The center of the villa still has that gravitational pull about it. It's different than it was, a force that draws everyone inward, rather than ordering everyone about their respective orbits, setting their optimal and appropriate paths. Lacking anything to direct the balance of movement, it's no wonder everyone spirals towards the center.

It's why Scott's at Dad's desk when he takes Casey's call, though it's come to his personal line. Further, it's where Gordon and Virgil expect to find the eldest, after they've put TB4 back together and come to their own resolution about what they need to do. It's where Alan heads after his shower, having pulled himself out of his cocoon and washed away the week that's been, shedding grief and grime like a too-tight layer of skin. It's where the alert flares up, from the central console, that Kayo's making her final approach and has an ETA of ten minutes.

So the family meeting isn't called so much as it coalesces, pulls together the fragments of the week they've spent in pieces.

Scott's just disconnected the call from Casey when Gordon and Virgil come up from the hangars. Something about Scott's expression prevents either of them from immediately engaging, and instead Virgil and Gordon drop into their usual places, sprawling out on couches and not talking about anything in particular until Scott seems like he's ready to talk.

Alan's next, down from the bedrooms, and there's something about his entrance that precipitates a bit of a double-take from Gordon and a quick once over, up and down and back up again, from Virgil. Something's changed, the sort of thing only the people closest to him might notice. Scott doesn't look up to see him enter, but he does look up when Alan clears his throat.

"Colonel Casey called me," he announces, and trots down the stairs to park himself in TB3's bucketseat. "Wanted to know about John."

"Yeah, I just got off the line with her." Scott sounds a little hollow, a little blank. And then, vehemently, "Fuck."

This turns every head in the room, and gets Gordon to sit up and screw a fingertip in his ear, making sure he's not hearing the outburst through a glob of engine grease. "Language, Scooter," he responds, reflexively feigning shock and horror. "My delicate ears!"

There's a half a bottle of scotch and glasses in Dad's desk, and the thud of thick glass on the desktop has Virgil on his feet. "Scott, what is it?"

But it's Alan who answers, "Something with John. Right? She wanted to know about how his health was, how he'd been acting." Scott nods, and Alan continues. "It's 'cuz he didn't get kidnapped. He ran." A beat of silence and though he's got all three of his older brothers staring at him like he's a whole other person, there's a grim satisfaction in the way he says, "And I bet I know where."

Virgil sits back down as Scott splashes whiskey into a glass and takes a drink in lieu of answering. He glances back and forth between Scott and Alan, and then a little helplessly at Gordon, who's only contribution is a bewildered shrug. "What'd she say?"

Alan scoffs, boosts himself in his seat so he's sitting cross-legged. "Nothing to me. But—it's EOS, isn't it? It's gotta be. He went after her. The GDF had TB5 and all its code, EOS included. He knew that. Casey's calling us—calling me about John. Either they caught him, or—"

"No," Scott's voice is raw, hoarse after a swallow of liquor that's of an age with Virgil. "Nope. Haven't caught him. Was there though. Jesus."

"Was where?" Gordon demands, and for all his flippancy, he's still a little bit angry, and his temper's starting to flare up again. "What the hell—"

Virgil cuts in, all concern, "Wait, did she see him? Is he safe, though, did she—what d'you mean, why would he need to be caught?"

Sometimes they all get out of sync, sometimes their wires get crossed. It's not often. Probably this is the first time it's happened in years. They've spent such a long damn time turning themselves into the well-oiled machine that is International Rescue, it's taken a very particular sort of emergency to send them all tripping over each other.

Usually Virgil and Gordon finish each others thoughts, pick up half-completed sentences, instead of talking over each other. Usually Alan's sitting perched on the edge of his seat, ankles dangling and legs swinging, waiting for what Scott's got to say. Something's turned the whole world upside down, if the youngest is speaking in the eldest's stead.

If the eldest is downing a second glass from the all-hallowed bottle of Dad's Scotch in the middle of the day—well, that's a new one.

"I'm gonna kill him," Scott declares, though probably that's twenty-five years of age on McCallan's finest talking.

"Oh good," Gordon drawls, falling into a rare show of sarcasm, snagged between irritation and the need to lighten the tone of the room and the situation at large. "If he needs killing then at least that seems to imply he's not dead. Good to know. Would've been nice to be in the loop on that one. Thanks, guys."

Another alert flares up in the center of the room. Thunderbird Shadow's landed, and normally this is a fact that wouldn't go ignored, but there's an imbalance of information in the room and it needs to be corrected. Virgil's still going doggedly at Scott, who's pulled a sheaf of paper out of their father's desk, and dropped back into their father's chair, and might just be regretting his involvement with their father's liquor. "Scott, what'd Colonel Casey tell you?"

"She thinks he was in San Jose," Scott starts and then stops, swallows a bit thickly. "It's all still classified, but he…I mean, if it was him, she can't prove it…she probably shouldn't've told me. But that was where they got the Hood, and he had someone with him. He was impersonating a Colonel, had an assistant. Did that holograph—gram—face…thing, had GDF credentials. Could've been anybody."

"It wasn't John?" It's a rhetorical question from Virgil, but the sort of tone that wants desperately to be a statement of fact. "He can't have been—but if that means the Hood had him—in San Jose? What the hell's in San Jose?"

"Fantastic damn surfing, but not John's kinda surfing." Gordon again, and he goes ignored.

Alan's the only one who doesn't seem surprised by this notion, Alan's the only one who's taking this without flinching, but then, Alan's always gotten John better than anyone else does. He folds his arms and leans back in his chair. "It's where EOS was. Silicon Valley, GDF's tech HQ. It makes sense."

There's a short bark of laughter from Gordon and he's fallen back to lie flat on the couch again, rubbing his eyes with his hands and leaving black smudges on his cheekbones. "This is crazy. Hell, she's crazy—"

"Shut up, Gordon," Virgil warns, respect and deference to their surrogate Aunt still firmly in place.

"Hey, I call 'em like I see 'em. Some random-ass henchgoon of the Hood, and for no damn good reason she thinks it's John? Crazy."

Scott shakes his head and he's still a little wild-eyed at the notion. "She hasn't got any proof," he says again, as though that's important. It's possible he's making a mental note to tell the lawyers, later. "What she's got is circumstantial, there's nothing conclusive—"

"What has she got?" Virgil prompts again.

Three hundred pages of John's thesis thud on the desktop with Scott's hand on top of them. "She talked to the guy. The Hood's attache or whatever, she says they talked. Didn't look like John, didn't sound like John, but then, it's been a long time since she'd heard him in person. Just—she told me that some of what he said was just—it fit. With everything. And then—" In spite of it all, and maybe because it's the sort of madcap, ballsy thing his dad would've been impressed by, too, Scott laughs. "—then he emailed her the title of his thesis. Made it clear she should give it a read."

"When the hell was this?"

"A week ago."

From Kayo, now, up from the top of the stairs, still in her flightsuit and a sight for sore eyes. It's typical of their surrogate sister, that she'll be incommunicado for weeks on end, doing whatever it is she does. When she reappears, it's generally with very little fanfare. She'll slip into the lounge to sit in on a briefing, greeted with nods and waves and "welcome backs". Or she'll just sit down to dinner like she's been expected, and no one acts like they're surprised to see her when she asks if someone would pass the salt. This is the closest she's come to recent years to making an entrance, standing at the top of the stairs with all eyes on her.

Expectant eyes, no less, hoping that this piece of information means she's been on the trail the whole time. But Kayo sags slightly under the weight of four hopeful stares, and shakes her head. "I didn't find him," she admits. "But there's a reason why."

"He doesn't wanna be found," Alan states. Technically it's a guess, but he makes it with the sort of grim conviction that makes it sound like a matter of fact. Alan's always known John best, after all. If anyone could work out what he might be thinking, it's Alan.

Kayo nods and her steps down into the lounge are uncharacteristically heavy. She drops into the seat next to Alan's, perhaps seeking closeness, another rarity. Her expression is just as sombre, but where Alan's got an air of restrained ferocity about him, Kayo just seems tired and sad. "No, I don't think he does. There's more to it, though, and—guys, it's not good news. I don't even understand it myself yet, it just doesn't make any sense—" She shakes her head, bites her lower lip and glances around the room, can't seem to hold anyone's gaze until she catches Gordon's. "You won't want to believe me."

This is ominous enough to change the tenor of the whole room, to dissipate some of the mounting frustration with the bits and pieces of Scott's paraphrased conversation with Casey. Maybe it's the way Kayo's looking at him that has him break the silence. but Gordon chuckles to himself from the couch, kicks his feet up on the arm of it and puts his hands behind his head. "Hell, Kayo, pile it on. Seems like today's the day for it."

Kayo doesn't know what's already been said, she'll need to be caught up. She's already decided to go for deliberate understatement, trying not to ruffle too many feathers with the suggestion that Lady Penelope's not to be trusted. Understatement is an understatement. She's gone for deliberate obfuscation, she's going to need to warm up the crowd before she tells them the truth—that Penelope's up to something. Whether it's actively harmful to her brothers, that's up for debate, but she's definitely got something to do with keeping John away from his family.

She takes a deep breath, steels herself, and then, "I don't know if we can trust Penelope."

The statement falls flat into the center of the room, greeted with four different flavours of silence. Kayo regrets it immediately, wishes she'd taken a stronger tone, been firmer in her conviction. We can't trust Penelope. She shut me up in prison, she's lied to all of us, she's always known more than she's said. She says it's for some greater good, but she's using John to achieve it. And oh my god she knows you won't believe me.

Alan's right beside her and Kayo finds herself remembering the last time they'd both been sat here, the last time they'd launched together, taking TB3 up to TB5, right at the very beginning of the whole mess. Alan had been grim then, too, alarmingly adult for his nineteen years. Alan seems like the safest person to look at, so she glances at him instead of the elder three, and is comforted by the fact that he doesn't look like he thinks she's lying. It's reassuring and some of the tension starts to go out of her, she starts trying to think of what to say next.

"What do you mean, Kayo?" Scott's finally pulled himself away from their father's desk, and he takes the steps down into the lounge proper, parks himself next to Virgil, his accustomed place. He hasn't rejected the idea outright either, and he won't, he'll hear her out. So will Virgil, but looking in his direction and watching the middle child frown and fold his arms, it's plain he's anticipated the same problem she has, when it comes to anyone who might have a word to say against Penelope.

Blond, stubborn, and a hundred and eighty-five pounds worth of not-so-subtly-in-love with Penelope, Gordon laughs, rolls his eyes, and thinks he gets it. "Oh man, Kayo. Hah. No, I know exactly how you feel, it's just—you spent the week with her, huh? Seeing her do her thing, seeing her pull all the strings. Right? Gives you a real funny feeling about the fact that that's her job, all that lying and double-talk and—"

Kayo swallows and shakes her head. "No, not that. She shut me up in the Tower of London for a week."

Sometimes Kayo thinks she should carry a pin to drop, with the sort of stunned silences she can get out of her brothers.

And then, hastily, before any of them can fully parse the notion, she continues, "She wanted to keep me out of the way, give John a head start. I don't know why. When she let me out, she said she knew where John was. The last she spoke to him was in Las Vegas and he'd been in San Jose before that, and he'd been caught up with the Hood, somehow. She knew all that. She wouldn't tell me what he was doing—or…or she would've, but only if I'd gone along with what she'd wanted and gone on to lie to all of you about it. I wasn't going to do that. I know it doesn't make any sense, I should've stayed to find out more, but I…god. I just wanted to come home."

Before there's enough space to want to drop another pin, Gordon laughs again. It's starting to grate on Kayo's nerves, and she's only been back for five minutes. "Oh, good. So you're crazy too."

She must flinch visibly at the biting, acidic sarcasm in Gordon's tone, because Alan puts a hand on her shoulder and glares at the other blond in the same moment that Scott snaps, "Gordon. Outta line."

"Well, what? Penny wouldn't—"

Virgil interrupts, "Let her explain, Gordon, clearly we need the whole story."

"Doesn't sound like she has it; sounds like she's making shit up and blaming Lady Penelope for the fact that they didn't find John. Who, incidentally? Isalso fucking crazy."

Kayo's not phased by Gordon's tantrums, fits of anger and frustration. Gordon says things he doesn't mean, everyone knows it. What twists in her gut is worry for him, sunny and sweethearted and trusting, when he's not actively being a jackass. And totally, completely smitten with someone Kayo knows he can't continue to trust. So her tone is even and she keeps her temper when she answers, "Gordon, I really think you want to get over her. I mean it, she's lied to you. To all of us, to the whole family."

Gordon's eyes narrow and he hauls himself off the couch. He's always come up just shy of six feet tall, always been just that little bit self-conscious about his height, but he's drawn himself all the way up to glare down at her. "Yeah, huh? Seems like you got a way longer history of lying to this family than Penny does, so maybe I don't really want your advice on the subject."

"Hey." Alan's on his feet, glowering across the room at Gordon. His fists are balled at his side and he practically growls when he says, "You take that back."

"Oh my god, Alan, sit down. You look like an idiot."

Alan's anger usually looks sullen and pouty. He can't help it, he's got a baby face. The drop of his brows and the jut of his lower lip only really ever serve to puff his cheeks out like a chipmunk and the way he tends to fold his arms across his chest tends render whatever he's mad about the subject of a tantrum. Not now, though. Now he's set his brows and clenched his fists and he's tall (though still shorter than Gordon) and straight and righteous and sticking to his guns. "Just because you don't understand someone," he declares, "doesn't make them crazy."

It's not clear whether it's the truth of the statement or the fact that Alan's the one making it that shuts Gordon up, if only for a moment. Virgil's already shifted on the couch, poised to intervene, if this turns into one of the shouting, shoving, screw you type fights that one gets into with Gordon when he's in a scrappy mood. But, temper or not, Gordon's not stupid, and when a quick inventory of the room turns up absolutely nobody on his side—he backs off. "…whatever, Alan."

There's nothing any of them might drop to make the ensuing silence any less awkward, but Virgil clears his throat and wades in anyway. His tone is gentle but firm when he makes the suggestion, "Hit the showers, Gordon. Cool down, get your head on straight, we've got a lot to talk about."

"Fuck off, Virg." But he doesn't mean it. This is one of those very particular sentiments that undergoes a midair translation between the two of them, and actually means "Yeah, okay, you're right." But Gordon says a lot of things he doesn't mean and especially when he's feeling attacked and frustrated. He storms out of the room without a backward glance.

The acoustics in the villa are excellent, and everyone waits for the distant slam of a bathroom door before it seems safe to resume. Virgil reaches for a control beside his chosen place, and brings Brains up on the center console. The engineer looks up at the call and gives a little wave in greeting. "Yes?"

"Hey Brains, can you, uh. Can you block any calls from the Island to Lady Penelope and vice versa?" It's a weird request, but far from the weirdest Brains has been given. "I'll fill you in later."

Brains' brow furrows slightly, but he doesn't press for an explanation. "C-consider it done," he answers, and then signs off.

"Good call, Virg." Scott clears his throat and looks over at Kayo with a bit of an awkward shrug, apologetic. "Sorry about him. Gordon—well, you know Gordon."

Kayo nods, but she's still watching Alan, standing in the middle of the room. "It's okay. I didn't think any of you were going to take it well." She shrugs and repeats her earlier statement, "It's not good news."

Scott's answering laugh is hollow and tired, "No, we've been coming up kinda short on 'good news', lately. Gordon'll…I mean, he'll come around. It's been a rough week, but I guess…well, now we've got information, at least." Scott runs a hand through his hair and sags slightly. "God, I wish John was here. I don't—like, I don't even wish he wasn't missing, it's just, if I had to pick somebody to pick through this goddamn snarled up mess of half-rendered chunks of data from assorted sources of varying credibility—" He heaves a sigh and shakes his head. "Fucking John. Crazy's maybe a little strong, Al, but you're right about one thing. I don't know if any of us understand him. Gordon's odds aren't better than any of ours."

Virgil shakes his head and hunches over, rubs his eyes with the palms of his hands. "We've gotta get back to work, Scott, or he's just gonna to blow up. Probably all over something of mine and I'm not really interested in scraping charred bits of Gordon's damage off of anything I value."

"Yeah, I feel that." Scott doesn't know it, but it's Gordon he echoes when he says, "Man, it sure would be nice to just…oh, I don't know, a nice earthquake somewhere. Or anything, really. God, I'd love to track down an airliner with a system-wide nav failure."

"Can we get back to work?" Alan asks, still in the middle of the room, with his gaze fixed on the central console. He looks over at Virgil, gestures at the the central display. "Hey, pull Brains back up. I wanna talk to him."

Scott shrugs. "I'd have to talk to legal. Contract work, maybe. I don't know if we can do anything under IR's flag right now, I don't know how we're fixed with the GDF. We've gotta…god. I don't know. I don't know how we'd do it without dispatch, either. I guess I could probably run things from the ground, but—"

"What if I did it? What if I went up and took over Thunderbird 5?"

Brains appears in the center of the room, in time to find everyone staring at Alan, and misinterprets this as everyone staring at him. He blinks at his audience and nervously adjusts his glasses. "I-is there s-something in my teeth?" he queries.

Alan turns and suddenly everything about his bearing makes sense, the change in his attitude, the way he's come to a resolution. "I wanna go up on Five," he announces, and then continues as though this is what he's been waiting to tell everyone, "I'll take TB3 and just leave it docked. If I need to go out on call, I'm ready, but we all know I go out less than anybody. Kayo can swap in as Gordon's alternate, or partner up if we need both pods. I'm not saying I can pull off John's level of dispatch, but I'm already rated and trained for space ops. We can get back off the ground, at least, I can work up into the big stuff."

It's clear a lot of thought (or at least, a long shower's worth of thought) has gone into this, and no one wants to shoot Alan down, so it falls to Scott. "Al, TB5's…I mean, it's empty. There's none of the software onboard, it's just a shell."

"John backed up his systems every time he did a broad reformat. Brains, we've got a copy of TB5's OS, right?"

Brains blinks and his hands are already skittering over his keyboard, plumbing through the depths of the island's meticulously ordered servers. He's not immediately dismissive, but thoughtful as he nods slowly, "Y-yes. Yes, we do."

"So load it back up, and teach me how to use it." Alan's eyes glint, determined, and he turns to Scott, "I dunno what Casey told you," he leads, "But I kinda think maybe we wanna find John before anybody else does. We haven't got Penelope—okay, so that sucks, but we've still got one of the most powerful space stations in orbit, and…well, we'd be stupid not to use it, right? We've got something that's meant to help people, and we all know John needs help. We're not just letting him go."

"No, we're not," Scott agrees, but thoughtfully, like he's really considering it. Like he's seeing Alan in the new light he's trying to step into. "We can talk about it. If the reality is that he's taken off of his own accord, regardless of what he's gotten himself mixed up in—if he doesn't wanna be found…well, then our options are pretty much wait for him to screw up, or wait for him to get lonely."

"So, what, maybe six years from now," Virgil surmises, but he's got a ghost of a hopeful smile, and it materializes into a grin at Alan across the room. "Hell with that. Boot up the world's most powerful search engine and run a search for 'John Tracy', hey, Al? Make sure the safe search is on, kiddo."

"Aw, shut up." Alan grins back, almost shyly, like he hadn't actually thought he'd be taken seriously. "It just makes sense. If anything can find John, it's TB5."

Kayo gets to her feet and joins Alan at the central console, puts an arm around his shoulders. Of the three of them, it might just be possible that she's the proudest and most pleased with Alan, for deciding what needs to be done. "If anyone can find him," she says, touching her fingertip to his chest, before going in for a real and proper hug, "it's you."