"You ok Brians? You seem a little distant."
"Hmmm?"
"Was it a good conference?"
Conference. Yes, that was right. Brains pulled his gaze back from the window of the small plane, the usually dazzling sea dimmed as it flew beneath them. It had been kind of Scott to offer to give him a lift to and from the Annual International Engineering Pioneers Symposium. Three days of presentations, networking and panels with the finest engineers and mechanics that the world could put forward. It always left him buzzing with ideas.
Not this time though. Now he felt... vague... fuzzy. Maybe he was coming down with something.
"It was good, thank you. Always so much to consider." Even though he couldn't remember any one topic that had been covered. He rubbed his forehead. He must just be overtired.
"We'll be landing soon." Scott said, making a few adjustments on the instrument panels in front of him. "Make sure you get something to eat before you disappear into your workshop. I know you – you'll want to get straight to work on whatever has inspired you over the last couple of days, but if you don't eat properly first Grandma will just bring you something."
"Of course." Brains murmured, watching from the co-pilot seat as Scott made the final preparations for their decent, the thought of food making him feel slightly queasy.
It was very kind, the way they treated him. Turn it off. If someone had told him that a simple engineering job straight out of college would lead to him living on a tropical island working for the world's most advanced rescue organisation he would have called it impossible. Turn it off. And that he'd come to think of these brave men and women as a second family was just icing on the cake.
"You getting out?" Scott jolted him back – they had landed! And he hadn't even noticed. Brains blinked heavily to dispel the fog around his mind and brushed off Scott's concerned hand.
"Sorry. I was just thinking." Suddenly filled with an urgency Brains practically fled out of the plane. He had to do something. He had to turn something off. Turn it off. Turn it off now. Off. Off. Off.
A dreadful beat began to fill his head. Off. Off. Off. Tracking off. Tracking off. Off.
Brains hurried into his lab, pulling up the main control panel, accessing the tracking systems. Off. Got to turn it off. He could turn them off one at a time, or he could turn them off at the source. The beat became a pounding, one that echoed back and forth between his ears, a hammer into his brain. One hand grasped his head. He wouldn't have time to do them individually before his brain exploded, or that's how it felt.
Off. Off. Off. Off.
The source. Turn the source off. He pulled another system up, entering override codes.
"Brains? Is something wrong?" John's transparent form appeared out of nowhere, alerted by the overrides.
Brains moved as quickly as he could. He had to stop the pounding.
Off. Off. Off.
"Brains? What the – Brains! Stop it! It's overloading!" But Brains couldn't hear John's cries over the thunder. "It's going to - "
Brains sat back heavily in his chair and waited as the thumping faded, to be filled with a heavy cotton wool instead. He used to love cotton wool as a child. He would stuff it in old socks to make tiny pillows for his grandparents cats, and stuck it on the underside of his homework desk. He made his own miniature skyscape with painted on stars and fluffy clouds. He would lie under there, feet sticking into his room, and dream he could touch the sky.
"Grandma sent me down with these." Gordon came trundling into the room, tray in hand. "But don't worry, I won't tell her if you eat them." He deposited the tray on an empty surface, gave a wink as he turned and dashed out again. How long had he been down here? Brains glanced at the clock – hours!
Brains ran his hands through his hair, confused as to what had absorbed him so. He wasn't working on anything, was he? He had just come back from... somewhere. Somewhere. Why couldn't he remember? Maybe he was coming down with something.
Brains felt restless and he began to pace. Nervous energy filled him and a sense of dread as if he'd done something terrible. Something awful. Maybe he'd dreamed it though. Maybe he hadn't. Maybe he'd forgotten something. Like a birthday.
No. He needed to do something. His pacing started to echo in his head, in time with his footsteps, in time with his heartbeat. He needed to... He needed to... He needed to …... do something. He needed to go.
Brains turned on his heal and headed out. He wasn't sure where he was going until he strode into Thunderbird Two's hanger but it felt right and lessened the pounding in his head.
Virgil was sitting on the open pod ramp, tinkering with some component or other, tools scattered at his feet and greasy cloth in hand. He gave a nod in greeting but carried on his work. He clearly wasn't going anywhere. Go. Go.
Walking up the ramp into the pod, Brains grabbed a wrench from the back wall – a full set of tools was always on hand for any on-mission emergency repairs. He hefted it, feeling the grip, and with one swift movement struck Virgil across the back of the head. Virgil crumpled without a sound, and Brains made his way to the cockpit.
Brains had designed most of this, consulted on everything else, but he was still slow to start up the lumbering machine. Practice. He didn't have practice. He knew the procedures but didn't do any of the endless repetition that turned launching into a smooth process. But he got there. Closing the pod ramp. Lowering the main fuselage. Turning to face the launch way. Each action eased the pulsing, each hesitation stoked it.
"What the hell Brains!" Virgil's angry voice from behind him, and then the pilot was beside him, flicking switches and turning off systems careless of the blood that matted the back of his head. He can't have been unconscious for very long, just long enough to make him angry.
"I have to go. I have to take it." Brains said, as if that would explain something he didn't understand himself.
"Take it? Take Thunderbird Two? Like hell you are." Virgil was angry. "Where the hell do you think you are taking her?"
"I don't - I don't know. I just have to - " Brains reached for the controls, urged on by the pain in his head.
A firm hand on his wrist. Stopping him from entering the engine start up sequence. Go. Go. All of a sudden Brains was aware just how strong Virgil was. How imposing when he wanted to be. When he was right in your space. He didn't often use his muscles when not on a rescue. But he could.
Brains' hand trembled against Virgil's grip as he grasped for the controls, but he couldn't move an inch.
"I have to. I have to go. I have to. Take it."
Virgil's thunderous expressions slowly morphed from fury to concern though Brains could barely tell from behind his cloud of pain.
"Where?" he asked simply.
"I don't know. I didn't know I needed to take it until I was here and now- "
"And now you need to take Two. I get it. But I'm not going to let you." Virgil said, resolute as a mountain.
"Please. It hurts." And it did. The pounding, a bass drum right between the eyes.
"No." Go. "I need you to tell me what happened. How long have you been feeling like this?" Take it. "How long have you had impulses like this, that cause you pain if you don't obey them?"
"Only today." Take it. "Only since I got back." Take it. Brains screwed his eyes shut, but that did nothing.
"Then it would have been at the conference. You met with someone."
Trembling all over now, a hammer drill in his head, Brains said "I met a lot of people."
"This would have been on your own. Probably just you and him, in private somewhere."
His hotel room. He had thought it was room service.
"You probably can't really remember what he looked like - "
The man was smartly dressed but there was nothing else memorable about him, except -
" - Except his eyes" Virgil was continuing. "He has really distinctive eyes."
The looked into his soul. Looked into his soul and found him lacking. That was when the pounding started.
"He would have been talking to you, but you barely noticed what he was saying because of a device he carries. It disrupts brain waves. Makes the target highly suggestable."
The man had been talking, but the words didn't register, the heavy thudding in his head removing all possibility of thought.
"But you can fight past it." Virgil was whispering in his ear, will as strong as his grip was. "You will fight past it."
Nails scratched down his spine, stabbing and burning the longer he lingered, the longer he left his mission unfulfilled.
"I. Can't. I. Have. To." Brains stuttered, sweat beading his brow.
"You can. I won't let him have you. You're our family."
Family. He wasn't going to hurt his family.
If Brains thought there was pain before, but it was nothing compared to the lightning that flashed over him now, burning down his veins. The thudding consolidated into a voice that was stern and commanding – it gave no care for his own needs or feelings. Where before it was subtle in it's control it now attempted to subsume all that made him Brains.
Go. Take it.
No.
Go. Take it.
No.
Take it.
No.
Take it.
NO
Washed away in a flash flood of feeling Brains lost all sense of space and time, each heartbeat the age of a universe and twice as empty. He wondered in a starless sky the only points of light were the flames of his family – this family that had taken him in and made him their own – and they were the anchor that pulled him back.
When at last he came back to himself the cockpit was somewhat crowded with Scott staring at him intently and Gordon tending the ugly looking wound on the back of Virgil's head. It was strange to be alone in his own head again: a shadowing presence on his shoulder that had been barely noticed was swept away and the day was all the brighter for it.
"You back to being you?" Scott asked passing him a bottle of water. Gordon threw him a dubious glance, but didn't stop his careful work.
"Yeah, I am. That was - " Brains took a deep breath. His mind still felt fuzzy and confused, memories disjointed but he was clear about the weight of a wrench in his hand. "I'm sorry Virgil. I -"
Virgil interrupted, holding up a hand. "Don't. We know it wasn't you. We know that The Hood has some illegal devices and breaking the conditioning can be tough, but I knew you could do it."
"I should have noticed something was off" Scott grimaced "you were out of sorts all the way back."
"What we need is something to counteract his tech." Gordon piped up.
"That's a worry for another day, perhaps when Brains is feeling a bit better."
"Hmmm, I do have a new perspective now," He agreed, opening the bottle and taking small sips.
"We should have expected an attack: we know he's after our machines."
Virgil waved Gordon away impatiently, and the younger rolled his eyes and removed his latex gloves. "The joke would have been on him though, you can't just fly a bird out the hanger: we can find them anywhere in the world."
"Ha! Yeah." Scott was agreeing, but another memory reared it's ugly head. Entering overrides. Sending a power surge. John being cut off abruptly.
Scott did a double take – seeing how Brains had frozen and paled. "What is it?"
"I think he did think of that. I- I think I destroyed any way to track a stolen machine. I think I destroyed Thunderbird Five."
This was inspired by a square on Bad Things Happened Bingo, and of course it had to be Brains because I can't resist a pun.
But of course, because it's me I somehow made it about John as well. You said I went easy on him last time, so I'm going to try and do better ;)