Hey. So. The world's gone crazy, huh? As a Year 12 student, I'm one of the lucky ones, but my heart goes out to all of you who were expecting to sit your GCSEs and A-Levels this summer. And to everyone else who has been affected by Corona, I wish you all the best. I know everything's scary and bleak right now, but we will get through this, and we'll get through it together.

With all my best wishes, here's the new chapter.


TWELVE

A problem that John had always struggled with was getting his brain to shut up. At any given moment it was a guarantee that he'd have at least three different thoughts racing through his mind at a speed to rival Thunderbird One with her ramjets engaged. It was a problem, and sometimes John wished he could just have a button to press to send his head into a beautiful, quiet shutdown, but it was also a blessing because without his incessantly loud brain, he wouldn't be able to do his job. He was the thinker, the problem-solver, the one who took a single look at the data and the situation at hand and told his brothers where to go when, which route to take, what line of action would result in the least pain and suffering and overall casualties. So yes, it was a burden, but it was one he was willing to bear.

Which is why it was such a surprise when he searched for a response to the bombshell Colonel Casey had just dropped on him and came up empty handed. He imagined a blank error screen where his thoughts should be, and grimaced. Even EOS, usually the little prompter with a witty comeback at the ready whenever a caller got just that little bit too aggressive on the radio, was silent.

"I don't know what you're talking about." He surreptitiously slid his laptop closer to his chest, preparing to tip it into his bag and head for the nearest exit. There was a fire door to his right, and he was willing to bet that EOS could alter the alarm codes for it within a second if necessary. "AIs are illegal. I work for an organisation that relies on the World Council's support – I'd never make a move to jeopardise that position." Casey raised her brows at him, the same look of amused disappointment that John could recall from his childhood. Sometimes it was very easy to tell that she had been such close friends with his father. "I mean, bringing an Artificial Intelligence onto my ship? That could endanger the entirety of International Rescue. You'd have to be a complete fool to make a move like that."

"Indeed," Casey agreed, "which is why I'm wondering what you were thinking." She dropped the act, shoulders slumping with days of non-stop work. John wasn't the only one trying to keep people safe, and he knew it. Casey's connections with the Tracy family had been the only thing saving IR from trouble in the past, and he hated putting her in a position that forced her to choose between them and her job.

"How much do you know?"

She nodded to the security camera that John had noted when he'd first walked in. "Let's go for a walk. It's…quieter in the gardens, if you know what I mean."

John suspected he didn't have a choice – he lacked Scott's military experience, but he knew well enough when he was being given a command rather than a polite request. Draining the rest of his coffee, he tossed it to the bin and looped his bag – laptop freshly stowed away inside – around his shoulders, following the woman who he'd grown up calling aunt to the door. A silent alert cropped up from his contacts, informing him that Penelope and Parker had played their part and Virgil was now piloting a battered Cessna over to the UK. He didn't reply – any extra data could potentially become a hazard, and he was multi-tasking enough as it was.

The gardens were surprisingly peaceful. John wasn't sure what he'd expected, but softly flowing branches adorned with yellow blooms and a fountain gently bubbling at the centre, had not been it. A string of wind-charms hung from a wizened tree, singing in the breeze. It was warm, but not the baking heat of midday – the shade from the rising buildings around them saw to that. Casey settled down on a bench next to the fountain – the sound of the water should drown out any of their conversation that happened to be picked up through an open window. John, bag swinging from his hands – he missed his uniform, with all the separate things to fiddle with when he was trying to improvise and manage five hundred things at once – joined her.

"I know about the incident in Japan, with the train," Casey began. Her features were stern, but there was an underlying warmth to her gaze that came with many years of watching the Tracy boys grow up and mature into the people they were today. "And I know about Thunderbird Five."

"How?"

She frowned at him. "John, you know I can't tell you that."

"If you're keeping tabs on us, then I need to know." Seriously, he really needed to know. His entire plan could have just gone to hell if the GDF knew too much.

"Obviously we're keeping tabs on you – you're an international organisation with enough advanced technology to leave half the planet powerless if you suddenly decide the rescuing business is getting too dull. Really, what did you expect?"

"Privacy for starters."

"I said we were keeping an eye on International Rescue, not the Tracy family."

"I live on my Thunderbird."

She settled her hands in her lap. There was a slight flush of tension about her knuckles. John knew well enough not to point that detail out. "The GDF do not have probes on board any of your craft. We don't break the law."

"But you sometimes believe you're above it."

"With all due respect, so do you."

John stared at the fountain. It was a harsh jab, mostly because it was true. He'd never directly broken any international laws, but he definitely viewed them as guidelines rather than rules to live by. He found and manipulated the loopholes and then, if there weren't any, he made them. Casey had a point, but it was one that referred to him rather than IR, and they both knew it. This was personal – she was after something only John could know.

"You want EOS."

"No. I was friends with your father before the idea of International Rescue had even crossed his mind. Scott had just turned two and you were still a dream more than an actual reality. Believe it or not, I want to help you, which is why I'm also about to break about sixty confidentiality laws in twenty different countries."

Yes. It was official – Colonel Casey was a badass.

"We pulled the records from the Chaos Cruiser. I recognised the plans we found as Brains's work and when we traced it back, sure enough, it registered with an IR database. I was the one who gave the order to bring in Gordon, because I knew Scott was not an option and he would never give consent for Alan to be questioned – I didn't expect any of you to agree to it, yet your brother is currently sitting in one of our interrogation rooms. Then, about ten minutes ago, I got an alert claiming that there had been an accident in the street outside a certain hospital, wiping out all visual and audio feeds in a three-block radius and requiring many of the staff who would otherwise have been on patrol. Now there is a plane in the air with three recorded passengers heading to an airport in the UK which belongs to an old friend of your father's."

"Coincidence."

"John. I've watched you grow up. I know you, and I know your plays. This entire plot has your name all over it. You're protecting Brains and Alan, which means Alan knew about the files on the Chaos Cruiser, and Brains is innocent. Am I right?"

John buried his face in his hands. "Pretty spot on actually," he mumbled through his fingers. He didn't need to look up to picture the satisfied smirk on the woman's face. She loved being right almost more than he did.

"Now, given I know you have an AI in your ranks, and you're trying to buy time by offering us Gordon, I'm willing to bet that EOS is only proof you have that Brains is in the clear. How am I doing?"

"Take a wild guess."

"I'm offering you our resources."

John sat up, staring at her incredulously. "I'm sorry, what?"

"Like I said, I care about your family. I'm turning a blind eye to EOS, but if the rest of the GDF find out, or the World Council gets wind of it, I can't keep you or it safe, so you need to find proof without her help – hence the use of our resources. You can keep Brains and Alan off the radar for a couple of days, but any longer and someone will grow suspicious. Now, do we have an agreement?"

"She."

"Excuse me?"

"She." John lifted his head. "EOS is a she. Not an it."

Colonel Casey raised her eyes to the sky with the long-suffering sigh of someone who had known John for his entire life. It was that fond exasperation that could only be found in someone so close that they could be considered family.

John stuck out his hand. "It's a deal."


"If you could just tell me anything you can remember."

Silence. The steady clicking of a watch face, the tapping of shoes against a tiled floor, the thrum of a heartbeat in his ears, but nothing more.

"Anything at all. No matter how insignificant it may seem, it could be vital information."

Another long pause. Gordon rubbed at his temples, yawned leisurely and tried to maintain his apparent relaxed demeanour; he was exhausted, and it was fraying at the edges. He dug his fingers into his palms, took a deep breath, and closed his eyes against the glare of the lights for a moment. The woman facing him had little patience for this, and the indignant tapping of her pen against her Pad suggested as much. He could imagine the narrowed brown eyes and scraped back peppered hair, cold with an unseen rage. One thing was for certain – the agent was not the cute might-ask-out-on-a-date kind.

He was sat on a plastic chair that was designed for focus rather than comfort; the hard ridges were digging into his back, probing tender skin where fresh bruises were still forming. The table in front of him was stainless steel and polished to the highest degree – it was so clean that he could pick out every tiny detail of his reflection in the metal. Around him were white walls, white ceilings, white floor tiles – everything so perfectly pristine until it seemed cold and threatening. He longed for uneven blankets and colourful sofas, carpets speckled with glitter from projects from their childhood that still clung to the threads no matter how many times the hoover ran over them.

"Is there anything at all that you can recall? This is very important and could be crucial in our investigation…it could save lives."

"Really?" He gave a dark chuckle. "Because I thought saving people was my job."

For the first time, the woman's mask of indifference began to slip. The corners of her mouth twitched, a brow quivered, and a vein leapt across her temple with barely concealed rage. Agent Jodie was a GDF agent, highly trained and almost unmatched in her field – the perfect candidate for retrieving information from unruly victims – but everyone had their limits. It had been a very long day – her fiancé had left the lid of the bin up and the dogs had got into it, her car had broken down and now she was faced with a twenty-something man with a cocky grin and sense of self-assuredness about him that had her desperately wanting to plunge her fist right into his face. She took a deep breath and tried to remind herself that he had been through a terrible experience for the past week – plus he had saved the world a few times, so there was that going for him too.

"Mr Tracy," she began again with an inward sigh of pure frustration. "Please."

"Please, what? Please can you sign my cast?" Gordon perked up, making to drag his leg out from under the table. The chair legs gave an ear-splitting screech across the tiles and she winced. For the first time, she allowed her true feelings to slither past her stony exterior and onto her face in a dark cloud of anger.

"This has been a long and trying day for all of us."

"Oh, I agree."

"I'm glad we've reached an understanding."

"It was very trying – they've run out of coffee in the hospital café and my brother was furious."

Agent J pressed her forefinger and thumb to the brim of her nose and squeezed. A dull pain was settling in about her temples; a silent promise of an oncoming headache. They'd been at this for hours. She'd tried everything; manipulation, dredging up painful memories, carefully worded threats but he still refused to give her anything. As far as she was concerned, this had been a complete waste of six hours.

Gordon, for his part, was not enjoying the experience any more than she was. He may have seemed well at ease and overly confident in his mask of humour and general irritation, but he was exhausted and hurting – the painkillers had worn off around an hour before. He had reached the conclusion even before the session had begun that the GDF's interview was more of an interrogation than anything else, reinforced by the complete refusal to allow anyone else to sit in. Kayo, despite being IR's head of security, technically had enough clearance within the GDF to be there, but she was sat on Gordon's side of the table so that their elbows and knees brushed, a silent message of support and grounding, and if that didn't speak volumes to the GDF about where her true loyalties lay then Gordon didn't know what would.

He was skilled in – essentially - being an annoying son-of-a-bitch. This was something all of his family could attest to. Manipulating people, irritating them, playing at their emotions until their masks cracked and their true emotions were revealed – it was a game, and he was the unsung hero. There were two outcomes – one where the GDF received their information – and god knew that there was scarcely any of it – and he was forced to publicly relive on camera the memories that played on repeat in his nightmares or he could force Agent J to crack first, and be sent away scot-free. He knew which of those two options he preferred. He steepled his fingers and rested his chin on the top, sending her a wild grin.

"So, Agent J, here's what I remember. It was a fantastic beach, but very poor customer service…"

"Enough!" She slammed her hands down on the table. Tremors skittered across the surface, rumbling about the tiles and up the walls. The mirror flickered – it was two-way glass then. There was something deadly in her gaze – like the vicious glare of a predator about to kill - and Gordon jolted back involuntarily. Kayo's hand flew to his shoulder, fingers curling about the loose fabric of his sweatshirt and digging in until he recognised his ragged breathing and tried to calm his heartrate before he started hyperventilating. God he was on edge. What the hell was going on with him?

"I think we're done here." Kayo rose to her full height, emerald eyes flashing with an unspoken threat as Agent J began to protest. "Did you mishear me? I said, we are done." She settled an arm around Gordon's shoulders to help him struggle to his feet. "We're leaving."

John was pacing the corridor outside. A spare EOS drive was clipped to his waist, looped around his belt in a crude fashion that would never be found on their IR uniforms. His hair was bedraggled where he'd been running his hands through it, shirt untucked, and he was significantly less put-together than usual, eyes blood-shot as he caught sight of them.

"You okay?" His hands hovered above Gordon's shoulders as though he were unsure what to do with them. It was such a John thing to do – waiting until the other person gave the go ahead – and Gordon stumbled forwards, colliding heavily with his brother. The pain-meds were completely out of his system by now and the aching in his bones was raw and soul-consuming, sapping the energy from him until all that remained was a desperate urge for sleep.

"Can we go home now?"

Kayo and John exchanged a silent look over his head.

"We've got to stay a little longer," Kayo said gently, her voice unnaturally soft. Gordon dropped his head to John's shoulder and buried his face in the fabric of the shirt. There was the distant, familiar scent of their washing powder from Tracy Island, and the traditional books that used proper paper, snatches of cinnamon too – everything that spoke and sung of home. He felt distantly like crying, but the scratching sensation of growing tears in his throat seemed detached. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and hid from the harsh lights of the corridor.

Kayo was still speaking. Her words seemed strange, almost foreign.

"Hey." John tapped at Gordon's head. "You still with us?"

Gordon blinked owlishly at him. "Uh."

"Uh isn't an answer, kiddo." John frowned, reaching out a hand to steady him. "You're swaying. When was the last time you ate?"

"Med ward, around five hours ago," Kayo answered for him. She had tugged her hair out of its usual ponytail and her IR uniform was slightly unzipped to reveal the soft fabric of her black t-shirt underneath and a flash of gold where her necklace was tucked behind it. "Painkillers have probably worn off by now." She padded closer, figure blocking out the bright lights of the LEDs lining the ceiling panels. The world plunged in a merciful darkness around Gordon. He had the strange feeling that he was floating, as though watching himself on TV – an entirely separate entity.

John snapped his fingers. Gordon stared at him. "Huh?"

"I said," John repeated himself, "that I think you're dissociating."

"Huh." Something was buzzing. It was the only thing that he could focus on and for all of his being, all that he wanted was to make it stop. "S'weird."

The buzzing stopped.

"Gordon."

"What?" he snapped, trying to blink the blurriness from his vision – unsuccessfully. Somehow, they had moved out of the corridor and into a darker room without him noticing. "Woah…"

"Woah, what?"

"I don't know."

John suddenly found himself with an armful of shaking younger brother. He took a couple of steps back to compensate for the extra weight, and gently lifted Gordon back to his feet. The aquanaut slumped heavily against his side and John resigned himself to the idea that Gordon wasn't going to be walking on his own two feet for the next few hours at least.

"I don't feel so good."

"Yeah." John sighed and tugged him closer. "Yeah, I know. I'm sorry about that. If I had my way, then we'd have taken you home already."

"That was what…six hours? Did you find anything?" John tensed. It was oh-so-slightly, and Gordon probably wouldn't have noticed anything had he not been clinging onto his brother like a limpet. "John?"

"Colonel Casey knows everything. She's on our side," John hastened to add as Kayo's hands flew to her sash. She let them fall back to her sides, but her green gaze was unrelenting – she was not about to let this go without a proper explanation; one which he would give to her later, when he was certain his younger brother wasn't about to pass out on him. "And to answer your question, yes, I've got a lead. I'll need a little longer, probably twenty-four hours' worth, to narrow it down to actual evidence, but then Brains will be in the clear and the GDF won't have a reason to go after Alan." He pinched the brim of his nose, wincing slightly; a clear sign of a forming headache.

Gordon, still fading in and out of reality, dragged his gaze away from the swimming ceiling and onto his brother's face. "Are you okay?"

John coaxed a smile onto his face. "Yeah, I'm fine. It's just a headache."

"Is it?"

"…yes?"

Gordon peered at him suspiciously. "When was the last you slept?"

"Recently enough. Anyway, you should go and get some rest yourself."

"I'm fine."

Kayo didn't bother to hide her derisive snort. "You're slurring your words and you're literally swaying on the spot right now. Also, word choice. In conclusion, brother-o'-mine, you are not fine." She waved over her shoulder. "Med-room, now."

Gordon glanced down at his feet and oof, wow, okay, that was a mistake. He wrapped his hand around John's waist with a yelp as he found himself tilting sideways. The horizon was a wobbling line and the floor was indistinguishable from the ceiling. Not fun. God, this was like a bad trip.

"Hey." John's voice was loud in his ears. "Gordon." Fingers snapped in front of his face. He blinked, jolting backwards.

"Can I just stay with you?"

Did he sound like an actual five-year-old? Yes. Did he particularly care? No. Gordon had been repressing pretty much everything from the past few days and he was trying to ignore the fact that he knew the second he was left by himself, he'd start thinking about it, which was a no go. Kayo was awesome, but she didn't know everything. John…kinda did. Plus, Gordon trusted the GDF about as far as he could throw them, which in this moment of time was not very far at all.

John and Kayo exchanged another look. They were communicating silently, and it was creepy. Gordon wanted to laugh; he also wanted to throw up, so there were two things he wasn't doing.

"Alright." John usually took a lot more persuading – you could throw Scott the puppy-dog eyes and he'd be caving within a minute, but John rarely gave in. Gordon would have entertained the possibility that his brother wasn't dealing with everything as well as he was claiming to, but Kayo's arm was winding around his waist and he had to focus on putting one foot in front of the other. Problems and solutions and everything else were too much and damn, what wouldn't he give for some painkillers?

"You gonna be okay?" Kayo whispered. She had her head tilted to the side so she could glimpse his expression and her face was soft with concern. People sometimes called her a heartless bitch, but Gordon knew the truth – Kayo loved people just as fiercely as he did.

"Give me a couple of hours," he admitted, and then, with a mischievous grin, added: "And maybe a Xanax or two."

Kayo elbowed him in the ribs. Next to them, John was silent. This wasn't out of the ordinary – Gordon reckoned that if you looked up introvert in the dictionary then you'd find his brother's picture next to it – but god, there were so many things wrong right now that even the idea of adding something else into the mix made him want to break down and cry. No matter which way he turned, the prospect of going home seemed to travel further and further away. Even the idea of heading out on a rescue seemed like another life.

Still. All that remained between Gordon and his own bed in his own room with his own goldfish perched on the desk and glowering at the tropical fish on the other side of the room was a measly twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours was nothing. He'd slept longer than twenty-fours before – admittedly, he'd technically been in a coma at the time, but he felt like the point was still valid. It was just…twenty-four hours. He was so tired of it all. He'd gone from trying to keep himself, Alan and Scott alive into the heart of a full-gone heist, complete with the high stakes of a bad spy film, and he was still popping pills from the hospital every few hours. This was ridiculous. Alan shouldn't be hiding out on a bus in England with Brains of all people – that was ridiculous too.

Yeah. Gordon needed to stop thinking. He twisted the hem of his shirt around his fingers until the fabric caught on his nails, which, ow, okay, apparently he'd been biting again. That was a nasty habit he'd forced himself out of about six months ago. Nice to know that it was back. Damnit.

"Here." Kayo's arm disappeared from around his waist as she held a hidden door open for them. Gordon tried not to limp too badly, and John's small smile was proof that his brother had noticed and appreciated the effort. Hey, he was trying. Give a guy a break. He'd been in hospital not forty-eight hours previously – the wonders of modern medicine.

It was almost entirely dark in the room. The flood of light from the hallway abruptly cut out as Kayo pulled the door shut until the lock clicked. Despite the darkness, Gordon couldn't help but feel the first glimmers of safety he'd sensed in days, as though the rest of the world had been shut out and couldn't reach him. There was only himself and two of the people he trusted most in the world, and really, he'd still take all this - the work and effort and fear that everything could go sideways and half of them could end up in jail – over the constant panic and sickness of the island.

He blinked until his vision obliged and adjusted enough for him to make out the fine details. There was a desk stacked high with hologram projectors and crates on the far side of the box-room, a lone lamp trailing a broken cord perched on the very end. This was covered in a thin layer of dust, confirming what Gordon had already suspected – this room was not commonly used. He was standing in front of a desk covered with paper-files, a familiar laptop and an empty coffee cup. Scrawled notes in familiar curved handwriting slanted on post-it-notes plastered to the wall, and, next to them, an EOS drive was secured so that she could observe the room and its occupants.

"Hello Gordon," she greeted him brightly. "How was your interview?"

There was a strange note of honest concern that was odd coming from an AI. Gordon went to answer her but cut himself off with a yawn. Something soft smacked him in the face and he yelped, struggling to maintain his balance.

"Hey." He shot an accusing look at the culprit. "Give a guy some warning, would you?"

"No," Kayo repeated, tossing him another blanket that she was procuring from a cupboard that had previously gone unnoticed, leering out of the shadows with a flash of EOS's lights reflecting off its hinges. "Think fast."

John scuffed the floor doubtfully with one foot and glanced at him. "You sure you can sleep on this?"

"I slept on an island for days on end, I'll be fine." Gordon dumped the blankets down on the lino in an undignified heap and promptly flopped onto them like a beached whale, wallowing in the sea of fluff and faint smell of dampness until he was submerged in the covers. John was watching him with intense amusement. "What?"

"You're such an idiot."

"Thank you. I do try."

"There's a proper bed not five minutes' walk away."

Gordon wasn't opposed to emotional conversations complete with honesty – and often too many hugs if Virgil was involved – but he had a sneaking suspicion that if he took up John's unspoken offer of talking about everything, then he'd start crying and then they'd never get anything done. Instead he shoved an arm under his head and rolled onto his side, stretching out his leg to try and dull the ache and watching the pale light of the laptop screen illuminate the room, throwing delicate shadows across the ceiling and turning John's hair an even paler shade of blond. Kayo, meandering across the room, was bathed in shadows, the light catching her cheekbones and flashing off her necklace. She bent down, offering him a cereal-bar and a bottle of water to match.

"Sorry," she admitted before he could complain. "It was all I could find in the cupboard that's still in date." She poked at the water bottle. "This is fresh at least." She lowered her voice to a whisper, eyes sparkling with mischief. "Don't tell John I stole it from him."

"I heard that."

"Shh, you heard nothing."

Gordon propped himself on his elbow and tore open the packet with his teeth. The bar was packed with additives and probably fouled at least five sugar taxes, but he was so hungry he'd take anything. Wolfing down the second half, he prodded Kayo's shoulder where she was sat against the wall by his feet. She lifted her brows in query. "You got any painkillers?"

"Leg?"

"Headache too."

She nodded, searching in her pockets until she found a spare packet of his hospital prescription and held it out wordlessly. Gordon popped a couple and chased them down with water, trying not to think about the taste. In hindsight, saving some of the cereal bar may have been a good idea. He wriggled down under the jumble of blankets, then flipped over to try and stop himself from subconsciously fidgeting with the wrapper left on the floor. John's typing was soft, but loud when it was accompanied by an echo. EOS was a pale blue glow, as alien as she had ever seemed since the day Gordon had first learnt of her existence, and oh hello, now he was thinking about the ever-present possibility of death again and oh god, Scott.

"Hey." Kayo's voice snapped him back to the present. She was staring at him with furrowed brows, hair loose around her face for once. Clearly he wasn't the only one with a headache. "What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing."

"Hmm." She grinned, shark-like. "I call BS."

"Kayo." John tilted his chair back to catch her eye. "Leave him alone."

She sighed dramatically, drawing her knees up to rest her arms on top. "But he looks like he's having some sort of waking nightmare."

"No, that's just his face," EOS whispered, and started giggling to herself. John pretended not to hear her.

"Let him sleep."

"But."

"Kayo."

Gordon tugged a blanket over his head and imagined the world had gone away for a little while. There was something terribly comforting about the darkness – no expectations or feelings or memories of family bleeding out of his hands or the fact that he'd just left without saying goodbye to Alan or Scott. He squeezed his eyes shut and bit down on his lip, hard, begging sleep to come quickly. He wasn't responsible for either of them anymore. Scott was getting the medical help he needed, and Alan was…hidden. Safe from the GDF and their questions that probed too deep into memories that Gordon had perfected the art of repressing.

He took a deep breath and immediately broke out coughing. The blankets were too musty and dusty and in general ew, and he tore them away from his face. "Hey John?"

"Yeah?"

"Can I use your watch?"

John's shoulders slumped, silhouetted by the laptop. A moment later, something metallic and emblazoned with the IR logo landed by Gordon's side and he scrambled to find it amongst the blankets. His fingers met a cold surface and he closed his hand around it, drawing it up to his face and squinting in the bright light that blazed from the screen. It wasn't difficult to find the right contact and flip a message across.

"Thanks."

Kayo's hand squeezed his ankle. He expected her to move away after, but instead she kept it there, tapping her fingers against his bare skin to the beat of her music thrumming through her earphones. Gordon relaxed into the grasp of his makeshift bed. John didn't need to say anything, because he already knew – they'd be alright. They always were.


Review?

Stay safe out there, guys.

Kat xx