Over the Rainbow

Gordon does not press the button.

John sags slightly in his chair.

Scott blinks.

And Kyrano smiles, tight-lipped and thin. "Thought not."

"Fuck y—" Gordon starts, but Kyrano's found the leading edge of reality, bizarre as it may be, and he uses its razor sharp blade to cut the blond off, thundering, "Boys. Enough."

Immediately and interestingly, all three of them freeze, perking up slightly. Like all three of them have heard it before.

Curiouser and curiouser.

He makes a poor Alice, though, and in this case would prefer to be a Dorothy. Especially whirled into the sky and over the rainbow as they are. And arrayed in front of him, fittingly, are his very own tinman, scarecrow, and the most cowardly lion Kyrano's ever seen, roaring and snarling at nothing and everything.

So let's start there.

"Gordon," he repeats, tone light and pleasant and disregarding entirely the way both Scott and John are staring at him. "Pick your chair up."

Tawny-eyed, wild and angry. He growls, "You don't fucking—"

"Gordon," and again, because Ben can see the way the name makes him flinch, makes something inside him seize and startle. It shatters his persona, hammering on him from the inside, trying to find its way out. "Take a seat, Gordon. Let's see if we can't work this out."

Ben may just be the only person who's unsurprised when the blond complies. He fetches the chair from across the room, swings it upright and slams it into place, completes the little four cornered tableau, though he reverses his chair and sits with his arms folded over the back of it, still defiant, denying his part in this whole mess. He turns deliberately away from Scott and John, glares balefully at Kyrano. "You wanna try civility?" he drawls. "You think I can't make nice, have a pleasant conversation? I can have a pleasant fucking conversation. Gonna have it with you though, and not these two fucks. It's you's been trying to get at me, right? Fuckin' right? So who the fuck you work for, Ben? Belah Gaat, right?"

"Not at present," Kyrano answers, still calm and unruffled. He flicks his gaze between Scott and John. "Who do you think they are?"

Gordon's jaw tightens, his eyes narrow, and he still refuses to look at the other two, the boys with his brothers' names. "Dunno. Sleepers, maybe. Pissed off some government or another, fucked if I know. SPECTRUM's maybe screwing with me, some kinda test. Fucking—fucking Scott, maybe. Gotta be. Fucking Scott's doing something." It's the second time he's used the correct name and it trips him up, has him stammer and lose the oil slick cadence of his speech. He seizes onto it and jerks his gaze over to the scarecrow, sat in his chair with his hands gripping the sides of it. "So what are you? Huh?" Gordon spits. "Clone? Some lab grown scrap of tissue, you come out of a vat somewhere? That's what it is, right? He grew you in a lab and put you out in the world to fucking find me, baited a fucking trap, play your goddamn mind games, you little piece of—"

"I doubt that's the case," Kyrano interrupts, but he files the handful of theories away, bricks in the walls of the world around him. "And him?"

This time Ben meets John's gaze across the room, pale blue eyes and an expression that's starting to get blank, numb. Scott still reads as bewildered, confused and a little bit frightened, beneath the attempted truculence. The redhead rallies slightly to nod at Kyrano, but he's still fading, wearing down beneath the exertion of the whole ordeal. Hopefully the tension will start to lessen, if Kyrano can get Gordon to start to calm down.

"Fucking dead man, isn't he?" Gordon glances at John, and his lip curls, something like hatred. "Throwing around my brother's name, same colours, wrong shape. Ghost. Yeah, you know what, Johnny, you're fucking dead, because I crashed the plane that fucking killed you. Me and you and Dad. Middle of fucking nowhere, came down out of a storm that wasn't supposed to get that big. Too young, shouldn't've been flying. Said I was fine, Dad said he'd take over if shit went sideways. Shit went sideways, but dad went through the cockpit window, so fuck me. And you. Fucker, went and fucking died. And I mean you were really, really dead, 'cuz I had to look at you for a goddamn half a day, me and my broken spine, halfway out of the cockpit and dead from the shoulders down myself. You had a piece of shrapnel so far through your chest it should've chopped you in two pieces. You were his," Gordon's eyes flit to Scott, again, "age, barely twenty-two. Right?" The laugh that tears out of the blond now is raw and high, belongs to the hyena that trails around behind the lion. "Real fucking funny, dead man."

John's eyes have widened at this and Kyrano can see him trying to process it, trying to reformat the vomited out spurt of information, complex and wrong and profoundly at odds with what reality actually is—but it's Scott who speaks.

"How'd you—how're you walking, though, if you broke your spine?" Scott asks, hesitant. That this is the detail he'd get caught on—Kyrano shakes his head to himself. If he only had a brain.

Gordon's hands grip the back of the chair, white-knuckled and taut. "You crash a plane and kill your family, maybe the wrong people pull you out of the wreck," he answers, soft and dangerous. "Maybe the right people, I don't fucking know. SPECTRUM. They don't recruit, they harvest. Maybe they give you a new goddamn spine, tell you they can cover up the fact you killed your family, tell you how to be someone new. New. Better. Useful. Already a goddamn murderer, it's a binary state. "

He comes back around to Kyrano now, light blazing in his eyes like fire, like something's caught on within him, "You SPECTRUM?" he asks, and then continues as though he's sure it's true. "You making a point, teaching me a lesson? You and your…what, what's with Red? He's a puppet-droid, then, right? Does he think he's real? Fucking joke. Biometrics to pass basic scrutiny, but really break him open and it's really all biopolymer and catalytic enzymes, brain made of sillicon and iridium. That AI's been implanted, it's the one running him, so it's a…what, it's like a pilot and a mech. Splinter-consciousness, sub-routine. Is it one of ours? Gotta be one of ours. And you modeled him off my dead brother. Some fucking test. This's got Scarlet all fucking over it."

"No," Kyrano answers, gently. "You make a lot of guesses. I think usually your instincts are better than they have been lately, and I think yours is a world that's far weirder than what might be imagined. I think you're just throwing terminology at something that frightens you, hoping to see what sticks."

"Yeah? Well, fu—'

"Yes, yes, fuck me, I know. You've said," Kyrano interrupts, starting to get testy. He softens again, quick and careful, and addresses John across the room. "John?" he starts, and then prompts, preempting any more filth from the supposed Agent Jonquil, "Why don't you tell us a few things about Gordon?"

Okay.

So.

Psychotic breaks.

Persistent delusions. Auditory hallucinations. Ahedonia and avoidance.

What else? EOS could tell him. If he could shrug himself out of this stupid leaden flack-jacket and speak to her for a second, re-orientate himself.

Voices in his head. Hmm? Maybe not.

Bound to happen. He's been through considerable strain. People had tried to warn him. Traumatic experiences hammering on the faults in his psyche. Inevitable.

Or maybe, maybe it's Kyrano who's delusional?

Yes.

Yes, that makes sense. Isolated individual, history of violence, off the grid for a few years, cut free, personally and professionally. Fits the profile.

But madness in Kyrano doesn't explain why Steven would call himself 'Scott Fucking Tracy' or why he has turned the colour of spoiled milk.

And it doesn't explain Jonquil, or his eerie story, or why he looks like he might be about to cry or laugh or puke all at once.

John swears he can feel it, the spectre of that piece of shrapnel, carving through his chest. In his mind's eye he can see himself, dead among the wreckage, as his little brother shrieks and sobs and burbles, his body mangled beyond recognition.

Steven's right. SPECTRUM really know how to fuck with you.

There's a drawn-out screech, as Jonquil – John can't afford to think of him by any other name – drags the metal chair across concrete, plants it in front of John and sits into it, so they're almost knee to knee. "Okay, John-O-Tron, why don't you tell me all about myself?"

And John wants to tell him that that's a mistake, to leave that door closed, that the ghosts can only come in and haunt you if you let them. But fuck it, the poltergeists are already in his home, making themselves comfortable on his couch and maybe it'll help exorcise them to talk.

Just don't look into those brown eyes and think how they look oh-so-familiar. Because that's crazy.

"My brother Gordon," he says. "Once swam the 100 metres butterfly in 48.99 seconds, that's less than point one of a second slower than the Olympic record. It wasn't a race. Nothing official. He had nothing but a snap of a stopwatch to prove it, but he still says it's one of his proudest moments. He makes enchiladas so hot they'll burn the roof off the mouth of anyone who isn't half-salamander like him. He owns the largest, most hideous collection of Hawaiian shirts you have ever seen, and not one pair of socks that match. The last thing I said to him was… was... I don't remember the last thing I said to him. He genuinely cares about people, wants to know their story, wants to believe that everyone deep down is good. He's an idiot that way."

He stops for a moment, exhales through his nose, swallows carefully.

"My brother Gordon is the toughest bastard I have ever known. He put himself back together after the crash, physically and mentally. Not," he adds, "The crash you're talking about. He was a passenger and it was a hydrofoil. They were travelling at 140k an hour when the boat disintegrated around them, killed everyone aboard except him.

"The crash didn't snap his spine, but that just meant he felt everything. The impact crushed his pelvis, broke both femurs, chipped seventeen of his vertebrae. He had full thickness burns covering 30 per cent of his body and they had to drill a hole in his skull to let out the collection of blood that was compressing his brain. He had 18 surgeries. They had to break and re-break 11 separate bones."

"Hey, man, shut up." It's not Jonquil who says this, it's Steven. If he was the colour of bad milk before, now he's the colour of rancid cheese. "That never happened."

But the man sitting in front of him leans forward, and there's a spark of something, horror or fascination, in his eyes. "Go on."

John clears his throat. "The doctors didn't rate him. They said he would never walk again. But they didn't reckon with Gordon. Up every morning before dawn, dragging himself from one room to the other, hours, weeks trying to re-learn to do the stuff the rest of us take for granted. He would cry when he couldn't… when he wasn't able to… But he never quit. Said he still had too much to do, that there was still too much of the world unseen."

"And did he do it?" There's a hunger now in the agent's eyes, or greed or maybe grief. "Did Goldenboy pull himself back together? Or is he on life's trash heap like the rest of us?"

John leans forward. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Huh." Jonquil sits back and the light goes out of his eyes. "That bad?"

"No."

"Funny guy." But he looks raw and scared and young, and for a moment John is overwhelmed by a memory of a boy, scarred and broken, sitting on the bathroom floor in a pool of piss and shit, sobbing angry tears. John remembers how pathetic he had felt. How he been able to do nothing to help, hadn't even been able to overcome his own disgust to enter the bathroom, had just run to fetch Dad.

And in that second John wants to reach out, fasten his hands around the boy's wrists and say, "You are tougher than you know," just as Dad had done before he had helped Gordon mop up his own shit.

"Scott," Kyrano interrupts this train of thought, "Is there something you want to share with your brothers."

"That's not my name." Steven's hands are fastened, white knuckled, around the arms of his chair. He's staring at his knees, won't raise his head.

Jonquil chuckles and something in his affect shifts, recovers a little of the slimy professional. "You just said it was, man."

"I lied." Steven – or whoever – keeps his eyes fixed on that spot on his left knee. "I'm Steven Summers of Hastings, Nebraska. I'm normal. Mediocre, yeah maybe. But not like you lot. I'm not a freak like you."

It's a wild haymaker of an insult, swinging wide to catch them all and not connecting with any of them. Jonquil cackles. "Ooh-hoo. Stevie, you know all the bad words."

His persona is rebuilding itself. The kid's too easy a target.

"Shut up." Steven's eyes flicker up at this and then quickly down again to his lap. "You think I'm 'malleable', maybe. Stupid, sure. But not stupid enough to play at this mindfuck. You're not my brothers. Steven… I don't have any brothers. And if you were Scott Tracy's brothers, he wouldn't have let this happen to you."

This time Jonquil's laughter echoes off the pipes. "Let us? Maybe you are Scott, after all. You certainly have his arrogance. Tell me, big bro, when did you ever let us do anything?"

"I look out for you," he says it almost too quietly to be heard. "That's my job. I wouldn't… I'd never… Gordon's a 16 year old kid! He thinks about swimming and girls and maybe how to make the bathroom sinks run with chocolate milk, and that's it. He's never been in any sort of – Jesus. Fuck!"

His arms go across his chest. "I'm Steven Summers of Hastings, Nebraska. Born August 15th 2034. Parents Lauren and Michael Summers, both deceased. Dad was a plumber. Mom was a nurse. Went to Columbia High School," he says it to himself like it's a mantra.

John wonders if Scott – his Scott – had ever been this young and vulnerable. There's the bulk of four years between them. When John was 18, Scott had seemed Teflon-coated, indestructible. He had been already out of school, finishing up his year in England, full of piss and vinegar and stories of the mountains he had climbed and the girls he had nailed. He had showed interest in his dorky little brother's projects in that callow way he feigned interest in all subjects that bored him. If he ever said anything genuinely insightful on a topic John cared about, John had always chalked it up to parroting Virgil or just plain luck.

Was all of that, that callow asshole personality, bravado? Had it just been some persona Scott had made up to hide the fact that he was a vulnerable, bright kid who didn't quite know where he fit in the world, who was scared and unsure of himself and worried about everything? To John, who has spent his whole life asking and expecting to be accepted exactly as he is, it sounds exhausting.

"I'm Steven Summers. 22. Washed out of the navy because of disobedience-"

"Gordon," Kyrano slips himself back into the conversation. "Where are Alan and Virgil now?"

This silences the kid. It causes Agent Jonquil to go very still too, but not so still that John can't see that whole body wince. "You're a piece of work, old man."

"Answer the question."

He taps his chin, thoughtfully. "You know, Virgil saw me once. At the hearings. When we tried to take the old man's company. That was after you did your disappearing act, Scooter." He jerks a finger in Steven's direction. "Ivory Tower shit. Virg had to take over. He saw me, across the room. Turquoise said he couldn't have recognised me, but she was wrong. He knew me. Must have been like seeing a ghost." He glances up at John. "Never could imagine what that felt like."

"And Alan?" Kyrano presses.

There's a tiny smile, ugly and unsettling. His voice is monotone. "Alan's okay. At MIT, second year. Studying particle physics, rowing crew. Doing well for himself. Got a girlfriend. Pretty thing. Sweet. He doesn't know yet that she's one of ours. Doesn't know that we've got planned for him. Gonna take him in, paint his soul a different colour. Got swatches all picked out. Favour red, myself."

He leaps from the chair, filled with a sudden manic, luminescent glee. "Hey, I've got an idea. Wanna see?"

"What?" John startles.

But Jonquil is suddenly up and jigging about frantically. "Hey Persephone, please play surveillance footage, subject 74243. Alan. Sheppard. Tracy."