Chapter Nineteen

"Run," Alan said as the buggy came charging towards them from the service road. Through the windshield and open sides and top of the buggy Alan could see three of the Hood's henchmen including Mullion all with devilish grins on their faces. Complacent, he thought, they think they're going to catch us easy now.

In unison Alan, Tin-Tin and Fermat turned away from the approaching buggy and started fleeing down the other side of the array clambering awkwardly over the rocks in their desire to escape the occupants of the buggy and flee into the jungle again.

They didn't make it. The buggy came around the rocks that surrounded the concrete block the communications mast was built on and roared to a halt directly in front of them. Mullion and both guards jumped out immediately and came straight at them. Mullion especially ran straight at Alan knowing that he needed to take the other metahuman down quickly before he could use his powers against them again.

Alan seeing Mullion barrelling towards him like an enraged bull knew he wouldn't be able to move quickly enough to avoid a collision with the older super strong metahuman. There was only one possible way he could think of to avoid being bowled over like a Human bowling pin. Taking a deep breath and holding it he imagined Mullion passing through him rather than crashing into him. He felt his powers flare immediately and then the light insubstantial feeling he already associated with phasing filled him.

Mullion was startled when Alan literally seemed to shimmer with an almost heat haze effect then literally turned transparent – he could see the rocks behind him through Alan's body. Realising that he wouldn't be able to grab the young metahuman while in that state Mullion tried to stop himself. But he was already too close to stop, reaching Alan he literally passed right through him to slam hard into the rocks a few paces behind him. Stars exploded before Mullions eyes and his world spun sickeningly even as he crumpled to the floor badly stunned by the impact.

Alan stopped phasing and as he solidified let out the breath he had been holding before almost crumpling to his knees as a wave of exhaustion rippled through and he could feel the level of power within him drop considerably. Note to self don't phase when your powers are already weak, he thought as he tried to rally his strength and the remaining energy within.

One of the two guards seeing Alan's sudden weakness decided to take advantage of it. Unhooking a stun gun from its slot on his belt he fired on Alan.

Alan jerked when he felt the two small metal darts from the tazer strike him, then a short but intense charge of electricity followed. The sudden blast of energy convulsed his muscles and dropped him to the floor just like it was designed to do. But that wasn't the end of it. The blast of electricity somehow interacted with the power inside him producing what felt almost like some kind of internal explosion and waves of pain so intense that he cried out in agony right before gratefully giving himself up to the darkness that raced up to embrace him.

"ALAN!" Tin-Tin yelled in fury seeing Alan fall and hearing him cry out in what had to be tremendous agony given his high pain tolerance, mercifully the scream of pain cut off as Alan lost consciousness. Part of her was stunned that a tazer attack something that would normally only disable for a minute or two could have such a devastating effect on Alan, but the rest of her was furious. Literally seeing red she lashed out telekinetically at the guard who'd just attacked Alan. The blast of telekinetic force knocked the guard flying to land stunned a few meters away.

Tin-Tin smiled slightly even as she felt a sudden surge of shame for giving in to her anger and using her power in a manner that was all to reminiscent of some of the things her uncle could do. Abruptly her world reeled and she felt sudden pain at the back of her skull before everything went black and she dropped unconscious. Standing over her was the remaining guard who having finished subduing Fermat and wrestling the kid into restraints had noticed her distraction and clubbed her around the back of the skull with the butt of his pistol.

Getting his wits back together Mullion picked himself up from the floor shaking his head to clear the residual disorientation while mentally swearing every word he knew. First there was ice, then snowballs and now phasing he couldn't help but wonder what other metahuman tricks Alan Tracy had up his sleeves. He was surprised and pleased to see Alan and Tin-Tin both disabled and unconscious with the third smaller kid in restraints and glaring hatefully at them.

"Bind these two as well. Then load them all on the buggy," he ordered gesturing at Tin-Tin and Alan just as the guard who'd been hit by Tin-Tin's enraged telekinetic attack picked himself up off the floor and shook his head to clear residual dizziness before moving over to help his companion.

As the two guards did what he told them to do Mullion noticed something shinning in the sun where it had fallen out of Alan's pocket. Moving over he picked it up and smiled when he saw it was a crystal state processor unit – specifically the guidance processor that was missing from Thunderbird Two.

Smiling even more broadly he secured it in a spare pouch on his belt. The Hood was going to be so pleased to have the processor back. Though Transom would want to check it to make sure it hadn't been damaged or tampered with which was proper. Once she was satisfied that the processor was okay and had reinstalled it in Thunderbird Two's navigational computer they would be able to leave Tracy Island and carry out the next phase of the plan.

And Mullion was so looking forward to it and all the loot they would get.

The Fridge

Ten Minutes Later

Shivering violently and aching all over Peter Davison struggled to remain conscious knowing that if he fell asleep that he might never wake up again. They had been in here for almost three hours and Richie's prediction about hypothermia really starting to set in at three hours was coming true.

For the first time in awhile Peter thought about how his sister had died. He vividly remembered it as he had been with Jeff and the boys on that day, a day that had to be one of the worst days of his life. They'd been in the lodge while Margaret had gone off with a couple of other people for an early morning ski on the fresh snow that had fallen the night before. What no one had known was that a massive cleft of snow at the top of the mountain had become too heavy and collapsed just as the first skiers hit the slopes. Margaret had been caught in the avalanche that resulted along with dozens of other people. She hadn't been killed immediately instead had died about three hours after the avalanche occurred and two hours before her body was found. She'd died mostly from hypothermia, as her injuries hadn't been that severe mainly because Margaret had always been something of a health nut. Is this how Margaret felt as she was trapped in the avalanche and slowly freezing to death, he thought as he shivered in the frigid air of the main fridge.

"Are you alright Peter," Richie asked shivering himself and struggling to see through glasses that were steadily frosting over from the bitter cold. Even though he could barely see properly he could tell that something about this situation was upsetting Peter more now than ever.

"Yeah I'm fine," Peter replied taking a deep shaky breath feeling his eyes sting with unshed tears. Like Jeff he rarely thought about the day Margaret died as it always upset him. He could talk about Margaret all day long from any other day in her life from her birth when he was two years old to the day before her death, and he frequently told Alan about her as the youngest Tracy had so few memories of his mother. But he could never speak of the day itself and Alan had never asked about it. Normally he avoided even thinking about it. But their current circumstances ensured that he was starting to remember it.

"Bad memories," he added though he didn't elaborate further knowing that if he spoke about the circumstances of Margaret's death he would start crying. Richie sensing that the memories were painful ones didn't ask anything more.

From outside there came a distinctive clanking noise as the manual locking bolt was retracted followed by a few electronic bleeps as someone worked the electronic lock. Then with a magnetic humming noise the door to the fridge opened and then they saw Mullion standing in the doorway. But only for a moment then he stepped aside as one of the guards threw a bound Fermat in, Fermat stumbling as he was thrown in. Then Mullion reappeared and threw in a just awoken Tin-Tin before finally throwing the still unconscious form of Alan into the fridge.

Then Mullion closed the door again and they heard the manual and electronic locks engage again.

As their respective parents awkwardly greeted Tin-Tin and Fermat, awkwardly since everyone was bound with zip cuffs, Peter looked over Alan's unconscious form with an eye that was almost as trained as a doctors. Like all International Rescue operatives he had a full spectrum of emergency medical training which would surprise even some of the best emergency doctors. Nothing physically seemed to be wrong with Alan that he could tell he was just unconscious.

"What happened to him," he asked.

"He was hit by a tazer," Tin-Tin replied from where she had just sat down with Kyrano and Onaha. "It seemed to have a disproportionate affect on him. He collapsed, screamed in pain and then lost consciousness he's been like this ever since." Peter frowned. Alan screaming in pain was almost unheard of considering his high pain threshold.

Richie also listened intently true he didn't know Alan Tracy nearly as well as anyone else did but he knew that he shouldn't have had such a reaction to something as mundane as being zapped with a tazer. The power level in a tazer shot just wasn't enough. Unless the electricity of the blast somehow interacted with his powers, he thought thinking about the primarily elemental nature of Alan's powers. It was certainly conceivable that the electricity had interacted with them perhaps caused something like an internal short circuit. Just like how water would spectacularly short out Virgil if he got wet while powered up.

"Its possible that the electricity from the tazer shot negatively interacted with Alan's powers," he said in explanation. "Such things have been known to happen with our kind," he added. "Seemingly ordinary things can have adverse effects on metahumans."

"Will he be alright," Peter asked while looking at Alan in concern.

"I believe so. I cannot be absolutely certain without recourse to sensors but once his powers have had sufficient time to recover he should be fine."

"How long will that take," Tin-Tin asked before Peter could voice the same question.

"That is question no one ever knows the answer to," Richie replied. "But since Alan's primarily an elemental the cold environment of this room might speed up his recovery."

"Perhaps but I don't see how Alan being conscious again would help us get out of our current predicament."

"R…r…remember Alan can ph…ph…phase," Fermat stuttered. "More s…s…so he can s…selectively p…phase parts of himself."

Richie was surprised by Fermat's words. Phase abilities were unusual in metahumans to start with but even among those who had phase-type abilities he had never heard of selective phasing before. But then even by the standards of their kind Alan Tracy was something of an oddity in that he possessed three distinct powers two elemental the third his power to phase and that his abilities had taken so long to show themselves.

"Selective phasing I have never heard of such a thing before. Still phase-type powers are very rare among our kind," Richie said then he smiled. "If Alan recovers enough then his selective phase capability might well be what saves us all from freezing to death. When he wakes up he could use them to free himself and then untie us…"

"And then we can figure a way out of here," Peter finished. "I just hope Alan wakes up soon because we're not going to survive in here much longer."

Control Room

Transom smiled as her sensor pack reported that the guidance processor was undamaged. Mullion had just handed it back to her and she was carefully checking it over. The last thing they would have wanted to do was install it in Thunderbird Two and take off for London only to find that the processor had been damaged or sabotaged. The consequences if something really went wrong with it in mid-flight could have been very nasty.

"The guidance processor is perfectly fine," she said looking up from the scanner display.

"Excellent," the Hood said. "How long will it take to reinstall it on Thunderbird Two Transom?"

"Not long sir," Transom replied. "I can have Thunderbird Two ready to leave within ten minutes."

"Excellent. Proceed to reinstall the processor."

"Yes sir." Transom started to get up from the main console only for the scanner display to give a sudden series of bleeps as it detective an approaching aircraft.

"Now what," the Hood said in exasperation. The constant delays were getting very tiresome. Soon Thunderbird Five would run out of emergency battery power and he wanted to be out of here and in London robbing the Bank of England before that happened. He wanted Jeff Tracy to see the start of International Rescues downfall before he died when Thunderbird Five's life support systems shut down.

"Perimeter sensors are reporting a aircraft approaching the island at extremely high speed," Transom reported her hands dancing across the control panels. "I am picking up an International Rescue identification transponder from the approaching aircraft. It reads as Fab 01." Consternation was in Transoms voice when she said that last part.

"ETA?" the Hood asked.

"Three minutes."

"Then we must prepare a suitable reception for whoever the agent if that vehicle is. Mullion get two guards and come with me. Transom get down to Thunderbird Two and reinstall that guidance processor."

"Yes sir," Mullion and Transom replied in unison.