Chapter Ten

Entering the dungeon deep beneath his temple, Belah was pleased to discover his prisoner manacled to the far wall. To the prisoner's right was a metal table covered with all manner of devices of torture. Chien stood to the alarmingly thin man's left and bowed as his master approached.

"The prisoner has been prepared, Sir, but I must warn you that he is incoherent and cannot be kept conscious."

"I don't need him to be conscious," Belah spat. "Leave us."

Chien nodded and scurried away. Belah laughed as he looked down at himself. He was dressed in an International Rescue uniform, complete with a blue sash. He walked forward and grabbed something off the table. Reaching out, he snapped it open under the man's nose. The man groaned and slowly blinked his eyes open. His chin rested on his chest, and he didn't seem to be aware of his surroundings.

Belah grinned, and when he spoke, his voice didn't sound like his own. "Brains! Brains, I've found you!"

For indeed, the man hanging before him was none other than International Rescue's former engineer. His large, blue eyes were unfocused, his mind nearly nothing but a blank. But that voice...he knew that voice. He hadn't heard it in so long. Slowly he struggled to raise his head. He couldn't see very clearly, but what he could see made his heart stop.

"S-Sss-Scott?" he croaked.

"What happened to you, Brains?"

It was Scott. It was!

"Hood..." he gasped.

"I'm going to get you out of here. You're safe now. But I need you to tell me what happened to Father. Where is he? Where's Father, Brains?"

Brains couldn't keep his mind on track. He began to lose consciousness, but felt the sharp sting of someone slapping his cheek. "F...Fath-er?"

"Yes. I need to find him. You have to help me, Brains. So I can save both of you."

"G-Gone...Scott...n-n-never f-f-f...found."

"Where?" the voice of Scott nearly bellowed. "Where did he disappear to? Tell me, Brains!"

"D-Don't...know. S-Sssscott...p-please...help..."

Belah growled in disgust. That was more than he'd ever been able to get out of the genius he'd nearly destroyed after so many years of torture and mind control. He'd never attempted pretending to be a Tracy before, because he knew Brains' mind would figure out he wasn't. But now, the engineer was almost dead, both mentally and physically. His hope had been to learn Jeff Tracy's whereabouts, or at the very least what had happened to him all those years ago.

But, it seemed, even Brains didn't know.

"It doesn't matter, you fool," Belah spat in his own voice as he ripped the sash off and threw it to the dirt floor. "I'm in control, and when I'm finished with you, you'll be dead. And if Jeff Tracy is still alive, I'll see to it he joins you in Hell."

With that, Belah picked up a small knife.

Standing at the entrance to the dungeon, Chien heard a sound that chilled him to the bone. One agonizing scream echoed off the dungeon walls.

Then there was only silence.

"Cammie, are you sure we should leave this island?"

"Marin, this is the chance we've been waiting for. It's the opportunity to change things, to make them right. To rid this world of Belah Gaat once and for all. Jeff is only one who can set things right. If we refuse to assist him, we're as bad as those who are Conformers."

"I say we go for it," a balding, middle-aged man said, rising from his seat. "Sitting on this goddamn island, hiding away from everything...well, it sure isn't making a difference. I'd rather die trying to help Tracy than sit here and do nothing."

"Hear, hear!" a woman said, rising to her feet.

Jeff, Penny, Marin and Dana watched as, one-by-one, the members of the faction showed their consent by standing. When at last no one was left sitting down, Penny took Jeff's hand and smiled before turning to address those in the room.

"Prepare yourselves for a long and difficult journey. We shall require all the food and weapons we can carry. We'll take both my yacht and Thunderbird 4."

"FAB2? It's here?" Jeff asked, incredulous.

"Of course, Jeff. We were able to find it and-" Penelope's voice broke. "And Parker's body. FAB2 is cloaked. It's been here the whole time."

"Where are we going?" the man who'd spoken before asked.

"Our destination is Malaysia," Penny replied. "The man we need to find could only be there."

"We're going after Gaat himself?" another man asked. "There's no way in hell we'll get to him."

"Half of us will go after Gaat. The other half are looking for a man we believe he's been holding prisoner. This man is the only one who can possibly turn the tide."

"It's suicide," a woman breathed.

"Marita!" Marin admonished.

"She's right," Jeff acknowledged. "I don't know any of you. And I can't expect you to have faith in something that seems like a one-in-a-million chance. You've all stayed alive somehow through the terror of what this world has become. If you want to stay here, stay safe, I understand."

"No fucking way," Dana said, grabbing Marin's hand with her left and Cammie's with her right. "We didn't last this long because we're cowards. None of us."

Nods and murmurs of assent washed over the room. "We're with you," the woman finally said. "Brad's right. We can't just sit here and let it go. We have to do something. And as crazy as this scheme of yours sounds, the fact that you're even standing here, Mr. Tracy, tells me that Gaat isn't all he's cracked up to be. If anyone can beat him, it's you."

Jeff looked down at Penny and smiled.

"Then let's get to it, people!" she said. "We leave in three hours."

Faction members filed out of the room, until at last only Jeff and Penny were left. "This is some remarkable group you've got here."

"It is, Jeff. We'll succeed. We're going to find Brains, and he'll be able to get you back to your time. And you'll stop this. You'll stop this all from happening."

"That's an awful lot of weight on one man's shoulders. What if I fail?"

"You? Fail? That's impossible. You're Jeff Tracy."

"What'd you find out, Scott?"

"Nothing that makes any goddamn sense. Barnes is a lunatic."

"What did he say?"

"He said he'd traveled to the future."

"The future?" Virgil frowned.

"Yes. He said International Rescue had been destroyed, and that he could only hope Father was dead."

"What the fuck does that mean?" Alan asked from his video portrait.

"It means Dudley Barnes is as mad as it says in those articles Gordon found," Scott said quietly as he seated himself at his father's desk. "It's all nonsense."

Everyone was quiet as they watched Scott. He looked like a taut wire ready to snap at any minute.

"John, what'd your scanner turn up?"

"There's only one place we could find a traceable aura on Dad," John replied as he walked to the computer behind the desk. He keyed in a few commands and a faint pink glow appeared in the middle of the lab. "The only place Dad's been is right there in that spot where he was standing before the converter blew."

"There's nothing else?"

"No. We've been over nearly every inch of this island. We can't even pick that aura up anymore. This is a file image we captured as soon as we got the scanner to work."

"Then he's not on the island."

"No," Gordon replied. "Wherever he went, it wasn't anywhere here."

Scott slammed his fist down on the desk, causing everyone to jump. "This isn't fucking possible. It just isn't!"

"What isn't, Scott?" Virgil asked, a worried frown creasing his brow.

"How can a man just blink out of existence like that?"

"Uh...I think I may have a theory," Brains ventured as all eyes turned to him. "Given w-what you've said that, uh, Barnes told you...I think I may h-have the answer."

"I'm not going to like this, am I?"

"Uh...well, n-no, Scott...probably, uh, not."

"Well, let's hear it," Ruth said impatiently.

"The, uh, prevailing theory on t-time travel a-at this moment is that it, uh, cannot be accomplished w-without a time gate o-open on either side of the spectrum where the, uh, traveler wishes to depart from a-and arrive at. H-However, one scientist, a-a Dr. Amrian, h-has speculated that it isn't, uh, necessary to have a-a gate at the o-other end. That if the, uh, gate on this side is powerful e-enough, the person could, uh, easily travel either forward o-or backward in time."

"But we don't have a time travel gate, Brains," Tin-Tin said.

"Uh, well, no, not e-exactly. But time travel gates, o-or interspatial teleporters, uh, theoretically, require u-use of an antineutrino generator."

"Oh, my God!" Tin-Tin exclaimed. "That's how you made the phase converter as efficient as you did! You used antineutrino power!"

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Virgil asked, his husky voice nearly a squeak.

"Y-Yes, I-I believe we are, uh, Virgil. Somehow, it would seem, my phase converter a-acted as an interspatial teleporter. I-It would stand to reason that, uh, Mr. Tracy disappeared into a different, uh, time."

Scott's face was a mask of stone. "Past or future, Brains?"

"There's, uh, no way for me to tell that, Scott. E-Even if I-I could recreate the time gate, I-I cannot guarantee it would lead to wherever Mr. Tracy went."

"Barnes said he went to the future. And he went the same way Dad did," Scott mused.

"Then it stands to reason that Dad went to the future, too."

"Makes sense, John."

"No, it doesn't make sense, Gordon!" Scott bellowed, rising to his feet. "Time travel. Interspatial teleporters. You expect me to believe that our father shot into our own future?"

"Barnes did."

"He only said he did, Virgil."

"Well, do you have any better theories, Scott?"

Scott turned on his closest brother, jaw working, eyes full of fury.

Virgil turned away to face Brains. "Can you recreate the gate?"

"I-I don't know. I-I suppose I could rerun the test just a-as I was doing when Mr. Tracy vanished."

"What, so another of us can disappear?" Ruth interjected. "I don't think so."

"Can it bring him back, Brains?"

"I-It's all pure theory, uh, Virgil. I-I honestly can't tell you that."

John walked over and stood in front of Scott. He looked him right in the eye. "You didn't believe in my aural scanner, but you believed in me, and the goddamn thing worked. Brains is a genius, Scott. If he says this is possible, what do we have to lose? Dad's already gone. What if Brains can bring him back?"

Anger had disappeared from Scott Tracy's face. Nothing made sense anymore. John and the others were right. This outlandish theory was pretty much the only thing that had even come close to explaining the situation, especially given what Barnes had told him. Scott sighed and looked away.

"Do whatever you have to, Brains," he said quietly. "I'll be in Father's study."

Brains, Tin-Tin, John and Gordon headed for the lab while Alan cut his feed to the Lounge, and Kyrano and Ruth walked out onto the balcony. Scott took off for the stairs and ran up them two-at-a-time. He entered Jeff's study, a room directly off the patriarch's bedroom suite, and slammed the door shut behind him. He didn't hear it click quietly open a few minutes later.

"Scott."

"What do you want, Virg?"

Virgil eyed his older brother sympathetically. Scott hated not being in control, and in this situation, he was anything but in control. "I want to make sure you're okay."

"Do I look okay?"

"No, you look like shit."

Scott snorted as he sat down in one of the room's chairs. "I really fucked this one up."

"How so?" Virgil asked, sitting in a nearby chair.

"I've failed, Virgil."

"How?"

"I haven't found Father. The only thing left is something so outlandish it can't possibly be the answer. I've lost him, Virg. I've lost Dad."

"Scott, you didn't lose him. And if it weren't for your visit to Barnes, Brains wouldn't even have thought of the time travel theory. If anything, you're the one that supplied the final clue he needed to put two and two together."

"To come up with what?" Scott yelled, jumping to his feet. "Fucking fifteen?"

"Listen, Scott, I don't know that I believe in this time travel thing anymore than you do. But would you rather think that he just winked out of existence? Or that he's alive and well somewhere in time, and that we can get him back?"

Scott turned to face his brother, who'd also risen to his feet.

"It's hope, Scott. If we don't believe in something, then we've got nothing. If we don't try this, we'll never know whether or not we could have found him."

Scott's shoulders sagged and he drew his hand down over his face. "You're asking me to believe something that goes against everything I've ever believed in."

"No, Scott. I'm not asking you to believe in anything but yourself. What does your gut tell you? That Barnes is insane? Or that he was telling the truth? That Brains is grasping at straws because he's desperate? Or that he's onto something tangible, something that could be the answer to Dad's disappearance?"

Scott's voice was barely above a whisper when he spoke. "I guess I have no choice but to believe."

"It's been almost two days, Scott. None of us have slept. Why don't you get some rest?"

"The hell I will. If Brains is going to try and make Dad reappear, then I'm going to help him."

Virgil smiled as he followed his brother out of the study.

"First, I'm going to give Penny a call. At the very least, I think she should be aware of what's going on."

"All right. I'll meet you in the lab," Virgil replied as he headed down the staircase.

"Virg?"

"Yeah?" he stopped and turned to look back up at Scott.

"Thanks."

Nodding, Virgil grinned as he continued on his way.

Scott headed for his suite. He entered and sat down at the desk in the sitting room. For a few moments he could only stare at the vidphone. Finally he reached out and dialed Lady Penelope's number.

"Hello, Scott. What an unexpected surprise."

"And unpleasant too, I'm afraid, Penny."

"What's happened?"

A lump formed in Scott's throat as he replied, "Dad's disappeared."