The boys can't seem to stop sneaking glances at the gun she has strapped to her hip. Kayo's always armed, but she's rarely visibly armed. Things have changed and she needs to reflect that. Kayo's perched on the back of one of the couches in the lounge. Her wrist comm is a constant source of data, she checks it every few moments. Threads of information, tiny streams of intel coming in from her various contacts and sources. Nothing the boys need to know about, not yet.

They've been joined by Lady Penelope and Virgil, up from Thunderbird 2's hangar. Penelope had been only a step or two behind Virgil, her stiletto heels hitting the hardwood, stacatto. She'd been tall at the top of the stairs and Kayo had needed to look at her twice, standing just a hair taller than Gordon would next to her. She'd dressed all in a shade of navy that wanted desperately to be black; a long, lean pantsuit cut close to her figure. Lady Penelope, upon arrival, had looked lethal in a way that Kayo never really thinks she does herself, even with a gun strapped to her hip and six years of special ops training.

Gordon had been sprawled on the couch, bouncing a volleyball from the pool lightly off the tips off his fingers, up towards the vaulted ceiling. Catching sight of Penelope, he'd missed a beat of the rhythm he'd established and bounced the volleyball off his face. There'd been a muttered stream of cursing as he'd sat bolt upright to clutch at his nose and wipe watering eyes. When Penelope enters a room, it's not uncommon for someone to get hurt.

They're two sides of the same coin, the two women who protect International Rescue. Lady Penelope is just as dangerous as Kayo is, if in a slightly different way. In Kayo's opinion, someone who can navigate this sort of situation without the barest crack in their exterior has to be made of far, far sterner stuff than she is herself. Kayo can't help wondering if Penelope feels the same sense of failure she does, for letting John down. Privately she hopes not. Neither of them could have seen this coming, and Kayo's come to terms with that.

Mostly.

Penelope's always been able to maintain a certain sense of professional distance, and it's something Kayo's always envied her. The Tracys are her brothers in all but name, but it's more than just blood that obligates her to protect them. It's her job. It's the last thing their father asked of her before he vanished, and she owes Jeff Tracy more than any of them can even imagine. Knowing that someone's done something to John-she feels the same white hot rage that she knows Scott's got bottled up inside. She's just as choked with empathy as Virgil, just as worried as Gordon, just as aware of the hole that's been left in the family as Alan is. But she has to keep it all behind the same stern exterior, the one Penelope seems to almost never let slip.

For the first time since he's been in the hospital, John's not visible above the console in the center of the lounge. Instead, Scott appears, even as he takes a seat behind some strange desk in the East Coast Branch office of Tracy Industries. Kayo takes a deep breath and starts to think about what she needs to say.

"Hey, Scotty," Gordon calls up to the eldest, as Scott rubs his eyes and finds the right place to look. "How's corporate treating you?"

"If I never have to talk to another damn lawyer again, it'll be too soon. But that's just wishful thinking, because I've got another meeting in an hour." Scott pauses, seems aware of just how dour he sounds. "But fine. It's fine, we're making progress. I think. Something's going on, anyway. God, John was right. I can't stop remembering how he told me off for not knowing enough about programming to talk about what's really going on here. This...the thing with EOS? Hell, the whole AI question? This is way over my head."

Alan speaks up, piping and anxious from where he's sprawled on the floor, indifferently poking at a projection of his homework. "They didn't delete her, though. Right? Right, she's not...she's not gone. 'Cuz that'll just...if...if we have to tell John that, it'd break his heart, Scott. They've already taken 'Five, they can't take EOS too."

Scott's expression is grim, though he shakes his head. "No, she's not gone." He sighs, heavy and tired, and when he shakes his head again it's mostly weariness. "Not yet, anyway. I don't know, Allie, it's complicated. I don't know how it's going to go. More likely than not, it's going to be a protracted legal battle and she'll sit in an isolated server for months on end until there's an answer. Currently all that's covering for her is copyright law, and the fact that John wrote all the code on TB5, and it's all the legal property of Tracy Industries. If they could tell where her code started and his left off, it'd be over and done with. But if we don't want him charged with the creation of an illegal artificial intelligence program, then we're gonna need to prove that nothing he did was the reason she became sentient."

"Jesus," Virgil mutters from across the room, and hunches up his shoulders, draws his knees up onto the couch and buries himself in his sketchpad. It's always vaguely ridiculous when Virgil attempts to make himself small, to draw himself in the way Alan can, all curled up and childish. Or Gordon, the way the second youngest can fold himself into the lotus position and meditate for a solid hour before free diving. Virgil, in trying to be smaller, only ever manages to seem that much larger.

"Yeah."

"We'll figure it out," Alan asserts stubbornly, even as Gordon shifts uncomfortably on the couch.

"How's John?" Scott's face is a study in guilt. "I've been trying to find time to call him, but-"

Gordon grins at this, glad to be able to give some good news. Virgil looks up again. "Starting to look like he's turned a corner. Grandma Tracy and me talked to him for almost an hour today, it was almost like he's back to his old self. Brains has been keeping in touch with his doctors, says it seems like his fever finally broke for good, they're starting to see the anti-malaria meds work. You should call him when we get done, Scotty, wake him up. It'd cheer you both up, I bet."

Scott's answering smile is genuine, hopeful. "Good. That's good, I needed to hear that. Okay. Well, we're having a conference call for a reason, and I've got that meeting in an hour. So...I guess with the good news out of the way...uh. Kayo? You wanna take the floor?"

Kayo nods. She's already told Scott. It had gone better than she'd expected it to, and she knows he's on her side. Penelope had already known, because of course she had. Still, it takes a deep, steadying breath before she can get to her feet and address the rest of the boys. "All right. Gordon, Alan, Virgil. There's a lot going on with International Rescue right now, and it's time for me to do my job. This is the first time there's really been reason to believe that someone's trying to hurt your family, and I need to know you trust me to keep you all safe. That's why your father hired me."

Alan's wide-eyed and Gordon's leaned back with his arms crossed, caught halfway between quizzical and challenging. Virgil's just hunched up a little further, like he knows what's coming and wishes he could drop through the floor. It's Alan who speaks up, utterly unsuspicious, "It's not about Dad hiring you, Kayo. You're part of our family. We've gotta keep you safe too."

This is heartbreakingly sweet, but then, Alan just about always is. Gordon's a little more cynical, he's caught on to the more important part of what Kayo had said, his eyes narrowing as he asks, "Who did this to John?"

Kayo shakes her head. "I don't know."

"Was it the Hood?"

Before Kayo can proceed with her confession, Penelope interjects, rising to cross the carpet and stand next to Kayo, the fingers of her elegant hands tenting as she takes over. "We simply don't know yet, Gordon. Occam's Razor suggests that the man with the most obvious and prominent grudge against your family is the most likely to have done one of you harm. For my part, yes, I do believe the Hood was responsible. How and why and to achieve what end, we don't know."

"Dad always expected something like this," Scott adds, and even saying so he looks remarkably like their father-the desk he's sitting behind in the far off headquarters of Tracy Industries is in Jeff Tracy's office- "Kayo's part of how we're going to be ready for him. That's her job, and Dad trusted her. So we-"

"The Hood's my uncle," Kayo interrupts, before Penelope or Scott can try and spare her any further. Quick, like a bandaid.

And painful, too.