First ever Secret Saturday fanfic, so don't kill me if the people are out of character. I'm not sure how old Drew and Doc are, so this is set when they're around twenty three, and they're just engaged right now. I don't expect this to be very long, but it isn't exactly a one shot either. It's sort of... a bunch of one shots strung together awkwardly in a sad attempt to make a story. Just bear with me, Okay?
Forgot to say last time, and it probably made things a little confusing for the people reading, but Zachary Weber is my OC.
Zachary 'Zak' Weber drummed his fingers impatiently on his desk. Technically, he wasn't supposed to be in here, but interning got boring after a while, so he had snuck into the testing room. Unfortunately, nothing was going on right now. Looked like he'd hacked into the security system for nothing, then.
Zak was in his mid teens, and had black hair and darkish skin of indeterminable origin. He had a slight build coupled with a small stature that had made him the target of more than one bully at the orphanage before they learned not to underestimate him.
The only reason he'd bothered trying for an internship was because it sounded interesting, 'Secret Scientists' and all that, but so far it was only paperwork. He hadn't even gotten to see these cryptid thingies everyone seemed to be so obsessed with.
The door slid open. Zak glanced up to see two familiar people standing in the doorway, Doc and Drew, with identical expressions of anger on their faces.
He grinned at the pair. "What's up?"
Drew groaned. "The second we let you out if our sight, you run off and do something stupid. Zak, you know you're not supposed to be in here."
"Sorry, Mom." He mocked good-naturedly.
Doc crossed his arms."What do you have to say for yourself?"
"Um...the door was already open?" He shrugged.
"You broke into the lab? Do you know how dangerous that could've been?" Drew exploded. Even though the two were only eight years older than Zak, they really acted like his parents, which was fine with the boy, seeing as the parents he had took off along time ago.
He leaned back against the table on his stool. "Relax, I didn't touch anything!" He laughed. "I just got really bored, you know how it is."
The adults exchanged glances, and they sat in silence for a few awkward seconds. It was Doc who finally relented. "You're still in trouble, but for now, just get back to work."
Grin growing wider, the teenager jumped to the floor and slid past both of them.
As soon as he had gone a sufficient distance down the hallway, Drew turned back to her fiancé."Honestly, he 'got bored'? What kind of reasoning is that? He could've... broken something!"
Doc laughed."We both know that wasn't really what you were worried about. He is just a kid."
"Yeah. And how did he even get this job? He's what, thirteen?"
Doc was inspecting the code panel next to the door. "Fifteen. This is impressive work. He just tweaked a couple of wires, and if I hadn't been looking for it, I never would have noticed."
"Doc!" Drew practically shouted, exasperated.
"What? I'm just saying." He muttered absentmindedly.
...
"Happy birthday to you!" The scientists finished.
It was Zak Weber's sixteenth birthday, and he sat in a chair looking embarrassed as the Secret Scientists ended their song.
Everyone, meaning all fifty of the researches, had come for the celebration, even Miranda Grey had flown in from her station out in the middle of, well, she wouldn't tell Zak, but he knew it was cold there.
The woman had tried baking a cake, but cooking had proved to not be her strong suit, and another had been quickly purchased.
"Thanks, guys." Zak said quietly."You didn't have to-"
Beeman ruffled the boy's hair."Sure we did, Shorty. It's not like your parents would."
This earned him a short laugh from the boy, but resounding glares from everyone else in the room.
"What?" He asked.
The festivities continued. Zak's habits of elaborate pranking and hacking technology had dubbed him 'annoying', but earned him a fond place alongside most of the people working at the lab.
Zak was essentially a social outcast at school, even going out of his way to avoid contact with people his own age, the reason for this being that he found a good portion of them rather boring. His parents had just abandoned him on the doorstep of an orphanage when he was three, so he had no one in his life aside from the scientists.
Drew and Doc Saturday, who had gotten married about three months ago, approached him, present in hand. "Happy birthday, Zak." Doc said fondly, handing him the wrapped box.
"Thanks, guys." To their surprise, the teen actually hugged the two of them."Really."
...
"You snuck onto the plane? What were you thinking? You've done alot of stupid things, Zak, but this tops it!" Drew shouted.
Zak stood there, looking sheepish. The sixteen year old had somehow 'found' the exact plane tickets necessary to get him to Egypt, and had managed to follow the Saturdays, staying hidden up until that point.
Doc and Drew had been invited to supervise a dig in Egypt. Something had been found, and although they didn't know quite what it was yet, they were definitely going to find out.
"You didn't really think I was going to stay back at the lab, did you?"
Drew ground her teeth and stormed away. "Make sure he gets set up in a tent, alright, Doc?"
"Yes!" The boy cheered. "So what is this thing?" He asked, suddenly all buisness, guesturing to the excavation site the white haired woman was currently walking towards.
"We're not sure what we're even looking for yet. All we know it the equipment picked up a massive spike in en-"
"Oof!" An odd looking man dressed from in a white headsarf and purple-gray robe elbowed past Zak, knocking him to the ground.
"You alright?" Doc asked gently, helping him to his feet.
"Yeah." He dusted himself off, frowning at the figure. There was something oddly familiar about that man...
"Doc!" The woman called, jarring Zak out of his thoughts. "We got something!"
The man jogged over to the hole just as the 'something' was lifted out of it. It was a large, red brown rock, and it looked as though someone had painstakingly carved characters into it. What the markings meant were anyone's guess, but they were clearly anything but unintentional.
Zak saw what was going to happen a second before it occurred. He tried to shout out a warning, but one of the ropes snapped, and the thing tumbled onto the sand. There was a bright flash of light, and everyone suddenly found themselves knocked backwards away from the object.
They clustered around the rock in silent awe. Zak spoke first, voice slightly shaky. "I think we found it..."
That night...
"Who are you?" The teen asked in a low voice.
A man, the same one who had pushed Zak before the stone had done...whatever it did... was trying to sneak out of the tent.
"I'm just a researcher here, dear child." He said in a nasally voice.
He snorted, blocking the stranger's path and taking up a fighting stance. "Yeah. And that's why you're sneaking around in the middle of the night."
The man ripped off his head scarf, revealing angry yellow eyes set into an unmistakable face. "Insolent little-!"
...
The Saturdays had set up a small lab inside on of the tents, and were examining their latest find.
"Doc, I think this is it!" She exclaimed. "I think we found the Kur Stone!"
Doc opened his mouth, but whatever he wanted to say was interrupted by shouting outside, the majority of it in Arabic.
The woman's eyes widened as she pieced together the translation. "Fire."
...
While Drew ran over to help someone calm down one of the camels, Doc surveyed the scene. It was chaos, nearly everyone was in a panic, and a line of people had been formed to pass down a bucket of water, which did little to quell the roaring inferno.
He decided the best course of action would be to move everything away from the blaze. Couldn't burn without fuel, could it? He worked his way around the flames, tossing aside anything that looked remotely flammable.
Then he saw it. A small figure was lying face down on the sand, a few yards from where the fire had started. Eyeing it warily, he dragged the form further away and cautiously turned it over.
"Zak?" He gasped.
Hearing his name, the teen's eyelids fluttered open. He was in bad shape, heavy bruising around the neck as though someone had tried to strangle him, and a disturbing amount of blood poured out of a large gash in the side of his head.
"D-Doc?" He choked out.
"You're gonna be alright, Zak, I promise."
The boy laughed weakly. "Yeah right. Smoke inhalation, head trauma, internal bleeding, heavy blood loss, just a quick nap and it'll alllllll go away. Somehow, I don't think my mommy can kiss it better, but thanks anyway." His mouth twitched in a pathetic imitation of a smile. "So, give it to me straight, Doc, I can take it."
In this type of situation, the standard Protocol would be keeping the victim calm to ensure they wouldn't injure themselves anymore, but it hardly mattered at this point. "You probably have a little over a minute, then you're going to fall asleep, and you won't wake up."
Zak didn't move except for the unsteady rise and fall of his chest, and the barely perceptible movement of his eyelids as he struggled to stay conscious.
"But you already knew that, didn't you." Doc stated solemnly.
He nodded, then chuckled grimly. "Never confront the bad guy alone, lesson learned."
"What happened?"
"Argost," his voice was a thin rasp."He got me good."
"Doc, the fire's out and- Zak! What happened?"
"Argost happened, apparently."
"He's after the rock thing. I tried to stop him, but he-" His sentence was interrupted by a fit of coughing.
"Shh, don't try to talk."
He rolled his eyes at her, faint smile returning. "Whatever you say, Mom." His head hit the sand with a soft 'thunk'.
...
The funeral was a quiet affair, hardly an occasion befitting the person it was for. It was hard to believe how only a few weeks ago, they had been celebrating his birthday.
They had known Argost was cruel, but this... this was just too evil for words.
The fifty secret scientists stood together angrily.
"So we go after the stone?" One asked.
"We have to!"
"Argost's gonna pay!"
"For Zak!"
"Yeah! For the kid!" A cheer went up among the group. It was decided. They would break into Argost's mansion and steal back the Kur Stone.
For Zak.
...
Eight months later...
Drew held her child close. He was a tiny thing, just a day old. His hair was black, with a strange shock of white at the front.
"Have you decided on a name?" One of the doctors asked in a quiet voice.
Doc put a hand on his wife's shoulder and squeezed it affectionately."How does Zak Saturday sound?"
A lump formed in her throat. "Perfect." She kissed her baby's nose. "You've got a lot to live up to, little guy."