Scott and Jeff followed Brains into an elevator, passing the laboratory floor and the sick rooms. Scott didn't breathe a word, just determindly dragged one leg after the other. Anger smouldered in him at this treatment. He couldn't understand why his father was wasting precious time they needed to find out what had happened to Alan. He reminded himself that he had been promised answers. Being impatient wouldn't help.
He was led into what was jokingly referred to as the 'drawing room'. It's where Jeff normally hosted special guests such as Lady Penelope or other old friends. Scott had only ever been in the room on the occasional birthday or Christmas, when he and his brothers would be up into the early hours of the morning putting the world to rights.
They stopped by a leather chair, standing beside a table laden with wires and equipment. There was a white plastic stand that Scott recognised as a portable brain scanner. He had last seen it used on John when Brains was tracking the progress of his illness. Alongside the scanner, Brains was fiddling with a monitor. He looking uncharacteristically flustered. He was often excitable, in his own way, but Scott had never seem him like this.
Scott tried not to betray his anxiety as he was seated in the leather chair alongside the table. He rested his cuffed hands on his lap and looked up at his father, who stared down at him with an unreadable face. He still held the handgun, aimed at Scott's chest.
"We'll do this quickly, son," he said, "I'm sure there's an explanation."
"An explanation for what?" Scott hissed, unable to suppress his frustration any longer, "What the heck is going on?"
Jeff ignored him as he addressed Brains.
"Everything ready?"
Brains popped his head up from behind the monitor, stepping over towards Scott.
"Uh, yes, Mr Tracy," he said, "I-I-I've reprogrammed this scanner to, ah, detect lying-specific brain patterns."
"You're using a lie detector on me?" blurted Scott.
Brains began fitting the top of the scanner device around Scott's head, which slipped over his forehead like a white headband strung with wires.
"Ah, yes, Scott. I assure you, it is painless and accurate. You see this, ah, infrared laser spectroscopy will shine i-i-invisible infrared light through your skull and reflect it off the brain to reveal activity-"
"Yeah, yeah, I get it," said Scott, "Please spare me the details and get this done."
"Son," said Jeff warningly.
"Father," returned Scott solemnly, "At least tell me if there's any progress? Do you know who did this?"
Brains stepped back from fitting the scanner before eagerly grabbing his clipboard, gripping it in one hand while the other gestured frantically.
"We have a-an awful lot more to go on than I a-a-anticipated. I-I-I cannot share those details a-a-at present."
"Then why am I here?"
Brains pursed his lips and looked towards Jeff.
"Uh, Mr Tracy, I suggest you sit yourself in front of Scott."
"Why?" asked Jeff.
"I-I-I feel it will help with the results."
"Well, if you think so..."
Jeff pulled over a wooden chair, antique oak, sitting himself a couple of feet directly in front of Scott. The pair of them avoided each other's gazes out of courtesy.
Brains almost mumbled to himself as he studied the readouts on the scanner, "Preliminary readings suggest you are experiencing severe anxiety..."
Scott sat taller in his seat. "I don't... No. I'm not feeling anxious. Maybe a little degraded."
"Oh, ah, that answer is reading as a lie," said Brains with infuriating certainty.
"Lovely!" Scott snapped, feeling his face burn. His father tapped a hand on his knee, forcing him to look up into his dark steel eyes, "There's no shame in fear."
Scott nodded stiffly. He took a deep breath, "Yes or no answers, right Brains?"
"Correct," said Brains from behind him, "Let us begin. Is your full name Scott Tracy?"
Last time he checked. "Yes."
"A-A-Are you a pilot?"
The whirring of the scanner was distracting. "Yes."
"Let me show him the footage," his father said abruptly.
Brains hesitated for the briefest moment, clearly wanting to delve further into Scott's intriguing neural patterns further. He reached behind the monitor for a video tablet, which he dutifully passed to Jeff. He tapped on the screen before holding it up for Scott to see.
"Scott, do you remember this?"
Scott squinted at the small screen and recognised he was looking at video footage from within the cockpit of Thunderbird One. He knew from the way he was slouched back in his seat, hands massaging his temples, that this was from the morning of the attack on Thunderbird Two. The timestamp confirmed it.
"Yes," he said carefully, "I had just returned from transporting casualties to Cooper Hospital."
As he spoke, he watched himself on the screen suddenly freeze and go still. He thought perhaps the footage had paused, before he saw himself rise up higher in the pilots chair. His expression remained frozen as his hands tapped out on his comms and then console unit with incredible speed.
"What..." Scott began.
Suddenly he saw himself lurch forward in his seat, hands clutching his head. He appeared to be breathing heavily. After a few moments, he watched himself answering the radio.
"I-I-In those few seconds," Brains said, "You sent a command to open Thunderbird Two's lower hatch. Of course you, ah, ah, have clearance to do so whenever you like, so Thunderbird Five wasn't alerted."
"But I-" Scott gasped.
"You let the terrorist in," said Jeff without emotion, "A female boarded Thunderbird Two and planted explosives."
"Father," said Scott, teeth clenched, breathless with terror, "I swear to you, I didn't do that."
Brains had gone silent, staring at the scanner readouts.
"Father, I don't know why... Or how... But I don't remember doing that. I remember my head hurting and answering a call from Virgil before the explosion, but I did not..." he hissed slowly, his cuffed and shaking hands rising to point a finger at the screen.
"Scott..." Jeff said, in a soft tone, a father talking to his employee and not his son.
It only added fuel to the raging fire of Scott's temper.
"I did not give that...
He didn't finish what he wanted to say..
'that... fucking command.' He had never sworn in front of his father before and wasn't going to start now. He suddenly got an urge to curl the pointing hand onto a fist and smash the screen, rip it from the wall, throw it across the room. It had been a long time since he had felt such a childish desire.
Brains spoke from behind him, "Ah, he's telling the, uh, truth."
Scott yanked the scanner off hard enough to give himself whiplash. He stood and marched up to Brains, brandishing his cuffed wrists, "Take these off me. Now."
"Brains, do as he says," said Jeff, "We're done here."
Furious and terrified, Scott barged out the room before he could act on his emotional impulses, accidentally knocking shoulders with Brains on the way out.
He heard the voice of his father calling his name as the door slammed shut behind him.
Someone, somehow, had got into his head. He had seen it before.
The Hood. It had to be The Hood.
After calming himself down, pacing stormily back and forth on the balcony of his room, Scott risked an update from Gordon. His little brother looked worse for wear, but when he heard the news that Virgil woke up his sigh of relief was restoring.
"Good old Virgil..." Scott sniffed, emotional tears building in the corners of his eyes, "Is he..."
"All there?" Gordon sighed and ran a hand through his hair, "It depends on your definition."
"What are you talking about?"
Gordon stared at him through the video feed, looking reluctant.
"Tell me," Scott said softly.
Gordon took a deep breath, another of his famous sighs of despair, before he spoke. "Scott... He was confused. He went a little berserk. I left to go and get myself a coffee. Up until that point he had been doped to the gills and wasn't capable of doing much more than open and close his fist. Then when I came back..."
Gordon took an agonised pause and Scott didn't press him further. After a while, his little brother continued.
"Well, how would you feel if you woke up with one of your legs chopped off? He's doing a little bit better now. I've only had to repeat myself three times when he last woke up," Gordon shrugged nonchalantly through the video feed on Scott's watch, but they were both hushed with concern.
"Does he remember anything from the accident?" asked Scott.
"No. He's only recently started talking but it's a bit... Slurred isn't the right word. Disjointed? Words come out in the wrong order. Anyway, he'd even forgotten that John had passed away. He kept asking to talk to him. Then he caught sight of a news report of the attack. Someone got great footage on their cell phone of Thunderbird Two crashing."
"My God..."
"I know," sighed Gordon, "It's like he's grieving all over again, in more ways than one. Wait, is that smoke? Are you smoking again?"
"No," Scott lied, moving his arm as far away from his body as he could to hide the evidence, "How's the security team Lady Penelope assembled?"
"Cranky. Clueless," Gordon sighed, "I'm keeping them busy."
"More like annoying them. Are you ok? Did you get any sleep?"
Gordon narrowed his eyes at him knowingly, "I've clearly had more than you. That, or you're hiding something."
"If I had news about Alan, you'd be the first person I'd tell."
"What have they found out? What do they know? Was it Wile E. Coyote?"
Scott again marvelled at Gordon's intuition. He'd not heard his brother's old nickname for The Hood for a long time. "Maybe."
Gordon blew out a breath, "If it is him, he's upped his game."
"He won't win," Scott agreed darkly.
"So you know for sure that it's him?"
"No, just a feeling. Don't think about it, Gordon. Look after Virgil. For me."
"Whoever wants to hurt him again will have to walk over my dead body first."
Scott's smile was genuine, "You're not half as threatening as you think you are."
"It's my charm."
"Look after yourself."
"Take your own advice," countered Gordon. The usual zeal was in his voice but his eyes were half closed with exhaustion as Scott shut down the call. He went back to his forbidden cigarette, his mind wheeling around in circles. A voice behind him made him startle.
"I thought you stopped smoking."
He half turned to Tin-Tin, who approached the balcony to stand by his side.
"I did," he said drily.
"Hmm," said Tin-Tin as she reached over his folded arms and delicately plucked his cigarette away from between his fingers. He expected her to flick it from the balcony but instead she took a long, deep pull. Her eyes filled with tears as she blew out the smoke.
"I don't know what I'll do without him," she said, trembling.
Scott nearly rolled his eyes and was inwardly disgusted by his own selfishness. The last thing he wanted to deal with was more of somebody elses pain. Yet part of him understood completely. He made an effort to comfort her, placing a hand at the top of her back for a long moment as they stood in silence.
"I need to, um... Get Rob down here. Poor guy," Scott said eventually, his need to lead, to organise the chaos, kicking into action, "I'll need Brains to scan me over, make sure there's no... Mind control gadgets ticking away in me. Then I'll get Thunderbird Three up to collect Rob. We'll need all hands on deck. If I've been compromised, then the worst I can do is self-destruct in space... That'd do them a favour, whoever's behind this..."
He stopped suddenly, rage embodying him and draining the last of his energy. He gripped the balcony and swayed. The cigarette had been a mistake.
Tin-Tin glanced at him, concerned, "Are you alright?"
The gentle question dissolved his anger in an instant. A rhetorical question, but the soft "no" was whispered automatically before he could stop it.
Her face was wet as she turned towards him, arms rising to take him in an embrace. Reflexively, Scott stepped back, but she ignored this and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. She was so petite she had to force him to stoop a little, holding him tight and close.
Scott buried his face into her shoulder, dry-eyed and exhausted. He wanted to cry, just like he had done in Grandma's arms as a child, when Mom passed away. The night he had watched John die, Virgil had been the one who held him as they both wept.
In both those devastating moments, there was an instant where he was worried he would never be able to stop. He knew he couldn't break now.
"I'll find him, Tin-Tin," he whispered hoarsely, "I'll find out who did this and I'll make them pay. I promise."
Suddenly, John was talking in his mind, as if he standing with them both. There was a sad smile in his voice as he cautioned, 'Scott. Stop making promises you can't keep.'
Shut up, John. You're not here.
Tin-Tin left him there to return to her daughter. Scott, knowing there was no way he would sleep, began his long walk towards Thunderbird Three's silo. Brains would have to wait to poke around in his head.
Each pace was a betrayal to his father, but he had work to do. The ten year old boy he once was feared defying his father to get the revenge he sought. He felt hollow with another realisation. All he knew lately was fear.
Author's Note - Thank you for the follows and favourites from the last chapter. They warm me like hot chocolate.
Merry Christmas, lovely people!