Chapter Nine
"Sir, the warriors have been unable to locate anyone in the search area. They've gone over it twice now."
"Chien, there is something afoot here, I'm certain of it. Have my prisoner prepared for questioning."
"Yes, sir," Chien replied, bowing slightly and hurrying out of his master's chamber.
Belah walked over to an ebony armoire and slowly opened its doors. Inside hung several blue uniforms, each with a different-colored sash. "Time to play a game, my friend," he said, choosing one uniform and laying it on his bed. "If anyone knows what could possibly have brought Jeff Tracy back from the dead, it will be you."
Scott waited as the elevator door opened on an empty hall. He started walking to his right, but quickly realized these were the even-numbered rooms. What he wanted was 417. He turned on heel and jogged in the other direction.
About halfway down he found the room he was looking for. Peering through the door's tiny window, he could only see a figure lying on the bed, his back facing him. When he tried the knob, he found it locked. Looking left and then right, he reached beneath the black leather jacket he was wearing and pulled out a laser pistol. Turning his face away, he fired, melting the knob and lock clear through.
The man on the bed sat up and turned to face him as he entered the room, closing the door softly behind him.
"Dudley Barnes?"
The man said nothing.
"Are you Chief Science Officer Dudley Barnes?"
Still, he was silent. Scott stood up straight and saluted. "Petty officer Scott Tracy reporting for duty, Sir!"
The man jumped to his feet and came to attention, saluting in return. "At ease, Tracy," he said.
Scott smiled. If there was ever a way to get through to a military man, it was by using protocol.
"Officer Barnes, I'm here on a top secret mission. I need your help."
He watched as Barnes' eyes seemed to turn inward, as a look of confusion passed across his face.
"Your name is Tracy, you say?"
"Yes, sir."
"I must have returned before it happened."
"Before what happened?"
"The future, son. The future."
"I don't understand. The papers said you couldn't feed or dress yourself. You seem perfectly lucid to me."
"I am," Barnes smiled. "It's these idiots who think I'm nuts. Better to tell the world that a highly respected and decorated Naval officer is a complete cupcake than that he's spouting some wild nonsense about having been to the future."
"You're saying that when you disappeared, you time-traveled?" Scott suddenly began to doubt the man's sanity after all.
"Indeed I did, boy. Indeed I did. It's a grim one. No hope. No light at the end of the tunnel. Quite frankly, I'm happy to stay locked away in this institution until I die. At least I won't live to see what I've borne witness to."
Scott seated himself on the room's lone chair as Barnes sank onto the bed.
"Officer Barnes, my father disappeared after touching a phase converter, just like you did. I need to know exactly what happened – where you went, and how you got back. I need to find my father."
"Jeff Tracy?"
Scott nodded.
"He's disappeared, you say?"
He nodded again.
"That explains it. That explains how it is you were defeated."
"Defeated? What are you talking about?"
"To this day, I cannot explain how it actually happened. But I was testing my new phase converter in the laboratory. When I touched it, I was surrounded by waves of rippling blue light."
"Yes! That's what happened to Dad!"
But Scott may as well not have been in the room. It seemed Barnes was actually reliving his experience. So Scott just sat back and listened.
"There were images...thousands upon thousands of them crowding into my mind. Things I had never seen, things that had never happened, or that I couldn't possibly have borne witness to. Then I woke to find myself in the very same lab in Ruislip. But it was under attack. Scientists and officers were running helter-skelter through the base. We were being bombed by several of our own fighters."
Emotions played clearly across Barnes' face as Scott watched in silence. The base at Ruislip hadn't been destroyed. Nothing like that had happened at all. Again, his faith in the man's sanity was beginning to fade.
"The world had gone mad, Scott Tracy. You were all gone. All gone."
"You? What do you mean?"
"You. Your family. International Rescue." Barnes laid down on the bed, covering his eyes with his hand.
Scott blanched. This man knew they were IR? But how?
"I have seen the future, son. If your father doesn't return in time, I will outlive you."
Scott rose to his feet, his face a dark thundercloud. He crossed to the bed and shook Barnes, but the older man didn't move. "Explain that! What are you talking about? Where is my father?"
"I don't know," Barnes mumbled. "But with any luck, he's dead."
"You sonofa-"
A sudden sound from outside made Scott whirl around and run to the door. He opened it a crack and peeked out. There were two men in white uniforms just exiting the very elevator he'd used. One of them was Bruce.
"Shit."
Scott turned to look at Barnes, who was staring right at him. "Get out of here, Scott," he said. "Find your father before it's too late. Before it's too late."
Grinding his jaw in frustration, Scott waited until Bruce and the other orderly were looking the opposite direction, then bolted out of the room and toward the end of the hall.
"There he is!" Bruce yelled. "After him!"
Pounding footfalls echoed in the hall as Scott reached the staircase at the very end of it. He slammed the door open and flew down the steps. Heart racing, he passed the third floor...the second floor. At the bottom level there were two doors. One led to the Lobby, the other directly outside. He chose the one leading outside. Alarms began to wail as he ran from the building and back to where he'd parked his car.
What the fuck was Barnes talking about? he wondered as he got in and started the engine. If anything, Scott was more confused now than he had been when his father had disappeared.
The papers had been right. Barnes was insane. Traveling to the future. His family being gone. International Rescue being gone. Still, something nagged at Scott as he peeled away from the curb and headed for the airport.
If you didn't believe him, Scott, then why is your stomach in such a knot?
"What happened to you, Penny?" Jeff asked, his finger tracing the scar. They had eaten dinner with the rest of the faction, and were now sitting in Penelope's tiny room.
"I'd rather not talk about it, Jeff."
"I need to know. I don't remember any of it. I only know what Dana's told me."
"You don't remember?" Jeff shook his head. "Gaat had a missile hidden on a nearby island to Halmahera. The missile came from due west, an underground silo. After International Rescue was destroyed, Gaat came after Parker and me. We fled through the tunnels beneath the mansion. We had nothing but the clothes on our back and a bag Parker had kept packed in case of emergency. Gaat's warriors destroyed the mansion and half of England looking for us. We survived below ground for four months on the stores we kept there."
"Four months?"
Penny nodded. "Finally the food began to run out. Parker went to the surface and determined that it was safe for us to emerge. Jeff, we walked clear from there to the ocean, where FAB2 was still moored."
"You walked all that way?"
"Yes. And didn't see a soul the entire time. It felt like we were the last human beings on Earth. We boarded FAB2 and headed for Tracy Island. In the meantime, I altered my appearance as much as I could – changing my hair color, putting colored contact lenses in my eyes. But when we got near, we realized it had been destroyed. We detected no life forms anywhere. Parker was certain we would not survive if we landed, and so we continued on. Eventually we were attacked by some of Gaat's men. Parker managed to get me into the tiny nautical bubble Brains had recently equipped FAB2 with, but two warriors discovered us. I thought for sure we were dead."
Tears welled up in Penelope's eyes as she continued. "Parker fought valiantly, but the men were just too strong for him. I exited the bubble and attempted to help him, but one of the warriors caught me with his blade," she explained, fingers resting lightly on her scar. "Parker cried out and shoved me back into the bubble, locked it and launched it before I could do anything. There was blood everywhere. The last thing I saw was one of the warriors shove their sword clean through his chest. Then I lost consciousness."
"God, Penny, I'm so sorry."
"I never realized how much I cared for him until I woke later in a pool of my own blood. The first vision that entered my mind was him dying, giving his life for mine. I did nothing but cry for the next few hours until the control panel began to beep. I realized Parker must have programmed a destination into it, and when it surfaced, I found myself here on Jarvis Island. Marin and the rest of the faction had only been here a few months. They cared for me and nursed me back to health. None of them knows my real identity. Eventually I became the head of the faction."
Jeff rubbed his eyes with one hand, his other over Penny's trembling one. "I wish I'd been there for you."
"You'd disappeared, Jeff. The boys were frantic. You'd only been gone three days when Gaat began his attack on International Rescue."
His head snapped up. "Disappeared? What do you mean? Dana said Gaat told everyone he'd killed me."
She nodded. "He did. But I didn't believe him. You see, one day before Thunderbirds 1 and 2 were destroyed, Scott contacted me and told me you had disappeared, and that they couldn't find you anywhere. They wanted to keep it a secret; they didn't want to tell the world you were gone until it was absolutely necessary."
"Penny, what day was that? I mean, the date. What was the date?"
"Why, November the twelfth."
"What year?"
"Twenty thirty-three."
"Oh, my God."
"What? What is it, Jeff?"
"The last thing I remember before waking up a few days ago was that I was in the lab with everyone. Brains was showing us his latest invention, a new phase converter." Jeff stopped and looked Penelope directly in the eyes. "The date was November tenth. Twenty thirty-three."
Penny's eyes widened and her jaw dropped open. "That was the day you disappeared."
"It can't be. This just doesn't make sense."
"What, Jeff?"
"I don't recall anything you or Dana have told me happened. She said it started when Scott landed in Indonesia, a rescue at an island there. That he was hit with a nuclear missile. That Thunderbird 5 was blown out of the sky. That the island was destroyed."
"Yes."
"But Penny, to me, none of that ever happened. Right now I feel like it's only been three days since I was standing in the lab with my entire family, in 2033. Yet fifteen years have gone by. And now you're telling me that I disappeared on the very day that's the last day I recall with them."
Her hands traveled the contours of his face as she seemed to look upon him with new eyes. "You know something, Jeff?"
"What?"
"The fact is that fifteen years have passed. Even without this scar, I know I look much older than I did the last time you saw me. But you...you haven't aged a bit. You look exactly the same as you did one week before you disappeared. That was the last time we spoke."
"I remember. You called in a status report on the case you were following...what was it, the disappearance of one of our agents?"
"That's right, Jeff. You know, I think I know what's happened."
"I sure hope so. Because I feel like I'm losing my mind."
"The fact that you haven't aged tells me that you haven't lived these fifteen years."
"What do you mean? I had to have lived them."
"Then why can't you recall anything?"
"Dana thinks I must have amnesia, that maybe I blocked it out."
"I don't believe that's the case, Jeff. I think you disappeared on November 10th, 2033. And I think the place you appeared was here, in 2048."
"Do you have any idea what you're saying?"
"I do. Something happened that day in Brains' laboratory. Something that changed the course of history."
"You're saying I...I time-traveled."
She nodded. "It's the only solution that fits the facts."
"It's not possible."
"Jeff, look at yourself," she said, pulling him to his feet and over to her mirror. "I know you have splendid genes, but do you think you look like a man who's seventy-eight years old?"
He looked at the man staring back at him. Looked hard. "No," he replied. "I don't. I look like a man who's sixty-two. I look exactly the same as I did that day on the island."
She came to stand beside him and grasped his hand. "Exactly. I think you're here for a reason, Jeff. I think you're here to stop this all from happening."
"But how, Penny? I don't even know how it is I got here. In order to stop Gaat from taking over, I'd have to find my way back to 2033."
"I know."
Jeff turned and looked down at her. "Dana said everyone was killed, but she'd never heard of Brains. Do you know what happened to him?"
She shook her head. "I can only surmise that Gaat captured him. Even with the plans and designs from the island's computers, I don't think there's any way he could have built some of the machines he has without Brains doing it for him."
"I can't believe Brains would willingly create machines to be used as weapons. He'd rather die first."
"Who said he did it willingly?"
Jeff's shoulders slumped as he thought of his young friend being forced to do precisely the thing he'd always been afraid of: develop advanced weaponry.
"I have to stop this from happening. I have to keep Scott from landing in Indonesia, from even going on that rescue." He grasped her hands and squeezed them tight. "Penny, if you're right, if Brains is still alive, he may be my only chance at putting things right."
She smiled. "Then I suggest we try to find him."
