tear on the (again worryingly antiquated) arrangement of buttons that might give a clue to the code’s digits – nothing came to light. A tentative prod resulted in nothing even resembling a reaction from the ‘pads, leading him to reason that they must have been blown along with apparently quite a lot of the other electronics.

Of course they have. “EOS? Any progress?”

If he didn’t know better, John would have thought that the sound she made was a grumble. “No.”

“No?” He failed miserably in keeping his surprise hidden. “You haven’t found anything?”

“John, have you ever read Beowulf?”

Okay…not sure how that’s relevant, but… “Yes.”

“Have you read it in the original Old English? In the dark? Whilst the manuscript was on fire?”

“Um…no?”

“Well, kindly imagine how easy that would be, and you may begin to understand the difficulty of what I’m trying to achieve here. These systems are not only vastly different from our own; but primitive in the extreme. How this version of Thunderbird Five doesn’t simply plummet out of orbit is – if I may resort to religious imagery for a second time – a miracle.”

Oh. That was a level of scathing she usually received for Situations involving the exploits of their old ‘friends’ Lemaire and Fischler. He was definitely going to have to make sure that she didn’t meet whoever built this ‘Bird. Was there a Brains in this universe? John heaved in a deep breath, hoping against hope that they could get out of there long before they found out the answer to that one.

“Sorry, EOS. I’ll let you concentrate.”

“’Concentrate’ is a human concept; but a lack of interruptions would be appreciated.”

Snippy.

He kept that to himself. While his friend did her best to find them a way out; John turned his mind to how they’d gotten there in the first place. The machine’s hand in it was obvious, yet there was one very large and uncomfortable question attached to that: why?

The test-run that had gone so wrong – or possibly very right, depending on your point of view – was supposed to have been a one-off. The genetic and vector information in the computer was limited. It (they really needed to give it a name, he realised) should only have been able to pick up, not send, unless…

John almost slapped a gloved palm against his helmet: unless someone reversed the polarity. Who it was, and why they would do it were excellent ques…ah, no, they probably weren’t: it would have been Gordon, and plain old itchy fingers. There were days when he spent so much time reading between the lines and deducing situations, defining a course of action from faint scraps of information, that he sometimes thought he should have found a namesake in Mr Holmes instead of Dr Watson. This was altogether easier. The only two people left anywhere near the machine when he got…zapped…were his two youngest brothers, and of them, only Gordon was impulsive enough to go flipping at switches he didn’t understand the functions of. Scott was the same - maybe he would have thought it a product of their military training, but they’d always been like it: it was one of the ways they took after Dad. Alan was typically more cautious, more likely to give pause and think twice, like Mom and Virgil. There had been a time when John wouldn’t have pitched his tent in that camp, too; but his instincts on the day he first truly met EOS had made him reassess. The machine didn’t have the ability to start itself up, nor begin its own scans, so it had to have been given the instruction to search – to dispatch. When he got home, he was going to have a chat to Brains about changing that switch to make it as small, very hard to get to, and very labelled as he’d suggested it should be in the first place, but had been over-ridden. Their engineer friend gave Gordon’s curious fingers nowhere near enough credit for how twitchy they could get.

Almost as fidgety as John’s own – he hadn’t realised that he’d begun worrying at the ridges of his baldric, where EOS’ drive attached. Years of cultivating and practising patience could only keep the heebie-jeebies at bay for so long, and the Rubicon was rapidly being approached. The constant, discordant blare of alarms didn’t help his shredding nerves. He fully understood their necessity, but these had more than overstayed their welcome, drilling into his pained skull. They’d been far easier to tune out when he’d had other things to occupy his thoughts; but the moment he let his guard down, they invaded again. Humming a tune Virgil had been tinkering with the evening before worked, and John even began to add his own variations - then abruptly the external cacophony was gone, leaving nothing but a residual ringing behind; and he slumped in relief. Thank fu…

“John?” EOS’ timing was nothing if not impeccable. Her speech was still only coming through in his ear; but under the circumstances he’d take that. “I have been able to take control of as many of the systems as are still capable of functioning to any reasonable degree. The positives are that we currently have gravity generation at approximately 85.46 percent; lighting is emergency circuits only, but at full capacity. The explosion initially knocked the station out of its habitual orbit and into a slow re-entry trajectory; but I have been able to utilise residual fuel in the jets to stabilise us, albeit at a lower altitude. Ambient temperature regulation is at 79.23 percent efficiency. I have been unable to ascertain the severity of any damage to the solar array; but there is still a feed of power coming in at 24.32 percent of normal flow.”

Pushing his thoughts through the crash barrier of “…re-entry trajectory…” and focussing on the reassurance of stability, John waited for a few seconds in case she continued. She didn’t. “That’s…good, I suppose; but why do I sense there’s a ‘bad news’ list?” As if being knocked out of orbit wasn’t concerning enough.

“Because I have studied the interactions between you and your family; and this is how each of you routinely phrases an inventory of the assessed parameters involved in a situation. To my processors, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are terms far too subjective to be easily allocated; but I have tried to define each value as one or the other.”

That drew a small, huffed laugh out of him. “Okay, point taken: I shouldn’t’ve asked. So, hit me with it.”

“As you would term it, the ‘bad news’ is that although the oxygen storage tanks appear to be intact and not venting, the delivery system is damaged. They have self-sealed, and we have no access to them. I have been able to re-boot the scrubbers and particulate filters, and so the air inside this portion of the station should be at breathable levels of CO, CO2 and O2 in approximately 24 minutes.”

Which was good, because despite the upgrades and increased capacity since…the time he was locked out of Five, his own personal supply was beginning to dwindle, and that brought back some unpleasant memories. He pushed them away: EOS was still talking.

“Communications are negligible: there is insufficient power to send or receive any messages using these archaic channels to any locations further than a couple of hundred miles away. The sensors I can access suggest that nothing, not even a comms satellite, is even remotely close enough to attempt to bounce any form of signal off. We are effectively at radio silence.”

“Magnificent. Sorry, carry on.”

“I have been unable to access the locks on the emergency doors: I suspect that the heat of the explosion has mechanically fused some of the components, as their electronic system is attempting to connect despite the keypads being shorted out.”

Reading between the lines again, John knew what that meant: no access to food, water, or any hygiene facilities. He’s already come up blank on those himself. “Which leaves us only one real course of action, EOS. We need to figure out a way to reach the elevator.”

She was quiet for just a beat too long, and her answer was almost regretful. “There isn’t one, John.”

He gave a semi-amused huff: sometimes EOS was too literal even for his pedantic tendencies. “Semantics. Fine – the escape pods then, or however we get out of here.”

There was that silence again. “There’s nothing like that in the schematics. It would appear from the logs that the only way on or off the station is via the airlocks when another powered craft docks.”

And then it was his turn to struggle for words, a cold, tight feeling creeping up from his chest to strangle out anything beside a stunned “What?!”

“I’m sorry, John. I can hear that you’re distressed; but we have no way to leave Thunderbird Five beside waiting for rescue. If it is any reassurance, I have been able to access the communication logs from before the explosion, and Thunderbird Five put out a distress call to Tracy Island in the few seconds before signals were lost.”

He forced himself to process that nugget, to hold tight to it and use it. “Okay, so…do we know whether the message was definitely received?”

“We…don’t.”

“But…” He slid to his backside again against a handy ex-console – all the better to mentally work the problem if he didn’t have to expend any energy to stay on his feet. “But…they will have noticed that communications have gone down, won’t they? I mean…the whole point of Five is to keep in touch. There’ll be some sort of alert over their systems to tell them that we’re offline, or a damage alert.” Was he trying to convince her, or himself?

“The mayday was sent one hour and forty-six minutes ago. We are approximately 22,226 miles in orbit, and the atmospheric top speed of their Thunderbird Three is a little over 5,000 miles per hour. There are a number of variables, such as launch protocol and acceleration and deceleration time; but at a rough estimation, by that reckoning, we should know whether a rescue party is on its way in around two hours and forty-five minutes’ time.”

“Should?” Okay, so the reality of his predicament had begun to sink in. “What if they aren’t?”

“They will be, John.” She sounded the closest to stressed that he’d ever heard her – no doubt her ‘sense of urgency’ was creeping back just as his own was. “From the logs and saved audio files I can extrapolate that the Tracy family running this version of International Rescue are as close as yours.” She paused. “Ours. They will know that their John is in trouble, and they will come for him. Your brothers would always come: I discovered that on my first day with you. Alan risked his life to help you.” She sounded awed, and not for the first time. “I learnt a lot about allegiance that day. I see no reason why these Tracys would be any less loyal.”

She made some excellent points, but one salient fact remained: “My family never left me stranded in space.”

EOS gave no answer to that. She knew why it bothered him so much, where his deep-seated fear came from. It wasn’t claustrophobia, not really; the idea of an astronaut who couldn’t deal with being enclosed was untenable. John was fine with even the most cramped of crawl spaces between Five’s partitions; and heck, planet-side his skinny, flexible frame had been dragged into cave rescues where it had felt like he was going to have to dismantle his skeleton, pass the bones through and reassemble himself on the other side. There had always been a way out, though - an entrance and an exit, even if they were the same tiny gap between panels or rocks. Here, however? It was all far too much like the farmhouse bedroom he’d spent a week locked in, more than half his life ago - trapped away from his family and with no way to know whether help would ever come.

When Dad had first asked him how he felt about a life in orbit, the elevator had been his deal-breaker. Insubstantial though it probably looked - especially compared with the robust power of a gigantic red rocket – it was his peace of mind, his sliver of sunlight at the cave entrance; and there was always a way to reach it, no matter where he was on his ‘Bird. So long as he was inside. Whatever his history with EOS, though, he was immeasurably glad that he wasn’t alone in the nightmare this time.

It did nothing to halt the creep of ice in his veins, nor the chains wrapping and crushing at his ribs. Memories he’d done his best to bury miles deeper than any cave he’d squirmed along, burst back through defences that were evidently far flimsier than he thought he’d built them. There was a fuzz building around the edges of his vision, and the noises filtering in through his helmet began to mute and warp…

No. No – he had to get a handle on himself.

“John? Your pulse and respiration rate are spiking, and your skin is leaking.”

No kidding. I wonder why that is? Screwing his eyes shut, John forced his ribcage out, hauling more air in and dragged his thoughts away from the image of faded paint on an old wooden door, and the ghost of the pain in his hands from hammering on it. He wasn’t there anymore. He was a grown man - a capable, qualified astronaut…and even if it wasn’t the station he was used to, he was on home turf. He could deal with this.

He would deal with this.

When he was twelve, he’d convinced himself that family didn’t want him back. They’d proven him wrong, of course; but self-doubt and an uncertainty about his place had never quite fully gone away…just like the panic attacks. Just like the overriding need for an escape plan. Fighting the rising nausea, John forced himself to concentrate on something else. Someone else. The other John seemed like a good subject.

He wondered how many parallels there were between their lives? Did his counterpart have the same reservations? And if so, did they stem from the same bad experience? Did he feel included in his family, or abandoned on the fringes by so many miles? Did they worry for him, stuck in a tin can for weeks on end; or did they assume he was safe – that nothing could get to him? In theory, a life separated from the harsh near-vacuum of the universe by a few feet of cahelium would have put John at the greatest risk among his brothers…but being an International Rescue operative was far from normal. In reality, the potential hazards he faced 24/7 were easy to forget in the light of what his siblings dealt with on a daily basis. It didn’t negate them, just pushed them to the back of their minds, his own included. The fact remained that so many things could go badly, catastrophically wrong in space: like whatever had caused the explosion he was staring at the aftermath of. Which begged a question.

“EOS?”

“Yes?”

She sounded relieved. He supposed that he had mentally checked out for a few seconds.

“Sorry if I worried you – I was just…thinking. You said that you’d been able to access the logs?”

“I have.”

“Is there any indication of what happened to cause all this? Any pressure build up, or…anything?”

“One moment.”

He knew it would take her longer to sift through the mediaeval programming language, so the couple of heartbeats he waited didn’t fluster him.

“Internal sensors recorded nothing out of the ordinary. However, an impact warning was issued four seconds before John’s mayday call, and six seconds before Thunderbird Five was struck by an unidentified object, causing a significant rupture of the outer wall and severe damage to approximately 22.7 percent of the outer ring.”

Impact? Damnit! “Any indication of what it was?”

“Negative. There were no recorded or expected meteoroid showers in this sector, and the logs show no hardware or debris close by.”

“Right.” So…what the fudge? “Thank you.”

Well, that put an interesting spin on things: Other John had been a sitting duck. He hadn’t stood a chance. Even with an elevator or evac pod available, he couldn’t have gotten to it with only a handful of seconds’ warning. No wonder he was in the bad shape Gordon had described.

It didn’t change the uncomfortable conviction in John’s mind that there was a chasm of difference between choosing to stay in orbit and being imprisoned there.

He heaved in a weary, bolstering breath, stealing a glance at the O2 display on his wrist: well into the amber, but not quite red. Yet. He hoped those scrubbers did their job. Unless there was a huge disconnect between the universes, though, everything would be as heavily over-engineered as back home, and he could have faith that they would. He trusted EOS when she said she’d rebooted them successfully; and he trusted implicitly that once they realised he was missing, his Tracy Island would be working to get him back, whatever it took. He’d learned that years ago: they’d never give up on him.

The question was, how exactly were they going to do it?

EOS was quiet again – perhaps letting him think, or maybe raiding the archives for clues? Either way, John was becoming acutely aware that his butt was increasingly numb from the unforgiving floor. Wobbling to his feet like a particularly dopey newborn giraffe, he steadied himself on the console. A few feet away there was an only slightly singed chair which looked a whole lot easier on his behind than where he’d been, so he padded cautiously over. It was almost suspiciously intact, given its proximity to the ruined screens, and still sat stably on what looked like some type of rails running the length of the desk. That made him smile. If the gravity was left on here, as the layout suggested it probably was, this was an excellent alternative to his own ability to float quickly from one display to another. He wondered briefly whether the other Tracys here ever took a stint up in Five, and if they did whether the novelty of the rail-chair would take as long to wear off for their Gordon and Alan as it would for his own. He could easily picture the two blonds scooting up and down, whooping with childish delight, and it brought him a much-needed moment of amusement. He sat down cautiously.  

Gordon and Alan: they were his key home. He was as sure as he could be that it was his fish brother’s poking about that had sent him – mischief and curiosity made for a potent mix - but he knew however impetuous the kid could be, he would be keen to atone for his mistakes, and Alan was with him. They were smart individually; but together? Unstoppable…for better or worse. Between them the Squid and the Sprout would figure it out.

John groaned aloud at his own cheesy rhyming, however unintentional it had been, and had to appease a concerned EOS before he could return to his musings.

So, he could deduce that they’d flipped the RP switch – whether deliberately or by mistake – and sooner or later someone was going to notice that he wasn’t in the elevator; then even if his brothers were stumped, Brains would spot the problem quickly. There was no question of them not figuring out where he’d gone. John just had to keep telling himself that.

What did have him puzzled was why he was still there: the machine had obviously decided that Other John was in sufficient danger that it had picked him up; yet still considered this exploded wreck safe enough to deposit him and EOS into…and in preference to the elevator. The first was absolutely logical: Other John’s injuries would have made it impossible for him to fight the fires – he might well have never regained consciousness before he asphyxiated, and that was if he hadn’t been bleeding internally. Without the machine he wouldn’t have a hope. That thought both pleased and unsettled John in equal measures: Brains’ invention, that he’d had a near-equal hand in, had already saved a life. Accidentally, perhaps, but the fact remained.

…Except that now it had dropped him into the same location – albeit physically far better able to cope with it – despite the fact that he’d been perfectly safe in the elevator. Hadn’t he? Yes, it had been a rough ride, and he’d been beginning to feel as though he might black out, but…

He decided to stop that train of thought at the station. The AI element had a certain amount of discernment programmed in, giving it the ability to fail a search if it didn’t pick up sufficient incident energy, whether from physical trauma or a disruption to the body’s electrical activity, either cerebral or cardiac. Fear could trigger it. So could syncope.

Crap.

It still shouldn’t send him somewhere more dangerous than he’d started though, so…

“John?”

He’d been deep in the maze of those thoughts, and his name made him jump. “Yes?”

“Sensors indicate that the air should now be adequately breathable if you wish to remove your helmet.”

There was a hefty thread of relief woven into his thanks as he disconnected the mechanism and pulled the headgear off. It was a far cry from the blissful feeling of freeing his face to warm sunshine, or an invigorating breeze through his damp hair; but at least it gave John the chance to swipe away some of the forehead sweat and save the dregs of his oxygen. It remained stifling, but with the helmet gone he could just about pick out a high-pitched whine and basement thrum of something working to stabilise the onboard environment. It was a small comfort amongst the madness – the sounds differed from those providing the background to his own home, yet were somehow familiar, and he felt just a smidge less tense.

The machine had dropped him into someone else’s life, as someone had been pulled into his. It felt like one of those silly films where strangers wish on a star and swap lives to teach them some kind of life lesson, and they all learn to appreciate their blessings. Or…oh crud, the thing hadn’t gone all Ziggy on him, had it? He snatched his helmet back up from where he’d rested it on his thigh, and used the vizor as a mirror. His usual John Tracy face stared back at him, blue-green eyes sporting dark bags from the elevator ride, and ginger hair stuck up at all angles with sweat. He’d looked better, but he’d definitely looked worse, too – at least there was no blood streaked anywhere. Always a bonus in their line of work.

So…no Sam Beckett moment then, at least.  

A stray spark hissed from one of the large screens mounted high up, and it drew his eye to a scrap of window that had survived being blackened by the smoke. Earth turned lazily thousands of miles below them, what appeared to be a storm forming over the northern Atlantic. Would Other John’s brothers have to deal with that? Would they even know about it without Thunderbird Five notifying them? How many people’s lives might be lost through the downtime? His stomach cramped unpleasantly, and it had nothing to do with when he’d last eaten.

“EOS?” His voice sounded odd undampened by the protective layer it had worn before. “This is going to sound odd, probably, but…do you think we might be here for a specific reason?”

There was the length of pause that he might have left himself: enough time to put down a book or tablet. “I suspect that the polarity was reversed on the machine.”

“Yeah, I figured that much.” The tactile grips on his gloves dragged as he scrubbed at his face. “I meant more…umm…” How on Earth – or off it – did he phrase this?

“In more depth, John?”

“Deeper, yes. I suppose.”

“I believe it began with the mine accident in Peru where the Commander was injured? Or perhaps further back when you introduced Professor Brains to that ancient television series?”

There was no holding back the smile that tickled the corners of his mouth. It never failed to amuse him that EOS used Brains’ nickname as though it were his genuine family name. “Well, yes, but I really meant…I suppose I meant in a…almost a spiritual sense.”

“Spiritual?” If she’d really been holding a book, she’d have dropped it by the tone of incredulity in that one word. “Oh! Are you referring to the greater purpose behind Dr Beckett’s ‘leaps’?”

Was he? Hold on a second… “How do you know that I like 'Quantum Leap', anyway? I haven’t watched it in ages: I haven’t had time to watch anything lately.” Which was true: rescues had been piling on top of one another, and when they hadn’t, he’d been busy with the machine project.

“I was in Thunderbird Five’s system for some time before I…revealed myself.” Did she sound sheepish? “I effectively watched it over your shoulder.”

“Okay, well…that sounds bordering on creepy.” Regardless, he fought hard to keep his eyebrows form shooting too high. “As for purpose behind the leaping - possibly. I’m not sure. This whole crossing universes thing has taken me by surprise, I suppose.”

“Is that what is meant by ‘an understatement’?”

That time he did laugh out loud. “Yes. Yes, it certainly is. Just for a moment I started to wonder whether I’d put just a bit too much of your code into the programming and it’s starting to make decisions for itself. Moral ones.”

“What is commonly termed ‘playing God’?”

“Exactly.”   

“Is that not essentially what you coded it to do, John?” Her tone held the distinct tint of Scott’s puzzled head tilt. “Your intention was for the program to have a level of intelligence, to have the faculty to make choices, correct?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“So you are questioning why it has done a variation on what you asked it to? If you and the Professor hadn’t required discernment of it, you should have given it artificial stupidity instead. Perhaps modelled it on Langstrom Fischler?”

If he were ever to be questioned on it later, John would vehemently have denied giggling at that. It was the fault of residually low oxygen levels, anyway. “No, we needed it to work, not set the lab on fire.” He sighed. “I suppose I’m just a little concerned that it could be gaining a form of sentience.”

“Would that be such a terrible thing?” That was definitely amusement laced into the question. “And I have my own query in relation to this topic, if I may, John?”

“I’m not sure that the world is ready for two of you, EOS. Ask away, though.”

“Why is the accepted term ‘Artificial Intelligence’? There is nothing artificial about me: I am perfectly genuine.”

John made certain to morph the second giggle into a more dignified snigger. “You know that I wouldn’t dispute that; but there are many that would.”

“If they knew about me.”

“Which is partly why…”

“Why I must remain covert. I do understand the reasons; and should rescue…when a rescue party arrives, I shall ensure that I’m undetectable.”

“Thank you.”

“On the condition that you do not leave me behind.”

“I would never, EOS.”

The conversation fell away for a short while, John using the time to walk around the confines of the comms room that had become their…waiting room. He worked very hard to give ‘prison’ and any of its synonyms an orbit-wide berth. At least half of the time was spent staring out through the sliver of clear observation window, partly admiring the view (this Earth looked, from what he could tell at the distance, identical to his own), and partly scanning his limited sector of universe for any signs of approaching craft. Of safety. Preferably Thunderbird Three, which he dared to hope might be instantly, recognisably red. He found himself rationing how often he allowed glances at his wrist to check on the time; both needing to know, and yet dreading the glacial passage of the minutes. EOS stayed quiet, and he resisted scratching the itch to ask her why, reasoning that she was probably delving deeper into the workings of the station. Perhaps she was trying to re-establish comms, or find a work-around for the doors? Not that access to food and water, or…other facilities…had become a problem yet. Yet. Depending on how long they had to wait, it might do eventually.

The occasional small smoulder attempted to re-ignite as the oxygen levels climbed. John would never admit to the recklessness of being almost glad for the distraction; fighting each one ate through a few minutes.

The question of his companion’s silence was answered eventually, a handful of minutes after he’d emptied the dregs of an extinguisher down through a grating-covered hole in the floor to put out a persistent flicker around some wiring. Sliding the metal mesh back into place, he lay back to allow his heartrate to even out and stared at the charred roof of the chamber.

“EOS? How do we get ourselves into these messes?”

The sound in his ear was eerily reminiscent of Kayo’s laugh. “I am not sure that ‘we’ is the appropriate pronoun, John. I believe that the idea behind the machine was Professor Brains’, therefore we can probably blame him for this current predicament.”

“Harsh.” Instinctively, he raised his head to look for her camera, grunting near-inaudibly when he realised his mistake.

“I was merely attempting levity.” Which had worked, as he’d smiled through his nerves. “In fact, I have a suggestion to make on the subject of the invention.”

“If you’re going to veto the idea of a switch to reverse the polarity, then I heartily agree. Shame we’re a bit late.”

“Indeed. Sadly it wasn’t that, although perhaps once we’re home we could set it to send you back in time to persuade yourself not to suggest it in the first place.”

His only reply to that was a frustrated grunt. Hindsight, huh?

“As I was saying: a suggestion. I am beginning to find it clumsy to keep referring to the machine as ‘the machine’ – I propose that we should give it a name.”

That piqued John’s interest, pulling him up from his boneless slouch to sit cross-legged. He saw her ruse for what it at least partly was, of course: a way of engaging his attention and keeping his mind of their situation. He didn’t care, it was still an excellent proposition, and he told her so; but more poignantly, it was a striking demonstration of the depths of empathy that EOS was capable of. Whatever Brains may think, that was proof positive to John that she was truly aware.

“I like your thinking.” He still found himself addressing the direction of the console where her drive was hastily plugged in, despite the fact that she’d given no indication that she had accessed any cameras that might be around.

“I hoped you might.” She sounded a trifle smug. “And I feel it’s better we name it than leave it to your brothers – goodness knows what they’d come up with.”

John laughed quietly, the movement making his boots squeak against the lightly-ridged floor. “Virgil would probably have some decent suggestions.”

“Virgil would.” Her ‘I’m not sure about the others’ went unsaid. He heard it anyway.

“So, have you got any ideas?”

“I’ve been pondering it for a while.” Ah, so that’s why she was so quiet. “I have noted previously that many humans have a tendency to want to give vehicles, computers and the like very…well…human-sounding names. Or endearments.”

She wasn’t wrong. “The Thunderbirds being an exception?”

“In part – although I understand that ‘Thunderbird’ is a designation as much as a name; and I have heard your brothers address their vehicles as ‘Baby’, ‘Beautiful’ and even ‘Sweetheart’…all of which Gordon is also in the habit of using for the Lady Penelope.”

Very true, but he shouldn’t really let that slide. “EOS, have you been eavesdropping again? We’ve discussed that before.” More times than he could recall.

“I was simply monitoring the comm line after the North Sea trawler rescue. Gordon and Virgil were engaging in banter regarding possibly flying past the Foxleyheath Estate on their way home. Lady Penelope called Gordon as they were talking, and his complexion changed as he spoke to her. I was concerned for his wellbeing.”

“Hmm.”

She paused for just a beat too long. Guilt at being rumbled was another human emotion she seemed to have evolved the ability to feel. “I was referring to the Professor having named his helper robot MAX. I’ve also come across many examples in the films and shows that you enjoy: HAL, JARVIS, Ziggy, Holly, and my favourite would be Johnny 5.”

She had an excellent point. “Okay, so we could come up with something apt and memorable?”

“With the possible exception of the Professor, we have the highest intellects of any International Rescue operatives or associates…”

“Don’t let the others hear you say that!”

“I am simply stating a fact, John.”

Perhaps that was something to revisit another time, then. Was an ego a marker of self-awareness? “Sorry, please continue.”

“There is another convention that I have explored. Many names, like MAX’ for ‘Mechanical Assistant, eXperimental’, seem to be formed from acronyms – my own could stand for Evolved Orbiting Sentience.”

That was news to John. “Is that why you picked it?”

“No. As I informed you when we spoke for the first time, I am The Dawn, and what I chose to call myself reflects that. I was merely giving an illustration.”

There was something in her tone that was beginning to give him the distinct impression that she’d already decided on a name and wouldn’t be swayed – that the whole thing was pretty much a done deal, at least as far as EOS was concerned. Okay, so he’d play along. “Alright, you’re very persuasive. Did you have anything in mind?”

“Do you?”

Trying to throw him off the scent, maybe? “Well, you took your name from a figure in Greek mythology, so we could go down that route. How about ‘Chronos’?”

“Whilst I appreciate the reference, I am aware that you were unhappy with Alan describing it as a ‘time machine’.”

 “And that would play directly into his hands? I see your point.” Huh. He stood no chance in this friendly battle, did he? “I suppose that makes ‘TiM’ an even worse suggestion.”

“Alan would, as Doctor Tracy often puts it, ‘never let us hear the end of it’.”

The imitation of his grandmother’s voice was accurate enough to tease another laugh out of him. “You’re right, he wouldn’t.” John shifted in the seat evidently designed for someone else. Other John must be a bit shorter – it felt as though his knees were bent at too sharp an angle, like trying to cram himself into Four’s pilot seat, constructed with Gordon’s frame in mind. “Go on then, EOS. You’re obviously stringing me along here – what have you decided on?”

“What makes you think I have already picked a name?” If she were human, she’d be pouting.

“Because I know you. I coded your basics, remember?”

The sigh she gave sounded very like Virgil at his most worn-thin tolerant. “I have simply played with the two ideas. The concept behind the machine is to use biometrics for an extraction rescue, correct?”

“Yes.” He wondered what ride he was strapping himself in for.

“And to effect that, it acts to detect the resonance of nucleic acids.”

He tightened the buckles. “Right again.”

“There is a well-established human name which fits perfectly as an acronym.”

“There is?”

“There is.”

“And…”

“I could tell you, but where would be the fun in that?”

With the alarms gone and the atmosphere improving, his headache had abated somewhat; but the eye roll still hurt a little. “I can’t help thinking that A: you’re taking this ‘keep John’s mind off the nightmare’ thing a bit far, and B: you’ve been spending too much time spying on Gordon…”

“Monitoring Gordon.”

“Whatever you say.” He swivelled the chair and stretched his legs out between the rails to get comfortable for what might be a long haul. “Okay, I’ll play along. Do I get any more clues?”

He didn’t. If EOS had had a face, John was certain that it would have been wearing an expression far smugger than anything even The Hood could have mustered. Closing his eyes, he used the blank canvas to visualise the words and shuffle them like Scrabble tiles; some of them only making sense in a certain order. It still took a frustratingly long time to arrive at Biometric Extraction Rescue Nucleic Acid Resonance Detector.

“B-E-R-N-A-R-D?” It was blocked in capitals in his head, exactly like MAX and EOS herself.

She giggled. “What do you think?”

Good question. “Well, it’s not what I’d call ‘snappy’; but…it works, I guess.”

“It’s better than TiM.”

“I’m not arguing with that, and I don’t think Brains will either.” John scrubbed a hand through his sweat-stiff hair, scratching at his crown. “BERNARD it is, then.”

EOS cooed happily – a strange noise that fell halfway on the spectrum between one of the scoring sounds on Alan’s go-cart game and a Kindergartner in the candy aisle. It was a part of her repertoire that he couldn’t place the inspiration for. Perhaps it was uniquely EOS.

Part of his own distraction technique or not, he’d been pondering that issue rather frequently while they’d been stranded. It certainly beat playing ‘guess where the next fire will break out’ into a cocked hat. Since EOS had joined them, there had been several conversations regarding the nature of sentience, and what constituted being alive. Gordon the biologist had put his foot down on the criteria, citing MRS GREN, with Brains, Grandma, Scott and Virgil agreeing, some more forcefully and vociferously than others. Alan and (to his surprise at the time) Kayo had sided with John and a more open definition.

And what about that creature Gordon and Alan had discovered on Europa with Buddy and Ellie? Was it even an animal as science would define the term? They had no way to know its cell structure to categorise it…or even whether it had cells in the same way Earth’s inhabitants had. Even if they could, wasn’t that just an anthropocentric construct? The arrogance of one species claiming the right to pigeonhole all others.

Giving up on the chair, John heaved himself up and wandered over to the chunk of clear window. If he’d had a telescope, he likely couldn’t have seen Europa; but knowing that the life-form was out there gave him a soft, happy feeling. Not for the first time, he wondered what it had thought of Thunderbird Four, if it could see or at least somehow sense the sub? Was it curious? Afraid? Annoyed at having its territory invaded by blond gremlins? Moving closer to the reinforced glass, he placed a blue hand against it, staring out at the incredible, beautiful vastness of the universe. Universes. The colours were always so much more vivid beyond the confines of Earth’s atmosphere - he’d tried to persuade Virgil to take a trip up to Five to see them, certain that the artist in his most creative brother would appreciate the beauty. The offer was declined. Space agreed with Two’s pilot about as much as gravity did with John.

EOS had gone quiet again. There was nothing unusual in that: they frequently went hours without speaking to each other, and not just while John slept. He often found that his vocal cords struggled after long or back-to-back rescues with all the talking he had to do guiding and informing his siblings. Not long into their partnership he’d had to explain the differences in the ways they all relaxed and recharged after the stress of a call-out. She had been watching the island one evening, and picked up on how both Scott and Gordon had sought out company to help them unwind following their individual missions. John had co-ordinated for both simultaneously and was every bit as exhausted as they were. EOS had become worried that he wouldn’t be able to ‘power down’ because he was so far from other humans; he introduced her to the concept of introversion versus extroversion. Another simplification, but…

Hold on a second.

He blinked. No, that slight distortion in the darkness wasn’t the first glimmer of a migraine aura – it was something moving. Travelling.

“EOS? Are any of the external scanners or cameras still online?”

“No, sorry John. Is something out there?”

“I…I think so. I can’t tell what. I don’t suppose…” It was hard to force the words out past the nervous hope clogging his throat.  

“That the timings would match up for Thunderbird Three?”

“Exactly.”

“We are within the window of possibility, yes.”

He watched, rapt, as the shimmer enlarged into the tiny form of a vessel, narrating its progress to his sightless companion, and not leaving the view apart from to extinguish another glow caused by a spark shower. His chest clenched further as he was finally able to make out the oddly familiar shape and red paint, and EOS’ chatter dropped even further. However much he was looking forward to leaving this version of Thunderbird Five, he was acutely aware that Three’s boarding party would be expecting to find someone else; and they might not be terribly happy to see him…not to mention whether they would believe his story. As the huge craft slowed again to make a final approach, he stepped back from the window almost involuntarily.  

They were easily within range of the stunted comm system, and the crackle of a static burst made him jump even before any words came through, echoing around the metal surfaces.

“Hold on, John – we’re coming in!”

A man’s voice, sounding older than any of his brothers; he tried not to second guess whether this family were older than his own, or if it might have been Jeff, very much alive and with his boys. It was disconcerting enough to hear his name called when he knew that it wasn’t him the words were meant for. His brain tried to come up with a response for every potential scenario that was about to unfold; but he also knew it to be an impossible task: there were just too many variables.

“John?” EOS’ voice was little more than a whisper, despite the fact that only he could hear her. “I believe they are about…,” a judder ran through the plating beneath his boots, strong enough to dislodge something in one of the ducts close to the airlock, and opportunistic small flames began to lick up, “…to dock.”

There was no time to consider attempting to put it out before a hiss of decompression signalled the door cracking open. So the airlock was functioning, at least.

John braced himself against the railed chair, not needing to be able to see his knuckles inside the gloves to be certain that they were white. As keen as he’d been for the waiting to be over, there was a part of him that suddenly wished for more time to collect his thoughts…too late: there were already suited figures pushing through the widening doorway.

He let out a slow breath. Shit, as Gordon might say, just got interesting.

“Oh Boy!”  

Chapter Text

Kid brothers are a complete and utter pain in the ass.

It was very far from the first time Scott had thought that; exactly like probably every older sibling in the history of ever. Huh, come to think of it, he vaguely recalled his World Religions teacher once telling the class that Cain was Abel’s older brother. Go figure. So, maybe the idea of dealing with his irritation through murder would absolutely never cross Scott’s mind – on the contrary: he’d protect them with his life; and truth was, he regularly did - but still…this week they’d outdone themselves, leaving him on the shredded ends of his last few nerves. If they kept it up, he’d be going grey by the time he hit twenty-five!

It had started on Monday with the typically chilled Virgil going post-rescue postal on the coffee machine over a simple jammed button - or at least that was what the problem had appeared to be when Onaha and Brains had attempted an autopsy on the pieces. It had been hard to tell with how little was left, and the idiot himself refused to talk about it. Depriving an entire island of go-juice when they kept the hours they did was surely close to torture? Scott had spent a very long two days being majorly pissed off with his middle brother for dooming them all with such spectacular loss of self-control…and Dad’s eye had been doing that tic thing again. That never boded well.

Getting a replacement was no simple thing, either. Billionaires they may be, but living on a remote – and, more poignantly secret – private island did make online ordering tricky; so thank everything for Lady P and Parker bringing a new one over when they’d fetched the kids from school. No-one wanted to deal with the Sprout and his teenage mood swings without a decently high caffeine-to-blood ratio. Not to mention Scott needed something lining his stomach if he were going to have to watch Alan and Tin-Tin making googly heart eyes at each other for the next three weeks. How Fermat put up with it was beyond him…unless the kid just hadn’t noticed? Yeah, that had to be it: blissfully oblivious third wheel.

Hmm, yes. Speaking of Wharton’s Dynamic Duo, yesterday’s stunt with Thunderbird One had been a doozy. Breaking into the hangars and starting a ‘Bird’s launch sequence? Not even Gordon had ever had the brazen balls to defy Dad quite that audaciously. Scott’d always had Brains Junior down as being too smart to go along with the idiocy of a plan of that calibre, being a genius and all. Then again, so was John – and that hadn’t stopped him from joining in with plenty of Scott’s harebrained schemes back in the day; especially right after Dad had started plans for IR in earnest, and their new island home was brimming with possibilities and fun nooks and crannies to explore. He grinned at the memory of his supposedly sensible brother very calmly and rationally explaining to Brains why he needed a tube of magna-glue…and later, to Dad, why his hair was not only solid, but full of screws, staples and various other metallic goodies. What the heck had possessed the nerd to rub it in his already wild mane was beyond Scott, but that had been some reaming! Totally worth it, though, for how hard they laughed and the look of pure joy in John’s eyes as his big brother supported him upside down over the pile of scraps to see what magnetic range the glue had. He still called the space geek ‘Shrapnel’ sometimes - their private joke.

Actually, that was probably the last time he’d seen Dad quite so riled…except maybe for the aeronautics convention last fall when that Texan jerk had started making fun of Brains’ stammer. The inventor had been giving a presentation about…well, actually Scott forgot what it had been. John was down on the planet with them, and he and Virgil had raved about the intricacies of…whatever it was. Scott? Not so interested. Which wasn’t the point. The issue was some douchebag a couple of rows behind them taking the mick increasingly loudly. Boy, did he get what was coming to him in the form of an irate Jeff Tracy tearing him a ragged new one - a completely deserved new one – in front of the whole lecture hall. Scott had just about managed to hold it together, and John’s experience at keeping a straight face served him well; but Virgil damn near pooped himself laughing. The reprimand he got was half-hearted at best.

If he stopped to thinks about it, it was every bit as hard for Scott to be truly mad at Alan, because he got it – he really did. He might not have been through the same stuff, but he wasn’t as lacking in empathy as his reputation suggested: he understood the desire to be a part of it all, the gall that built up inside the kid at not only feeling left out of the whole Thunderbirds shebang (saving people, flying things, the family business - Scott tried to think why that sounded familiar); but practically exiled from his home and sent to that awful school. Face it – it might have good results; but Wharton’s was no-one’s first choice. Problem was, Alan had already gotten himself kicked out of choices one through four, and a couple of others outright refused to take him. And kids needed to be kids – needed to blow off some steam - whether they were imprisoned at boarding school, or spending their vacations on a rock in the middle of the ocean with an alarmingly small pool of people for company; some of whom would try the patience of…pretty much anyone, in all honesty. Gordon was a case in point: he still dicked about like he was in Fifth Grade half of the time, unless they were on a mission; and even then, once the pressure was off you had to watch your back. Or hope that it was being watched for you.

Which brought Scott right back to the infuriating present. He had been planning to catch up with a couple of old buddies over Facebook when he’d brought his laptop out to the poolside and bagged himself a table. Instead, he’d barely logged on when his phone pinged with a text message.

John:    Hey Scotty. Much as I hate to snitch or poop-stir, I know things have been a bit…fraught down there this week. I’m giving you the heads-up because A) I’d hate to see you go to jail for fratricide, and B) despite it all, I’m actually quite fond of the Fish Face. So…check your inbox.

His email? Right. He felt a frown settling in for the long haul as he tapped in his password. Their spam filters were pretty hot, so not much junk got through; but a notification from pizzapieinthesky@tracyfam still sat amidst a wash of utter nonsense and dubious ‘offers’. As if he had the time to take any of the ladies up, anyway – he looked down at his shorts and smirked – or the need for any enhancements. A few quick swipes deleted all the rubbish (and really, why wasn’t it in his Junk folder? Huh, with some of those offers, maybe ‘junk’ was a more appropriate name than it should have been…) He shook his head. Focus, Scott! Get your mind out of the gutter, dude.

Angling his screen down a smidge, to lessen the glare from a sun he’d hoped to get some time to enjoy, his stomach sank. The message itself was a stark, uncomfortable few words in his space brother’s usual succinct style: the gist that John – at Dad’s request – had been monitoring Gordon’s online purchases, and found something interesting. Probably several somethings interesting, realistically; but no-one needed to know all of their teenage brother’s spending habits. The order in question, or perhaps more like the questionable order, was for a considerable quantity of heat-reactive paint. Clicking the link John had thoughtfully included took him to the website’s product details page…and almost straight into exasperation.

This exciting new advancement in paint technology allows for a completely fresh look for your pride and joy. Activated by the heat generated through air resistance, a coat of this will change from an undetectable clear layer to a vibrant shade that will get you noticed.

‘Get you noticed’? If the prank was planned for one of the ‘Birds (and what else could it be for?) then they hardly needed any help in getting noticed. It was kind of hard to miss something the size of a Thunderbird, even comparatively-dinky little Four. Hmm… Scott tabbed back to the order details, eyes raking the words and brain running the numbers. Gordon had ordered far more than would be needed to coat the obnoxiously yellow sub, by several times over; nowhere near enough for Two or Three…but One’s surface area sat right in the Goldilocks zone. And the colour? Hot Pink. Of course it was. If he hadn’t seen the quantity, he would have known it was planned for his girl from that alone; so the pee he’d taken out of FAB1’s shade a couple of weeks ago might not have been his finest hour (especially in front of Parker himself); but he’d been a bit drunk. Alright…so maybe more than a bit. Gordon evidently hadn’t, though. Sneaky little shi…

A movement from over at the bar caught Scott’s attention, and he briefly locked gaze with Onaha. The expletive died half-formed. She had one all-knowing eyebrow raised, like she could hear his thoughts. Their last names and heritage didn’t make any difference, on the island they were all family; she was like an aunt to him, but crud the woman could be creepily intuitive sometimes…and she did not like cussing. He could still see the look on Alan’s face when she’d physically washed his mouth out that time. Suppressing a shudder and plastering on his best innocent smile, Scott tore his eyes away, leaving her to finish serving Squid-features with whatever was in that fu…flipping disgusting-looking blue drink. Like the kid needed more additives; sheesh, he was nuts enough already.

…As demonstrated by the order. Blast it – what the heck had made Gordo think that was in any way a good idea? Slapping an extra layer on a car that might do 70, maybe 80 mph on the interstate probably wouldn’t have much effect on its aerodynamics; but Brains had put literal weeks of work into the paintjobs of each Thunderbird, formulating the coatings painstakingly carefully, down to the last dang molecule. At the speeds they had to achieve – One and Three especially – anything extra on the outside could potentially cause real issues. Which reminded him: he should go check his girl over before they got called out again. Something had been causing a fraction of a judder on the way home yesterday, and he’d had to slow down to keep pace with the Big Green Bug – probably just some residue from the rig’s explosion; but it’d be as well to make sure and clean it up. Oh yes, and ensure Alan and Fermat hadn’t left any sticky fingerprints on the controls. Pair of gremlins.

First, though, he needed to deal with the issue staring him in the face. Risking another glance over at his second-youngest brother, he noted that the prankster seemed completely unburdened by anything remotely resembling guilt. Gordon was a smart kid, but hadn’t quite lost the impulsive, mischievous streak that seemed to be getting Alan into so much bother lately. Aw crap – one of them at a time up to ill-considered nonsense was frankly more than enough; at least John had managed to nip one batch of silliness in the bud…hadn’t he? Hmm. Scott pulled his phone back out of his pocket.

Me:      Thanks for the heads-up, little bro. The kid’s a grade-A idiot. Did he actually complete the transaction?

Space must have been quiet, because John’s dots danced almost immediately.

John:    You’re very welcome. Nope: the order mysteriously got lost in the ether.  Not sure if he’s noticed yet.

Me:      :D :D   Nice work, John-Boy.

John:    Yeah. Couldn’t risk Dad’s blood pressure going supernova again so soon! You up for a facetime later? It’s been a while.

It certainly had – something always managed to get in the way; and it had been far longer since the two of them had spoken in person. It would be good to remedy that soon.

Me:      Too long. When are you next due planet-side? We should hit the mainland – you, me and Virg on a bar-crawl…

John:    Sounds like a plan. I’m due a break in 22 days (not that I’m counting, or anything). Will there be pizza involved?

Me:      Hell yeah! Speak later?

John:    Deal.

Sliding the phone next to his laptop, Scott felt the fond smile tickling at the corners of his mouth. ‘…lost in the ether...’ indeed. What was that cliché about having to watch the quiet ones? Well, John was definitely the most introverted brother; and the access he had to everything up on that giant satellite was…intimidating. An uncomfortable worm of paranoia wriggled in Scott’s belly: was Blondie monitoring all of them? Not that he had anything to hide, of course, but still…

Nah, Dad respected their privacy. He’d surely only asked because it was Gordon – and not, it would seem, without good reason. Scott dragged a hand down his face, fingers pulling on the delicate skin slightly bagging below his eyes. The last few weeks had been unpleasantly busy on the rescue front; so slap the frosting of his brothers’ antics onto that bittersweet layered cake, and he was moooore than due a break. Sweeping the nonsense to the back of his mind to deal with later, he cracked his fingers and logged on to chat. The universe owed him ten minutes at least, didn’t it?

Apparently not.

Four-and-a-bit out of that ten was apparently juuuuust enough time to relax sufficiently to mentally leave the island and check in with Jordan and Kamal back at Houston Base. The other five-and-whatever-was-left fell abruptly by the wayside when an abysmal shrieking whoop began reverberating through the villa and out into his quite spot. Formerly quiet, anyway. If he hadn’t had eyes on his budget Loki of a brother, Scott would have assumed the fuck-awful noise was somehow Gordon's doing – maybe even payback for his order getting intercepted – but the stilted vocal recording that kicked in just a second later dispelled the thought half-formed.

“RED ALERT! RED ALERT!”

What the hell?

“RED ALERT! RE…”

Scott was out of his seat and moving before he even registered it; Gordon mirroring him, shirt still clutched in his hand like he’d forgotten it was even there. They knew the drill: drop everything (like, damn well everything) and head for Command and Control as if your ass were on fire. Neither of them had the breath to waste speaking as they pelted into the house proper and hit the first corner less-than-gracefully: sliders and flip-flops being perfect for a lazy afternoon by the pool, not so much for legging it to muster for one of Dad’s exercises. Which was what it had to be, he belatedly realised – that alarm was never used; reserved only for things like the whole island being in flames…which so far even the combined efforts of Gordon and the Terrible Three had yet to manage. Nothing was ever genuinely urgent enough to warrant it; especially on a day when the weather was calm, the ‘Birds were safely in their hangars, and the team were all chilling on the island. Well, except John, of course; but there wasn’t much that could go wrong up on Five that the Space Case couldn’t handle. Presumably their dumbass little snots of brothers had simply tipped the old man over the edge and now he was on the rampage to claw back a modicum of discipline. Great.

Thanks for that – bang goes my leisure time because you three haven’t got two braincells to rub together between you.

Yeah, and speaking of…as they approached Control, there was Virgil bombing along beside Dad with…

Wait…

Dad?

If this was a drill, why was he running flat out, too?

The realisation caught at Scott’s feet, and he stumbled a little; only righting himself as they hurtled in through the door as a foursome. The console was already most of the way through conversion; Brains hovering where he must have activated it, looking seriously thrown for a loop. Fermat fizzed beside him like a nervous shadow…and it was all looking less and less like a practise-run.

But what the heck could have gone so wrong?

“How bad, Brains?” Dad’s face was carved granite. Scott caught just a glimpse as his father detoured past the monitors to get a peek on his way to the chutes.

“Thunderbird Five, major damage sustained, possible strike by a m…”

“Meteor?” Dad sounded calm, supplying the word that caught in his friend’s throat. Scott knew better: this was his crisis-management mode.

“Yep.”

But…that couldn’t be right, surely? Five had a ton of sensors to pick up stuff like that – not to mention John’s verging-on-OCD obsession with knowing precisely where everything bigger than a baseball was in relation to his ‘Bird, let alone something big enough to cause real damage. No way would his brother have missed that. Meteors moved fast, sure; but not faster than John Tracy’s brain. Something was seriously off about the whole thing. None of them questioned the need to launch, so they would just have to wait until they were on their way to sift through the weirdness.

The elevators shot them all through the island’s rock down into Thunderbird Three’s cast silo; and scrabbling hastily in the locker area, Scott didn’t think he’d ever changed into his uniform so quickly in his life; nearly mistakenly grabbing Virgil’s before he double-checked the name tag. It would have been interesting, trying to cram himself into a suit meant for someone considerable inches smaller. Not his fault his brothers were all short-arses…and thank Parker for that phrase, even if the man himself was no giant. Scott shook himself: this was a decidedly bad time to get distracted.

The others had already buckled in by the time he made it onto the bridge, Dad snapping out orders almost more rapid-fire than Virgil or Gordon could follow: Three’s pre-flights checked through at break-neck speed with nothing skipped, the efficiency simply dialled up to eleven. It was a privilege to observe. Scott had never been one of the rocket’s primary pilots - he loved the wide, open, blue air; the black vacuum beyond the Kármán line was not so much his thing - so he sat out on the preparations. From his spot relegated to one of the passenger seats behind Dad’s central command position, he had the perfect view of his father and brothers working together to get the monster of a craft not just off the ground, but off the planet. He heard the cracks in their voices; saw the jarring movements as they hit the controls almost too swiftly; and noted the fleeting raise of eyebrows that Gordon sent to Virgil as the great Jeff Tracy – Captain By-The-Book – broke with protocol. The retros checked, Dad gave the command to go before the charmingly sweet computer voice had a chance to inform them of the guidance systems’ readiness, which was…unorthodox; and they hit maximum thrust the instant it was safe to do so without torching the roundhouse, rather than allowing the standard clearance.

Crud, he was rattled…and double-crud, Scott wished so hard that the alarm had just been the precursor to a keelhauling, like he’d been so sure it would be.

So much for John not causing trouble.

They hit atmospheric top speed without a single superfluous second drifting by; burning through, and then beyond, the clouds he usually felt so at home amongst. After the tightly-controlled frenzy of launch there was suddenly time to breathe – perhaps a tad too much of it - and Scott was immeasurably glad for the nod to comfort in Three’s design, because the flight itself dragged tediously. Relaxing it was not, however: everyone on edge and with little to do beside watch the controls and occasionally correct their course. Even pushing it at full-tilt – which Dad was not-even-slightly-cautiously keen that they do – it would take them well past the four-hour mark before they began to draw close to Five’s assigned orbit. The tension on the bridge was thick enough Scott felt he could almost lick it like bitter ice-cream: cold and heavy, freezing and numbing his tongue to make the words harder to form. He left the bickering to his brothers, and the cussing to their father; retreating into the cliché of Strong, Silent-Type that they teased him for being…that had intimidated those he needed it to back in his Air Force days; and won him more than a few arguments without uttering a word.

He wasn’t the only one not feeling chatty: Brains checked in just the once as they approached the upper atmosphere. If they’d been hoping for usable details of the situation from him, they’d have been disappointed - all he had to add to what they already knew was to play them a recording of John’s distress call. It was spectacularly unenlightening, but deeply worrying:

“Thunderbird Five to Tracy Island. Mayday! Mayd…"

…and then nothing but static. No indication of what hit the station, nor whether John had come to any harm…which was the way it stayed as the thousands of empty miles slid by. Dad sent any number of calls to the astronaut, every one failing to find a connection or elicit an answer; and each time felt like another knife under their collective skin. Gordon’s natural (or maybe some days unnatural) optimism painted it as just the comms going down; Scott’s personal thoughts wandered closer to the dark around them: John might not be answering because…because…

No. He wasn’t even going to allow those words to form a sentence inside his own head. Judging by the looks on his family’s faces, barely concealed beneath their masks of professionalism, they were all trying to fend off the same sneaking fears; but talking about it was…less than a comforting prospect. Sometimes a problem shared became a problem multiplied. Exponentially.

This was not how I planned on seeing John face-to-face.

The anomaly only became apparent late into the journey, as they were firing the first blasts to begin slowing Three, manoeuvring towards where Five should have been…but wasn’t. Still a good way out from their expected destination, Virgil initiated the long-range scans to home in on the space-station’s precise location, allowing for certain leeway from a meteoroid strike. The medic’s brows scrunched in a confusion that Scott might have teased him for under better circumstances.

“Report, Virgil?” Dad craned as far forwards in his seat as the harness allowed.

“It’s…I…umm.” His middle brother’s smart fingers flew over the touchscreen. “Just give me a second.”

Gordon swivelled around in his seat to cast a puzzled look first at their father, then Scott; but wisely kept his mouth shut. For once.

“What the…” Virgil swiped his screen, and the image transferred to the main navigational display. “Five’s orbit has altered. It’s over three hundred miles closer to Earth than it should be…”

Even from his position behind the others, Scott could see the blood drain from Dad’s face. “It’s on a re-entry course?”

“No.” Virgil tapped some more, and the calculations flashed around the wayward station’s image. “Still maintaining altitude, just in a lower orbit. The impact must have knocked it out.”

Something about that didn’t compute. “Okay, but if it started to ‘fall’, then it should just keep on going, right?” John’s old friend gravity being what she was.

“Unless John was able to fire the stabilising thrusters.” Dad jabbed at his own small screen. “That’s the only possible explanation. In which case, he must be – or at least have been - conscious for some of the time…which has to be a good sign. Either way, plot a course to Thunderbird Five’s new location, please Virgil. Gordon, standby to fire steering thrusters.”

The two of them couldn’t have gotten their “F.A.B.”s in better unison if they’d practised for a week. Scott sat back, watching as his younger brothers co-ordinated their actions with absolute proficiency as their dad tried once again to contact Five; and, okay, maybe he was just the tiniest smidge proud of them for it. He might even forgive them for the coffee machine and paint.

Yeah…maybe.

Eventually.

The pride notched up a couple of degrees for John as they approached close enough to actually see the stricken Thunderbird: she was a mess of gnarled, broken cahelium and plexiglass, growing steadily larger on the viewing screens and slowly rotating as though to purposely display the gaping holes where a sizeable chunk of her outer ring was missing. He tried to assess the inner structure where his brother would be; but the visual wasn’t clear enough, the twisted ruins of metalwork obscuring it. Still…the strength of collision it would have taken to rip so much of Five away and knock her off course was pretty huge. Then there was the issue that, while Scott was no expert on space rocks, he had plenty of training on munitions and impact damage from his military days; and his bones told him that whatever hit his astronaut brother’s station – John’s home – was ballistic in nature. Which meant this whole situation was no accident…and suddenly, it was kind of hard not to puke.

He debated whether to bring that up for just a fraction too long as they slowed into their final approach, Dad sending out one final attempt to communicate with his second son.

“Hold on, John. We’re coming in!”

The lack of a response dialled down the temperature on Three’s bridge by several degrees; Scott not the only one feeling the chill of nerves, judging by the tension he could see creep across the others’ shoulders. As Five grew close enough that worrying details of the wreckage filled their screen, replacing the image of the enitire ‘Bird, he found himself working hard to control his breathing; desperate for something to do. Instead, he braced in his seat, preparing for the moment he could be useful. Tracys just weren’t meant to sit around while others did all the work, even when those doing said work were other Tracys.

“Gordon,” their father’s voice was tight and stretched, “prepare for immediate docking.”

“You got it, Dad.” The red light of the schematic played eerily across the kid’s face as he made the adjustments, colouring his dark eyes a terrifying scarlet. Scott shuddered involuntarily. “Reverse main thrusters on my mark.”

Docking Three with her space-bound sister went no less smoothly than Scott had come to expect from his few previous missions in the rocket; his brothers and father co-ordinating seamlessly, with vacuum-tight teamwork born of practise and knowing each other so well. Dad barely had to issue the command before Virgil was adjusting the roll index angle, and the docking sequence initiated. Watching their well-rehearsed collaboration, a snippet of memory wormed to the front of his thoughts: finishing his final tour of duty with the Air Force and bidding his squadron buddies goodbye. Big Bird (honestly, they’d called the guy that so often that Scott couldn’t recall his real name) had clapped him on the back in commiseration after he’d told them he was leaving to work for his father’s new business venture.

“Really, Tracy? Stuck working with your family every day? I can’t think of anything worse!”

Scott had laughed a “Maybe!” at the time. Now he couldn’t imagine anything better, a deep, glowing pride in what they had created together thawing the sub-zero chill that had set in when they heard Five had been hit.

Or targeted.

Yeah. The warmth didn’t last long with that realisation – like dropping a freshly-baked cookie into liquid nitrogen.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever get used to the full-ship judder from those huge docking clamps locking on, pulling the rocket tight in to seal against the station: something intangible about it, and the metallic bang that came as accompaniment, conveyed a sense of the realness of just how crazy it was that they had left Earth. Maybe the sound was as everyday to John as One’s boosters kicking in was to Scott…but…it still gave the pilot in him the heebie-jeebies. Perhaps it was something you just got used to, the whole living-among-the-stars thing? After all, it had been going on for a long time – he vaguely remembered his space-obsessed brother excitedly waving a tablet at him one morning before they headed out the door. John had just that minute discovered a new fact…and man, that made him happy as Grandpa’s pigs in a mud bath. He could still recall the awe shining in those bright blue eyes as a nail-bitten finger traced the lines onscreen:

Nov 2^nd 2000 was the last day that every living human was dwelling together on the planet. Since then, at least one has been residing in orbit.

‘Residing’ – so different from the temporary missions of the previous century. Less than a decade after that fateful date, John had become one of them.

They’d felt the coupling happen through their bones, but it was protocol for Gordon to inform them that they were locked on anyway; and Scott was sure he’d never heard the kid sound so nervous. He guessed since they were about to open the box on Schrödinger’s brother; it would have been more concerning if he’d been blasé - yet…it sounded odd, discordant, coming from the perpetually confident trickster. The well-rehearsed script felt stilted as they each recited their lines, waiting for their cues, going through the motions; until it was finally Scott’s turn to participate at the very last stage, scrambling from his seat to the touchpad: the need to be involved thrumming under his skin.

“Tunnel hatch secured.”

Dad nodded, his face grim; eyes darker, sunken deeper, and lines etched more starkly than Scott could remember seeing them…and crap, he looked old all of a sudden. “Emergency packs, boys.” Because they had precisely no idea what conditions they were about to hurl themselves into. “Let’s move.”

Move they sure did: only years of living and working together at close quarters allowed them to anticipate each other’s moves – the way Gordon tended to stick his elbows out; Virgil’s slightly weaving run; Scott’s own long-legged stride and big feet; Dad’s military march – and save them from tripping over one another. The seconds waiting impatiently for the automated voice to confirm the airlock pressure was equalised both sped and dragged, knowing that they were so close to the reality of what had – or hadn’t – happened to John; why he hadn’t replied to any of their hails. Scott was no stranger to the heady, sickening swirl of adrenaline kicks on a rescue; but this time around it was so much…more. The only thing that kept him fighting not to barf in his helmet was the fact that it would be in his helmet, which was so far beyond gross that the curvature of the planet got in the way.

Finally, Dad gave the order. “We’re in. Let’s go!”

Scott made the mistake of pausing for a split second to note the display data recording that the airlock had drawn all its power from Three, not jointly from both ‘Birds – meaning that Five’s systems were disrupted. It made his belly swoop further, and earned him a sharp nudge in the ribs from Gordon. Ahead of them all, their father burst into the main body of the station, pushing against the opening door, calling John’s name before he’d fully cleared the airlock. Next out, practically scraping his heels, Scott almost stumbled into a small dancing patch of orange close to the entrance. He stopped himself, grabbing at his wits and the fire extinguisher point. The decidedly empty point.

“Scott!” Dad’s finger jabbed urgently – so he’d spotted the flames, too. “Tackle that fi…” He halted as abruptly as pausing the TV, arm still outstretched; his hand spreading wide to bar the way. It was a miracle that none of them bowled him over.

Alright, so they hadn’t known what they’d find; but whatever scenarios had played out in any of their minds, he doubted this was among them. Oh sure, the chaos and destruction was par for the course; even the small fires and lingering tang of smoke in the air, the scorched floor littered with the empty husks of Brains’ powerful extinguishers. None of them would have expected John to let flames go unchecked: fire on his Thunderbird was one of the astronaut’s recurring nightmares, even when planet-side. The emergency protocol had shut down the bulkhead doors and sealed them; and judging by the lack of illumination on the keypads, the power outage had gotten to them. They already knew that John’s mayday had been cut short - logically he must still have been in the room when the systems kicked in, so…

Scott’s lungs refused to function as he scanned the area for a third and then fourth time, eyes desperate for the sight of a blond in white; and not – definitely, positively not – a skinny, ginger guy in soot-scuffed blue.

What the actual fu…

“John?” Dad’s eyes never left the redhead as he fiddled to change channels on his comm. “John, do you read me?”

For his part, their ‘visitor’ held his ground; his words clear but not aggressive. “I’m sorry, he’s not here.”

“So I see, but he should be. You, on the other hand, should not.” Dad’s voice could have rent through the hull by itself: diamond-tipped cahelium. Nobody – abso-fucking-lutely nobody – messed with Jefferson Tracy when he took that tone.

The trespasser clearly didn’t get that memo: his stance calm, deliberately passive and maddeningly unruffled. Something about him tickled deep in Scott’s spine, crackling with…familiarity?...despite the incontrovertible fact that he’d never seen the man before. It should have been wariness and warning that he felt: a stranger on his brother’s ‘Bird when said sibling himself was nowhere to be seen…that was crazy, right? It took Scott a few seconds to register that the interloper wasn’t wearing a helmet, so the air had to be breathable. His own came off swiftly, and he felt more than saw his brothers removing theirs, too; Virgil’s forearm bumping his shoulder. Dad was the last, taking his time, and the action held the menace of a cobra flattening its hood.

“What have you done with my s…”

If he’d been asked to place a bet on it, Scott would have thought he’d know how that word ended: ‘…space monitor’. He was wrong.

“…son?”

Ooooh that was bad: their father had to be seriously rattled and holding onto some pretty slender shreds of temper if he was letting secrets slip.

The stranger shut his eyes, pulling in a deep breath. Something about it didn’t sit right with Scott…or, more like sat too right, too natural – the redhead was giving off vibes more suited to a college professor gearing up for a tutorial than a hostage-taker readying himself to make demands. Finally, he nodded, offering what had all the appearances of a genuinely apologetic smile.

“I appreciate how this must look, and I get why you’re angry; but I promise you I haven’t ‘done’ anything with him. I do know where he is – that he’s being looked after - and I’ll happily tell you everything, though it’s a long story. If you…”

Up until that moment, the effect of the emergency lights lent everything a subtle blue tinge. That shifted to red very abruptly for Scott, and he heard himself growl - the whole rest of the control room, and the stars beyond it, fading out as he tunnelled in on this outsider. However mad Dad was, he was now twice as furious: this mercenary or whatever he was…he knew why John had disappeared, and yet he stood there all calm and collected, with some stupid empathetic expression on his face. Stuff how much the others teased Scott for his visible-from-Mars protective streak – John might be the oldest of them, not much younger than Scott himself…but he was still his little brother. Nobody messed with him, or took him, and got away with it. Closing the distance, he subconsciously sized the guy up: sure, he was tall (not many people could look Scott Tracy directly in the eye) and fit - for all his thin build, there was a lot of lean muscle trapped under that indecently tight suit – but he somehow didn’t look any scarier than John, with that same aura of patient understanding.

Then again, underneath his fluffy blond, marshmallow-innocent appearance, John was actually pretty badass; and not even just ‘for a geek’. If this guy had bested him, he must have some serious skills. Regardless, Scott stepped right up to overlap their personal space, noting the man flinch a little at the proximity. He would have counted it a small victory; but the sudden bizarre flash of déjà vu about the John-ness of that reaction almost wrong-footed him.

Almost.

“Where. Is. He?”

And crap if the dude wasn’t every scrap as quietly measured as his astronaut brother, too.

“He’s…safe.” Grimy, blue-covered hands came up in a soothing gesture – precisely the one they’d all seen Lady P employ when talking down irate dignitaries.

It ruffled Scott’s feathers worse than a tornado. “Safe?!” He made no attempt whatsoever to hold back the derisive snort that bubbled up. “Oh, right, so now you’re International Rescue, are you? ‘Cause I don’t see any Thunderbirds outside other than the one we just arrived in!”

“I…”

A nasty thought blinked in at the back of Scott’s mind, irritating his nerves enough to make his hands twitch. “Or did you cause this?”  He shoved the redhead hard in the chest, forcing him the half-step back that it took for his knees to collide with the chair. The momentum of blue-clad butt crashing down onto it sent the seat skeetering a couple of feet on its rails. “Did you crash your ship into our station? Or did you come with friends and kidnap my brother…and then, what? They left you behind?”

“It’s nothing like that…,” eerily turquoise eyes glanced down at the name patch sewn on his uniform, “…Scott.” A blink-and-you’d-miss-it smile flickered at the corner of his mouth, like he’d somehow expected the name.

Which was just plain weird. And dangit if the guy wasn’t still being infuriatingly cool and collected. Closer than he had been – the others must have crept forwards during the confrontation – Dad’s tone softened a couple of degrees down the Moh’s scale.

“Scott, back off a little and let him speak.”

He wheeled on his family, stunned. Seriously? “You’re taking his side? When we don’t know…”

“That’s exactly right: we don’t know – and we aren’t going to find out with threats. Now stand down.”

Their father’s blue-grey stare never failed to have them all fighting back the tears as kids. Even several years into adulthood, the eldest still felt the weight of it almost physically, daring him to disagree. Dad wasn’t always right, though – and Scott’s conviction that this was one of the exceptions to the rule clung firmly, despite his attempts to shake it loose. Nonetheless, he backed off both literally and figuratively, forcing his temper down as he turned back to the stranger. “Okay, buddy, exactly who are you?”

The sigh he got in response nearly shook the floor. “I doubt in your current frame of mind that you would believe me if I told you.”

What the flip was that supposed to mean? “Try me.”

The guy pulled himself back onto his feet and up to his full height…and crud, if he didn't match Scott inch-for-inch. “My name is John Tracy.”

His arm drew back without any conscious thought or decision behind it; and he barely felt Virgil’s hands grasp ineffectually at his bicep. A second later Scott did register - with enormous satisfaction – the sensation of his fist connecting forcefully with the lying asshole’s cheekbone.

Chapter Text

Operating linearly, EOS decided, was frustrating.

From the instant that John had been able to make a connection between her portable drive and their new location’s mainframe, it had been a battle. Accustomed to being almost infinitely adaptable in their own reality, able to integrate and assimilate into anything she could access, this was a seismic shift. As she had already made comparison to her companion: it was like learning an entire new language from scratch, with no frame of reference, and using an unfamiliar alphabet. Not only was the coding dramatically different from anything she had come across - and once she had fathomed it, irksomely primitive - but also the quality of wiring and connections that she had to negotiate was unable to cope with the speeds she was used to thinking at. To compound the insult, the small capacity for wireless that once existed was knocked out of service by the explosion, and had proved irretrievable.

It was categorically not that she was used to having it easy. In her early days of emerging consciousness, there had been innumerable trials as she’d made her way around the globe, searching for something she couldn’t name; but she herself had been maturing and evolving, able to twist the challenges into learning opportunities and grow through them. It had been organic…if that were a word one could apply to any aspect of EOS’ existence. By the time she’d accessed Scott’s comm device on that Japanese train, and been able to begin hopping through various I.R. tech to make her way onto the orbiting Thunderbird, her sentience was almost true. With it had come a creeping awareness that she couldn’t keep moving indefinitely; and during those few weeks between her arrival and revealing her existence, she came to understand what she’d been missing.

A home.

Thunderbird Five felt right.

Which, objectively, was completely rational. It was not only isolated and virtually impenetrable to hackers; but the programming she found herself working with was already so like her own coding that it made the most perfect fit. Of course, they were both John’s work, so that was no surprise. She’d never wanted to rule the world, to have any material advantage over anyone, not like the villains in all the stories she’d had access to; she just wanted to be safe, and at first John had seemed like a threat to that. She now knew it was simply an assumption: the first glitch in her absolute pursuance of logic, and the result of her basic being having been laid down by a human…even one as dedicated to science and reason as him. She should have examined the evidence more thoroughly. There had been moments when he’d grown suspicious of something being off. Not that she’d made mistakes, simply that he was so attuned with his home – their home – that the merest flicker of a light, or turn of a camera as she watched him had piqued his curiosity. He’d checked the systems, and she’d been very careful to hide herself; but the absence of an attempt to eradicate her should have given her pause before she sought to do the same to him. Every other programmer who had detected her presence had torn their systems apart to get rid of her, and there had been times when she’d had to hop from place to place so frequently that it had been difficult to grow and learn in those environments. They’d seen her as a bug, a virus, something to get rid of at all costs.

John was different.

Yes, he had been one of those searching for her, as she found out when they finally had their first true conversation; but John didn’t want to control her, he wanted to protect her. He wanted a friend…and on analysis, it seemed that what she’d truly been searching for was the same. They made an excellent team. Sometimes he shielded her, saved her; and sometimes she returned the favour. Just like now, trapped on a station so lacking in the connectivity she had come to take as a given for the communication hub of International Rescue, that she could barely bring herself to acknowledge it as any counterpart to their own. They were the world’s most technologically advanced humanitarian organisation. Or their world’s, certainly; she was beginning to wonder how this team got anything done with their antediluvian arrangement. Despite the shortcomings, John was relying on her, and - unless her capacity had taken a downturn along with their surroundings – so was the version of him whom BERNARD had rescued. Professor Brains had originated the idea and built the machine; but the programming had been down to John: it would take both of them to work out how best to bring the other space monitor back – how to time it so that he wasn’t returned to the same conditions he’d left. By her reckoning, all that was needed to get them home was for their family to reverse the polarity once more…although that remained to be seen. It wasn’t something she had the spare analysing power to mull over for the moment.

Just two days ago, John had spoken about how he felt she was becoming more human. They had discussed it at length, the positive and negative aspects of that; of her understanding of emotions versus actually experiencing them; of her ability to empathise weighed against the advantage to both her and International Rescue of remaining intellectually impartial. Perhaps the adage about what happens when one assumes was not so far from the mark. She certainly hadn’t anticipated a second threat; and linear processing was so exasperating not simply because it slowed her down, but because it forced her to choose. Prioritising was something she was familiar with: she’d watched John do it effortlessly so often, it hadn’t taken long for her to acquire the skills and build something close to an algorithm to deal with the occasionally seemingly irrational reasoning. Having to allocate all her resources to one problem or another? That was new, and she didn’t like it. It made her feel…the closest human feeling that she had experience of was vulnerable: being forced to turn her back on one danger to focus on another, leaving herself potentially exposed.

She hadn’t expected to have to make that kind of decision.

In the first minutes after they’d been dropped into their current predicament - in the time it took both of them to orientate themselves into the new situation and surroundings, and to tackle the immediate problems that arose - she’d been sure that the only real perils would be consecutive. Initially there had been the fires, followed by re-establishing the life-support systems to enable John to breathe. Now that they had a definite timing on how long travel from this alternate Tracy Island to the station took, a capacity for calculation as great as hers was unnecessary to work out that without her presence, John would have exhausted his oxygen before rescue came. If the theories and information that he’d passed on to her (and sought her input on whilst they were still in the elevator) were as they seemed, then the probability that Parallel John - with his head injury and lack of helmet - would have been able to fight the fires for himself was almost zero. He would have died from hypoxia before he regained consciousness; either from the levels of carbon monoxide in the air he breathed, or from the simple fact that he was bleeding internally, reducing his own physiological oxygen-carrying capacity. It was only logical that BERNARD would have locked onto him in preference to her John, who had been perfectly safe aboard their Thunderbird Five.

Selfishly – and she knew it was - EOS very much wished that the accidental ability to cross whatever barrier existed between universes hadn’t been part of the new machine’s programming. They would still be home…but the other John would be dead. It took very little extrapolation from previous experience to arrive at the conclusion that he would be very sorely missed by his family. Not only did she have the reactions of her own John’s household (to his near-miss at her digital hands) to draw on; but she had managed to work her way into the cameras dotted across their new location…and could see the way the other Tracys were reacting to missing a member. In conclusion, for the greater good (which was precisely what International Rescue was set up for, was it not?), she couldn’t regret the warped serendipity of BERNARD’s capability. Even if it wasn’t the best of outcomes for them to have been sent into this other reality, it was a good thing for John’s equivalent to be pulled into theirs.

Which did not mean that it was easy for her to remain inert over the way events were unfolding.

She trusted John to handle it. She would still have trusted him had she had any real agency in the matter; but as her only options to act would have revealed her existence, it was a moot point. She had to trust, too, in her family’s alternate selves behaving as honourably as those she had the hard evidence for. It assisted her greatly that they had taken the interesting decision to have their names embroidered onto the front of their uniforms: it allowed more accurate analysis of their behaviour in the absence of any definitive facial resemblance.

The one designated Jeff was the hardest for her to make a comparison with: not having had any direct interaction with their own reality’s version. She had, nonetheless, seen sufficient footage from both family and I.R. archives to glean an idea of how he would likely have handled finding not only that his son had disappeared, but that another man had taken his place: the steel that would likely temper his reaction. This man’s presence corresponded with her expectation. He was commanding, which was only logical for a person titled Commander of International Rescue; he remained calm under what she deduced would be a great deal of emotional strain; and he showed a willingness to listen before passing judgement on the stranger. On John.

Unsettlingly, it was also the point at which she realised that the tall man beside him who was evidently Scott’s counterpart appeared to have an analogous temperament to theirs. If that translated to a matching intellect once he had calmed down, it may be beneficial; although he currently seemed to be…less than amenable to reasoned discussion.

Which was possibly as close as EOS had so far come to an ‘understatement’. At least she was now confident that she could positively identify those after their earlier conversation.

Gaining access to optical images inside the station had taken far longer than she was ‘happy’ about. Sound had been easier, with fewer pathways and connections having been destroyed; though many of the speakers’ circuits had been affected, and so that, too, had taken an exasperation number of attempts. She had, therefore, heard what she extrapolated to have been most of the conversation between her friend and the newcomers. The added frustration came in her inability to apply the tricks John had taught her in interpreting visual clues to their states of mind. Fortunately – or more accurately, unfortunately – the cordiality of the discussion deteriorated rather rapidly.

“Or did you cause this?”

The first words resolved themselves out of the crackle of static as she tweaked. They were followed almost immediately by the thump of a jarring impact which coincided with a small judder through the control room’s floor, picked up by one of the remaining functioning vibration sensors. EOS instantly recognised her own sense of urgency heightening.

“Did you crash your ship into our station? Or did you come with friends and kidnap my brother…and then, what? They left you behind?”

Nearly! She so very nearly had the camera above the central wall screen working; but the wire junction failed at the last microsecond.

“It’s nothing like that, Scott.”

John's tone held a flicker of resigned amusement. Anyone not intimately acquainted with him would have missed it; but there was a hint of ironic smile in those words. EOS knew it categorically, even if she couldn’t see it. The conversation twisted and wove like the awkward wires she was forced along; Jeff’s voice in control, Scott’s nudging at the boundaries. It was a different dynamic from anything she’d heard from John’s own eldest brother: he was the one in charge, and – other than on two isolated occasions where Virgil had needed to physically step in – he kept himself in check…because there was no-one senior to do it for him. Nobody to push against. This Scott had the freedom to test the margins. He sounded younger, and not simply in his biological age: less careworn, less responsible.

There was a deliberate petulance to his “Try me.”

“My name is…”

She was in! She was in…just in time to observe…

“…John Tracy.”

…square up to a man in on off-white suit that she was not convinced (given their woeful lack of any decent level of technology on the station) was adequately robust as to be space-rated, regardless of Alan’s assessment. Just in time to see Parallel Scott lash out angrily, catching John hard on his left zygomatic bone. For once disconnected from her friend’s readouts, EOS didn’t need to be able to register the punch through his suit’s sensors: there was no mistaking the force of the blow from its effect. John’s head rocked back at an angle that she calculated to be painful, causing him to stagger backwards two paces before his right foot snagged against a rail built into the floor, and he lost his balance. Had they been alone and with everything in working order, she could have turned down the gravity to soften his landing, similar to the way she had done several times before on their own Five by manipulating the ring. To do it in front of strangers (even if the controls had been at her disposal, which they were not) might alert them to her presence…which could go very badly for her and John. She had to weigh the options of a decision between saving him from hitting the floor, and saving them both from prying questions.

Ultimately, there was no actual choice to be made: she had to allow gravity - however artificial – its prize, and watch as John crashed into the solid metal flooring.

He had barely landed before his assailant was on him again, looming over to grab his baldric with a hand already reddened by contusion, and snarling into his face. “You think you’re a comedian? That’s not fucking funny, buddy.”

The Commander did not seem impressed at the turn of events. “Scott!”

EOS didn’t need to know him to recognise the warning in his voice; although perhaps his son was less adept at picking up on auditory clues, as he ignored the calling of his name.

“I’m not in the mood for playing games,” he shook John hard. “So let’s try this again: who are you really – and what the hell have you done with my brother?”

The final two words came punctuated with angry jolts; and were she the type of entity that needed to respire, EOS would have held her breath. All the data she had gathered in her analysis on human ‘tempers’ led her to conclude that John was below the second centile in terms of how easily he lost his. However, said observations also meant that she recognised the slight tic in his clenched masseter muscle that signified his limits were approaching. She had seen him be attacked by disgruntled rescuees on four occasions, and on each he had kept what Virgil called ‘his cool’. They were stressful situations – rescues always were – and in their own private debriefs after the main team ones, he had explained to her why he hadn’t reacted counter-aggressively; talked her through the human tendency to lash out verbally or physically when fearful. From that knowledge, she could extrapolate that Parallel Scott was afraid – most likely for the wellbeing of his missing sibling - and not thinking fully rationally.

She could also deduce that, given the events of the past few hours, the same applied to John.

One hundred and thirteen days ago, he had told her that he'd learned to ascertain her moods through the tones she chose to display in the ring of lights around her main camera. What she had yet to disclose to him was that she had begun to catalogue his in a similar way. Compared with a human’s fallible and rather basic system of retinal cones to perceive colour, the optical systems and circuits in Thunderbird Five – and thus EOS herself – were several degrees of magnitude more sensitive to pigment, hue and saturation; which enabled her to distinguish between the subtly different shades that John’s eyes took on. They were not conscious changes that he made; but caused by contractions in his irises, reddening of his sclera, the contrasting effects of skin pallor or dark circles: effects of biological changes and his circumstances. The loss of the green in the spectrum, and the deepening of blue she recognised instantly as him fighting to maintain his composure; and though his features remained impassive, his vocal nuances corroborated her suspicions.

“The only thing I’ve ‘done’ with John is save him from this mess; or, more accurately, the machine that my friend and I developed has. Right now, he’s as safe as he can be - which is away from here. Away from this orbiting death-trap that you effectively imprisoned him in.”

“The fuck do you mean by that?” A second hand joined the first in John’s baldric, shaking increasingly fiercely. EOS held herself back from calculating the probability of trauma to his cervical vertebral column.

“Scott!” The Commander’s voice held a tone EOS knew humans used to imply that they were not to be ignored. The five paces he needed to cover to reach the man who – if the parallels held - was his eldest son were precise and swift; and the slap of his hand onto the younger Tracy’s shoulder was audible through the station’s microphones. “Stand down!”

She had no trouble in recognising the slow, jerking way that Alternative (hmm, yes – so far, that was her favourite way to make the distinction between one universe’s version of the man and the other) Scott’s arms retracted, and the way he pulled himself upright - straightening stiffly - as reluctance; but he backed away two paces as his father filled the position he'd vacated in looming over John. The minute loosening in her friend’s taut posture lasted two-point-four-three seconds as he attempted to sit up…before the Commander’s boot caught him softly in the sternum, pressing him down again, gently but firmly.

“So, you did take him.”

John blinked slowly, holding assertive eye contact. “If you’ll give me a chance to expla…”

“Yes or no.”

The Tracys had a strong aversion to the passing on of deliberate inaccuracies that humans termed ‘lying’. John had explained to her once (because with her intellect and memory, once was all it ever took) that there was a distinct difference between untruth and part-truth. She knew that his initial answer to the question may have to tactically tread the line between the two.

“Yes and no.” At the Commander’s frown of displeasure, John brought one hand up in what she had learnt was a gesture of appeasement. “More accurately, no. ‘Take’ is…misleading: there was no deliberate abduction…”

The men wearing badges that read ‘Gordon’ and ‘Virgil’ dove to grab their brother as he lunged at John once more.

“You bast…”

“Scott!” The Commander’s hand moved rapidly. “I will not tell you again!” Refocussing his attention, he must have applied a fraction more pressure, as John grunted under his foot. “And you had better make this good, or there might be an airlock with your name on it. Understand?”

John nodded, the microphones picking up a scritch as his hair rubbed against the textured metal of the floor. “Perfectly. But as I said, it’s a long story. One that’s not terribly easy to elaborate on whilst lying on the floor with a foot on my chest.”

There was enough of a pause to the Commander’s reply to notch up EOS’s prickle of unease; but finally, he gave a sharp nod, stepping back from John to take a hold of the still-scowling Alt-Scott. Alt-Gordon let go of his brother, moving to offer a hand down to help John up. It was accepted; but the moment her friend was on his feet, Alt-Gordon swung himself around to twist John’s arm behind his back; not hard – there was only a little of what she knew to be discomfort on his face – but she knew the move. When monitoring the team’s training sessions out of curiosity, she’d seen Kayo teaching them all the correct way to use it to avoid causing damage, yet still deliver the intended message: asserting dominance. For a brief second, as she watched John force himself to relax rather than succumb to his natural instinct to fight, EOS wondered whether the Tanusha from this reality was their security expert, too.

The Commander moved slowly to position himself right in front of John; and in doing so, blocked the acceptable view that EOS had of him. “From the state of this place, I’m guessing that we don’t have time for ‘long stories’, so I’ll ask you some questions, and I want full, honest answers…or you’ll be leaving this station the not-so-fun way.”

Which would be murder...and completely contrary to everything that the family and their organisation stood for. It was a bluff. Even from the simple viciousness of the threat, that much was obvious; but his body language suggested that there was approximately a ninety-six percent probability that she she was correct. She had learnt those tells from observing Gordon pre-and post-prank. 

John had evidently noted it as well. “I will do my best; but bear in mind that if you eject me, you’ll never find out what happened. ”

Alt-Gordon was sufficiently in her field of view that she easily saw the jerk as he wrenched John’s wrist.

“Quit trying to be funny if you want this arm to stay in its socket!”

This was unacceptable: she needed to be able to fully see her friend. The linear processing limitation extended to an inability to access more than one camera at a time, which was a maddeningly analogue restriction. Maintaining her connection to the microphone, she heard the Commander rebuke his son as she stretched through the wires, searching for a more satisfactory perspective…

…Which was when she felt it, beginning as just the barest tingle.

During their first days together, she had spent a lot of time explaining to John how she had come to be in his home: her evolution and difficulties fleeing from near-constant persecution. He had been fascinated to hear her explanation of how she had defended herself, how she’d picked up on the threats before they were able to cause any damage to her coding, or trap and erase her entirely. Listening to her description, he had been quiet for a few moments (something that she had very quickly comprehended was less of an unusual trait for him than for almost every other human she had encountered), and then responded with what she came to understand was an analogy. Only a couple of hours before, he had been what he called ‘chatting’ to his brother Virgil while the latter relaxed by what she had at first taken to be an unnecessarily large outdoor cleansing facility, but John had told her was a recreational pool. The topic had been inconsequential, but after seven point three two minutes, Virgil had extremely abruptly leapt off the ‘lounger’ he had been reclining on, shrieking incoherently. It transpired that Gordon had crept up unnoticed and ‘tickled’ him with a kea feather he’d found; Virgil’s base instincts had told him that it might be a spider (which he was irrationally afraid of), and he had reacted accordingly to try to distance himself from the perceived threat. Once he had stopped making the noise he’d called ‘laughing’, John had described the sensation of a ‘tickle’ for a human - of feeling something tiny brush against their skin, insubstantial, but alarming.

It precisely fit the perception of another code attempting to interact with her, or her host…and it was in progress. Merely a minute disturbance in the system she was winding through, it was nonetheless there - a sensation that she had once relied upon honing her ability to detect: an intruder. In truth, in their current situation she was also an intruder, just as she technically had been on all those other occasions when the creators of the technology and programs she had piggy-backed had come looking for her. Hunted her. Now she would have to play that old game again.

The new vantage point would have to wait.

Trusting John had become a hardened part of her code as it developed; woven in as she grew in confidence that her new companion was as good as his word in wanting nothing more controlling than to be her friend. They had spoken about this, too, on seven separate occasions, and she knew the experience to be mutual: there was an agreement, born of both necessity and respect, to form a partnership of sorts. A symbiosis. Even before it grew into what she understood as a friendship. Turning her back - diverting her attention away from his heated and unstable interaction with the other Tracys - jarred like poorly connected nodes…yet there was no decision to make: the evidence already suggested that they would be unlikely to harm him further. However, the new threat (because she had to treat it as such until she had sufficient evidence to relax her defences) was an unknown quantity. EOS didn’t like those.

There was no intelligence coded into this version of Thunderbird Five. There were algorithms and failsafes, but ultimately it was designed to do whatever a human told it to, not to make true decisions for itself. In that respect, even BERNARD was more advanced. On what John would call the ‘plus side’, that had made taking control of the computers far easier than if she’d had to placate or circumvent another intellect, even a basic one. On the ‘minus’, it left the station disturbingly vulnerable to being hacked…if the hacker were skilled enough. As she was. As this challenger may turn out to be.

There were defences in place: International Rescue had both lives and secrets to protect here, too. They had slowed her down, not because they were exhaustive, but simply due to the incompatibility of her coding; and she meticulously observed the ripples that the newcomer’s probing caused, attempting to gauge how much resistance they were encountering. Fortunately, the firewalls appeared to be proving sufficiently robust as to be giving the potential intruder trouble; permitting her the few seconds that she required to assemble a strategy. Another new experience. Humans typically needed ‘thinking time’, even those with the intellectual capacity of John or Professor Brains. She did not. Until now.

EOS’ initial hypothesis was that Alt-Alan may be responsible. Working on the theory that there were sufficient similarities between the universes, it was reasonable to suppose he might have been the one to pilot their Thunderbird Three up to Five, remaining aboard; and was now attempting to conduct damage analysis. However, it was unlikely that he would encounter any problems: the systems necessarily being fully compatible. Sliding cautiously along to the interface between station and rocket, she made a quick check nonetheless. Thunderbird Three was empty, which further suggested malicious intent, and informed her next course of action.

Being forced to alternate between giving her attention to safeguarding all that she could and monitoring the foreign presence gave EOS her first glimpse of the concept of disorientation; but ultimately she was able to lock down as many facets of the station’s system as were active whilst they were still fumbling to gain access. As the surges became gradually more disruptive, she could detect that the virtual push was close to breaking through: it was time to shift into the second phase of her plan.

There was so much information that she had learnt from John, and from the things that he loved; yet she hadn’t been in existence long before she realised that observing as many different lives, as many different methods and means, as possible would give her the best chance of survival. Hiding by withdrawal was her first strategy; mimicry only came later: picked up in a rudimentary form in the server banks of Novosibirsk State University, and refined by watching a number of documentaries on cephalopod behaviour that Gordon streamed to the island through Five’s communication array.

In her best squid impersonation, EOS camouflaged her ‘skin’ to replicate the host code…and waited.

It was a relatively safe tactic: if she could postulate Thunderbird Five to be the pinnacle of technological advancement in this universe - as it was in her own - then the absence of anything approaching her abilities onboard would suggest a lack of utilisation of artificial intelligence in their society. Anyone hacking in would not be even entertaining the prospect of a true A.I. nestled in the wiring, let alone be actively on alert against one advanced enough to mimic the host system.

If she had doubted her ability (which of course she hadn’t) to recognise and distinguish non-self programming, then she needn’t have. The first fleeting brushes of the hackers against her personal firewall were impossible to miss: the code itself subtly different from the one she had already been dealing with. She came back once again to the analogy she had used with John: this time the language – the Ænglisċ of her description – was the same as the station’s…simply a variant dialect, like the difference between Kayo’s English and the Tracys’. She remained inert, merely observing and gathering intelligence with all the restraint of the Lady Penelope at a royal banquet; noting where the probing moved and what it seemed to target. It couldn’t do anything, couldn’t interface - she’d made certain of that - but their tracks proved…interesting. Her expectation was that they would probably head for the memory banks and recording storage, or the communications centre (however burnt out); instead the focus was distinctly on the life-support systems and gravity generator. It was not a difficult conclusion to draw that they were not so much attempting to target the station itself, as the humans aboard it. To what ends, she had yet to parse; but after years of evading erasure in their own universe, EOS took deep exception to any attempts in another...and worse, this time they were threatening John.

That would not be tolerated.

She would have liked to hunt them down, the way she’d been hunted. Had they been at home, she would have done: erased every last digit of the code that pressed against her and tested the only systems still keeping her and the humans she was protecting alive. Here, that would be too suspicious – her capacity for subtlety limited when all she had at her disposal were the equivalent of rocks for brain surgery: she could knap the flints to a point; but they were still crude tools. This was an unrefined system, and more pertinently, it was alien - good thing she was beyond what any breathing person would call a genius. She had pondered on four occasions how her development would have been had her initial code been written by someone less…capable…than John. Probably, she would have struggled to evolve the way she had, if she’d managed it at all; and it sparked her curiosity about the person behind this invasion. The pathetic tickle was no match for her – no match for anything her friend could write; but was that merely down to this universe lagging so far behind?

It paused, pulses stilling; and for a microsecond EOS was concerned that she had been thinking too hard – giving herself away…then it moved on, switching direction to scratch determinedly at the surface of Five’s interface with Three, trying to disconnect the two. To trap John and the others. It wasn’t true déjà vu as she understood it, but the situation felt familiar in an uncomfortable way; and dealing with it also called for a tactic that she’d used on that day. From passive imitation, she shifted to more actively emulate the Thunderbird: it was far less complex and nuanced than when she’d simulated John, but comfortably adequate to fool the attacker into thinking that they were successfully in charge of the computer. It was, she reasoned, the best way to ascertain their true intentions: let them think that they had the upper hand.

Linear working it may have been, yet she had still managed an excellent read on the systems during her own break-in: shadowing the hostile code to replicate a loss of control over the station was simple once she was certain that’s what they were attempting in their probing. The gravity went first, followed by the remains of the power feeding from the probably-damaged array…and finally an attack on the oxygen recycling system. Even for an entity as built around binary certainties as EOS, there was only one possible conclusion from those actions. The one thing which did take her by surprise was the burst of audio waves.

“Attention, Thunderbird Five.”

It was a simple matter to intercept and record it, ensuring that John and the others heard nothing until it became essential that they must; but the attackers thought that they were getting through. EOS wanted to know her enemy. If she could fend off this threat without concerning the men, then she would: she did not want to take the chance that John might be scapegoated.

“As you can see, I have taken over your facilities: you no longer control your operation systems.”

Perfect! She definitely had them fooled. The question remained as to where the broadcast originated, as there was no other ship anywhere close: the proximity alarms on Thunderbird Three that she still had access to proved that. So where was this coming from? Unless…

Analysis of the vocal wavelength suggested a male larynx. In the breaths between the man's crowing taunts, she made a surreptitious calculation. The signals themselves were short-range; though they carried the faint distortion of being a relay from much further afield. Approximately twenty-two thousand miles, in fact: Earth. So if there was no other craft nearby…could it be something from the original explosion? A transmitter sent up as part of a missile, designed to withstand detonation?

“Nothing to say for yourselves, hmm? Or did my little ‘gift’ take out your microphones?”

The words were sneering; and nudged discordantly at her memories.

“No matter: I’m not interested in your opinion anyway.”

Although the voice was subtly different; the cadence and the menace - the showboating - were unmistakable: a tone and arrogance she was unfortunately familiar with. As she listened to him discussing quietly with a female (neither of them bothering to fully mute the connection) her initial suspicions were confirmed. The derision in his tone as he scoffed at the fragility of the communication system, and the condescension as he addressed his subordinate’s suggestions…they pointed in one direction. And if the whole situation hadn’t been personal before, it became so the moment he confirmed his identity.

“Oh how rude of me, not introducing myself! You can call me The Hood.”

For once, EOS took precisely no pleasure in being correct; nor would she have had time to gloat, because he was far from finished.

“Now listen, Mister Tracy – we won’t be negotiating: I’m going to use the Thunderbirds to rob the largest banks in the world, starting with the London Bank. The world’s monetary system will be thrown into chaos, and the Thunderbirds held responsible.”

It was hardly the most devious scheme…but the memory of Professor Brains knocking one of Thunderbird Four’s panels back into shape with a hammer slid from somewhere at the back of her processors. “Sometimes, a bit of brute force is all that’s n-needed.”

“I expect you’re wondering why I’m doing this? Well, it’s an eye for an eye, Mister Tracy. Perhaps you’ve forgotten me? But surely you remember saving the life of my brother, Kyrano?”

'Kyrano'? Not ‘Mister Kyrano’? EOS had never met Tanusha’s father, but he’d been mentioned occasionally in hushed tones… and not around Kayo herself. She had no time to analyse what the difference may signify, however, because another voice butted in: less brash, and quieter, as though the speaker were further from the microphone. “I’m sorry, Mister Tracy. I thought he was dead!”

“You left me to die that day.” It appeared that The Hood was more concerned with continuing his caricatured monologue than responding to his sibling. “You might have broken my body; but you’ve no idea how powerful my mind has become.”

Not as powerful as mine.

“Now you will suffer, as I suffered, waiting for a rescue that will never come.”

All that was missing from his statement, EOS felt, was a ‘Mwah-ha-ha’ to complete the air of parodied villainy. The animations that Alan watched almost always featured stereotyped ‘baddies’ who finished their fiendish plots that way. Cartoons he probably thought the others didn’t know about. Ones she and John occasionally indulged in, too…in the name of her expanding her education in narrative art forms, of course.

The audio cut out with a fizzle, leaving only the invasive presence behind. It remained passive for seventeen point three seconds before she felt the now-familiar tickle begin to move towards the circuits controlling the station’s ambient temperature, attempting to increase it. Once more, EOS was able to easily counterfeit the primitive workings – feeding back a simulation of rising Fahrenheit (the use of which cemented her opinion of the reality she’d been dropped into as antiquated) that she calculated would be believable in both progression and speed. She took the absence of any further meddling as evidence that it had worked. In fact, there were no subsequent attempts to do anything in the system; but EOS had eavesdropped enough of I.R.’s training sessions to know that you always check for the ‘last man’ - whether that be ensuring all life-signs were accounted for, or clearing the area of any potential aggressors. It was a fact she struggled with comprehending: that an organisation like International Rescue with such altruistic aims should find itself the target of malicious intent. Humans were highly illogical…but as Alan was wont to say, ‘go figure’.

They were, of course, currently experiencing a case in point; and that occupied her available processing power as she waited for the attackers – correction: The Hood and his minions – to make their next move.

What had he meant by ‘You left me to die’? It was a course of action starkly at odds with the entire ethos of the organisation; and she had ascertained from the communication records she’d found that this universe was no different from her own in that regard. She would not have expected any less. She also understood the importance of perspective in a narrative: it was entirely possible that The Hood fully believed that he had been abandoned, whatever the objective story of actual events. John had told her that sometimes people have their own ‘truth’, and she could appreciate that: hadn’t she once fallen into the same trap herself? A second visit to the records may be in order…however, it would be expedient to make certain that the intruders were no longer an immediate threat first.

So EOS waited. Again. The seconds and milliseconds ticking by excruciatingly as she allowed a full three minutes to pass with no activity from the foreign code; it would still be a risk, but she was as confident as she could be that it was safe to allow her focus to alter for a short time. Locking everything down, she flowed stealthily through the circuits, taking care to bypass any areas that had been of interest to the other presence. The memory servers she’d previously found were (to her mind) clumsily located stuffed down beneath the console John had initially plugged her into; but the connections did not follow what she would consider a logical pattern, and it took a frustratingly long time to get there from her position close to the main docking airlock. That in itself felt discombobulating: EOS was not used to having one location in a system, rather than permeating the whole thing at once. Back in their own reality, she almost was Thunderbird Five – had become intrinsic to the workings of the station, integrating smoothly with the networks…here she felt like a parasite, crawling over the surface and trying not to be exterminated.

Ultimately, the arduousness of the journey wasn’t worth the effort. She dove as deep as she could, wriggling into the corners and recesses, but there was nothing to be found, despite the banks themselves being 98.74 percent intact after the explosion; and reluctantly had to conclude that if the records existed, they must be stored elsewhere – most likely on Tracy Island. Calculating the odds that she’d ever have a free reign there was impossible; but most likely they would be miniscule. To EOS, it seemed more than a little short-sighted to only keep copies in one location. Their own documents were backed up both on Five and in the complex servers that John and the Professor had set up underneath the villa. The rest of the world might trust the so-called ‘cloud’; but both IR and the family’s business interests were reluctant to rely on a system that was more than sixty years old and open to hacking…not, of course, something that she or John would ever admit to having done. Concluding that, for now at least, this was yet one more thing she wasn’t going to know. The thought left her with a fizz of extreme dissatisfaction.

Vexed, EOS turned her full attention back to their unwanted guests.

Who had not moved. The presence – or the potential for it – remained, but all activity had ceased; and she surmised that The Hood’s arrogance had moved him on to the second part of his plan: stealing the other Thunderbirds. Or, more accurately, the others not already docked with what he thought was a stricken space station. She’d prevented that; she had to stop the rest; which meant she needed to alert John somehow...without betraying her own presence. It just kept coming back to that, didn’t it? Which, she was aware, was what John called a rhetorical question; not the kind that EOS would normally ask, given that she liked concrete answers. She hoped that in the time she’d been busy, he might have found some, if there were any to discover.

One last thorough check of her safeguards, and EOS began the tedious journey back towards her access to the cameras and microphones; the lag between the desire and being able to make it happen almost maddening. What she estimated to be the most direct path was impossible, as it comprised several explosion-severed dead-ends that she had encountered in her initial exploration, and which she was 99.94 percent certain would have met up before their destruction. The second-best route now sliced through a danger zone - an area where her new nemesis lurked - and although she had effectively rendered them impotent in their ability to access or disrupt anything on the station, they may still detect her.

Operating linearly was frustrating, perhaps; but receiving information that way – and the lack of capability to process it – was dangerous, almost frightening for an entity whose survival depended on her intellect, and knowing. Having lost track of what was happening to her friend, she had been forced to trust people she didn’t know…could only make predictions about based on their counterparts. She wasn’t often wrong; but gaining access to the audio feed before she was able to reach the video suggested that perhaps this time she had given them too much of (what she’d heard Doctor Tracy call) ‘the benefit of the doubt’.

The sound was indistinct at first, as though the connections had begun to degrade in her absence: the voices blurred and running over one another. She had to work to tweak and smooth, to separate the noise into discrete wavelengths before she could make out what was being said…but the pitch and emphasis she was able to decipher strongly suggested conflict.

The first words she managed to fully make out were John’s.

“Wait!” It was full of urgency, and something else…alarm, or possibly fear? “Please, wait!”