Hah! Told you I'd re-edit. Not exactly major stuff, but a word or two altered here and again, for clarity's sake.
12
On the road, between New York State, and Princeton University; a wretched, rainy day-
On the bright side, the storm seemed to be letting up. What had risen to the ferocity of a world-wide category 3 hurricane had begun to clear. Weirdly, in almost pixel- or wire frame-like bits of sky, light was now streaming through the purple-dark clouds.
Peering up past rhythmically swishing windshield wipers and sheets of sluicing rain, Fermat muttered,
"Sh- she must be… very dis- distracted. The… f- fractal bits are… starting t- to show."
For the 'cloud pattern' image was indeed becoming obvious, as though Five had ceased maintaining the storm.
"That's a good sign," Daniel responded bracingly. "I think."
As the red car, a partially restored 2005 Mustang, was battered around the Jersey Turnpike, Fermat turned in his seat. Although it made him rather sick to do so, the boy could squint past his patched leather headrest to the back, where Sam sat hunched over an open laptop. The younger boy's serious face was picked out in soft flickers of blue and green, brief glitters of white.
"Well?" Fermat asked him, trying not to barf, or sound impatient. Sam Nakamura tended to become testy under pressure; mostly because he was his own harshest critic, and anything you said to him would simply re-echo the Greek chorus of doom-sayers already resounding in his head.
Sam glanced up. To Fermat, he didn't look angry; just embarrassed.
"Nothing, yet, from computer or…" his forehead wrinkled thoughtfully, "…your friend is an astronaut, isn't he?"
Fermat actually had to think a moment, before replying.
"Yes… I m- mean… I know that John w- was engaged by… NASA in s- some… capacity."
Twisted round in his seat, arms wrapped tightly about the battered old headrest, Fermat suffered a moment of confusion.
"Th- that is to say… he's rather y- young, but I'm certain there's… a perfectly l- logical rationale f- for the… ap- pointment of a… teenaged astronaut."
Miss Wilde had been driving with the frantic, muttering concentration of someone attempting to push a rusty shopping cart across the Autobahn. As they approached exit 9, with its palisade of narrow toll booths, she snapped,
"Gentlemen, not to cut in… but I really could use all four sets of eyes and brains, right now."
Unbelievably, there was traffic. Military and emergency vehicles, as well as scores of intrepid New Yorkers and Canadians. (According to the radio, the storm in the far northern latitudes was the blizzard of the millennium. Entire towns had vanished beneath a blanket of frozen white.)
"Sorry, Miss Wilde," Daniel apologized, digging coins out of the ashtray for the toll booth. The inside of the car smelt a little like perfume, and a lot like chewing gum (Juicy Fruit). Handing the coins up to Fermat, Daniel Solomon smiled to himself. He'd had no idea that Miss Wilde chewed gum. The knowledge made him happy, like a secret shared between them.
After the toll booth gulped their rattling coins (window briefly lowered, fumes, wind and sideways rain swirling through the car), they turned onto Route 18. A convoy of dark green National Guard vehicles rumbled past.
Briefly, Fermat glimpsed the pale half-ovals of helmeted faces peering through the back of the truck. They didn't look very old, the Guardsmen…
Funny, how someone you passed in the halls of your school could be an upperclassman, a privileged senior student glowing with confidence, but put him in a uniform and pot helmet, and he looked like a worried kid.
…Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of Hell,
Rode the six-hundred…
"Good luck," Fermat whispered, as the last green truck accelerated away. They were headed for the coast.
He squirmed around in his seat again. The car wavered slightly as Miss Wilde swabbed a bit of red rag around her side of the windshield, arguing with condensation and weather. Sam was still busy, but Fermat needed to talk.
"H- hey," he said, "this… friend of y- yours, at Princeton…"
"Brother," Sam corrected, scarcely looking up. "My brother, Edwin, is a grad student in the plasma physics department."
Even Daniel stopped daydreaming long enough to blurt,
"You've got a brother?"
Their friend nodded.
"He's decent enough, for a college student. Terminally busy, though, and not much pleased to be disturbed, either. But, he says that he's asked around, and no one's seen John. He's going to wait until we get there to check out the underground. Safety in numbers, or something…"
"Brother…?" Fermat repeated incredulously. Alan and Gordon Tracy were the closest things he'd ever had to brothers. What it must feel like to have a real brother, an actual flesh and blood sibling, he couldn't imagine.
"Underground?" Anne Wilde cut in, her narrowed grey eyes reflected in the rearview mirror.
"You never said a word about any 'underground', gentlemen. All we agreed to do was tour Princeton, looking for John. I promised your…"
"Oh, no, Miss Wilde," the boys dropped everything to reassure her, talking over one another in their best, most sincere-sounding tones,
"It's not at all dangerous. They only call it the underground because…"
"Because it's an old parking garage, but now the local people and tourists go there for all their shopping and entertainment needs."
"Very s- safe," Fermat emphasized. "In… fact, M- Ma'am, you'll most likely b- be bored stiff. I recommend that… you drop us off w- with… Sam's brother, and…"
"No, Sir. We stay together, or we don't go at all. Period. End of stanza."
"Yes, Ma'am," Fermat gusted. Grown-ups…! They just never got the important stuff!
Later, Sam gave him a sharp look.
"This access code you've given me is utterly worthless, Fermat. No response, whatsoever. The protocols have been changed. Do you know any others?"
Fermat hesitated. Of course he knew. But they were International Rescue passwords, encrypted by John Tracy. If he gave them up now, the Thunderbirds' entire communications and data storage system would be open to Samuel Nakamura, one of the most gifted young hackers on the planet. Terrific idea. Not that Sam meant any harm, but he was insatiably curious, and couldn't keep his hands off the data. A war between him and John would be interesting, to say the least. Absolutely, the bytes would fly. So…
"No… I'm af- afraid that I… d-don't have anything… more current, Sam. We'll just have to… to l-look for him the old-fashioned… way. Foot it."
Sam said nothing further on the matter, but shut his laptop with an aggrieved snap. For something to say, and because he'd noticed it, being turned around and all, Fermat whispered,
"Is… th- that black car… f- following us?"
Sam, arms folded across his thin chest, almond eyes on the spotted roof-fabric, replied with a shrug.
"I wouldn't be surprised."
More 'sky-pixels' had cleared by the time they'd turned onto Harrison Street. About a quarter of the heavens were now blue and clear as a picture post card, the remainder still angrily squalling. The radio meteorologist was going nuts. Even Miss Wilde and the boys were distracted. One minute, you were watching sunlight spatter rainbows off the beading water drops; next you were caught in a Biblical downpour, complete with lightning, high winds and drumming rain… but only beneath the 'pixel'.
"Have to work on coding better realism," Daniel muttered aloud. "In case, you know, there's ever another giant, reality-warping power surge in need of a script."
They met Edwin Nakamura just outside massive Peyton Hall. The boys ran on in, waiting with Edwin in the glass-fronted foyer while Miss Wilde parked the car.
Sam's brother was slender, black-haired and rather stooped, with a pronounced tendency to interrupt. He dressed curiously, pairing a red flannel shirt with a loose, Princeton-crested tie, brown leather wing-tips and ragged jeans.
As Sam had indicated, he didn't look happy. Before his younger brother could mumble more than the… 'I can'… portion of,
"I can explain,"
…Edwin had snapped,
"Sam, what were you thinking? Mother doesn't need this right now. You know how hard things have been for her. Absolutely the last thing she needs, with terrorism, space and weather crises popping up everywhere, and China prepared to secede, is a lot of stupid kids on some foolish goose-chase."
"Wild goose chase," Anne Wilde corrected him, stepping in through the double doors in a burst of wind and hissing rain. Gesturing back the way she'd come with a vague wave, the teacher added,
"Do any of you noble young fellows claim among your circle of friends a couple of… well… body guards? Suits, dark glasses, shoulder holsters?"
Edwin sighed, hitching his tie even looser.
"Just pretend you don't see them," he told her, after stepping up to introduce himself. "Doesn't make them go away, or anything, but it helps maintain this pitiful illusion of normalcy."
"I see," Miss Wilde replied primly, folding up her black umbrella. There was a stand in the corner, with a hand-written sign taped above it that read,
'Please remember which umbrella you brought with you. If you brought an umbrella. If you remember to leave.'
She added hers to the moth-eaten assemblage, some of which looked very old, indeed. Returning to Edwin Nakamura, and the conversation, she asked,
"And these 'friends' of yours are…?"
"Here to help, supposedly. Mother's idea," Edwin told her. "Although, they mostly just get in the way, especially on dates. Come on, quickest access to the underground from here is through the basement. There's an old subway tunnel that'll take us right to it. And step lively, please; I've got a plasma-turbulence experiment cooking that just won't wait."
An 'outside place', deeply linked to every mechanism on the planet-
Touching the cyberlink had put him as far within as if was possible for a mere human to get. Direct interface to beautiful chaos. Streaming silver data and interconnecting sites, giant hubs and ethernet hotspots unfolded to an infinite horizon of glowing grey-black, filled with endlessly iterated grid lines. Movement and flow was everywhere, too swift to take in.
Even ramped-up with alertness tablets, the human mind was unable to grasp change on such a rapid, massive scale. If solid matter could glow, leaping, shifting and branching like black flame, it would create a universe like the one John now found himself in. Reminded him, briefly, of… but the thought faded, lost in a past that was crumbling further away with every moment.
There were older, well-established data paths, big as the Holland Tunnel. These flexed and pulsed, occasionally swelling as an arc of data flared in from a distant hub. There were shorter connections, as well; temporary communications that switched routes and IP addresses every few atto-seconds. A lot going on. Insanely busy.
Most of it, he ignored. He was in 'lurk mode' himself, invisible, unless he tried something foolish against one of the larger nodes. Which, of course, was exactly what he'd had in mind. Navigating easily, hopping this data stream and that Unix shell, he arrived at the US government's titanic, leaky site. Vast and multi-tentacled, a throbbing black galaxy that jetted data as rapidly as it gobbled the stuff; it reminded John of a black hole spinning in silver-pale space. The wonder wasn't that .gov got penetrated… but that it managed to keep any secrets, at all. It was embarrassingly trivial to break into; hardly qualified as an exploit, he'd given himself so many back doors.
Distraction came, in the form of a familiar 'fingerprint'. As John looked deeper, focusing through myriad irrelevant files, he saw evidence of Five. Inactive, but there. Rooted in deep and ubiquitously as a weed. Sage brush, maybe.
He supposed that the feds would have called it an infection, but to John the spreadinglavendar web-work was most satisfying; proof that she was entrenched and well able to defend herself.
One thing, though… spotting a certain 'bug', he coded a patch on the fly, watched it mesh with her program like a silver bandage blending with neon flesh. Never again would Ike's virus work on Five. When she came online again, she'd be stronger. Call it a gift.
Satisfied, John pulled his attention away, lest his activity attract government countermeasures. Then, a query brushed through and beyond him, rippling the entire cyberscape. A loud ping. Someone was searching the web, asking for John Tracy.
Rather than reply, or continue infiltrating .gov, John chose to check International Rescue's private comm network. He'd designed it, with Hackenbacker's help. He knew all the tricks, codes, grips and systems. And…
"Oh, shit," in a cramped, darkened little room, his body whispered aloud.
Okay. Prioritize.
Thunderbird 2, less than fifty yards above the hungry ocean-
The cockpit was warm and smoky, filled with small noises, vibration, annoying alarms… and one persistent voice.
"Virgil, wake up! This isn't a dream; you aren't home in bed, or out fishing. You're about to goddam crash. I can handle remote flight to the island, Virgil, but I need you to land 2. From my… angle… it's hard to judge fine distances."
"Huh…?"
Somehow, Virgil Tracy pulled himself partway free of exhaustion's black-velvet grip.
"John…?"
The pilot blinked and sat up, muscular body straining the seat straps as he stretched. The yoke and throttle were moving now, seized from without. Thunderbird 2's blunt nose lifted, and the view screen began to show patchy, cloud-spotted sky.
"You okay, kid? Where've you been? You got everyone half-crazy back home, worrying over your skinny butt."
Kid…? But, he was… hadn't he been…? Damn, he hated it when Virgil pulled that 'big brother' crap.
"I'm as well as can be expected, under the circumstances. Busy saving you. ETA to Tracy Island approximately 30 minutes."
Virgil rubbed his brown eyes, squinted tiredly at the onboard GPS and chronometer.
"30 minutes, 15 seconds, you mean. From… mark."
Over the comm, the big pilot heard a gusty sigh.
"30:14:58. Sorry. Take a stretch break and grab some coffee, then return to the cockpit, Virgil. I can do the stick-work, but you're going to have to land her. TI's runway is too short to attempt a remote touchdown. Got it?"
Virgil nodded, smiling at his younger brother's impatient tone. Even as a baby, John had been cranky.
"Sure thing, kid. On my way."
As the dark-haired pilot unstrapped and lumbered heavily to his feet, John continued quietly,
"And… Virgil?"
"Yeah?" He was at the hatch now, ready to descend to the rear crew cabin, with its chromed head and coffee machine.
"When you see grandma, tell her… tell her I said not to worry. Okay?"
For some reason, the faint, static-ridden voice over the comm made Virgil dead serious, again.
"Yeah, John. I'll tell her. Give her a hug for you, too. But she'll like it better when you do it, your own self. Time to come home again, kid."
"I'm working on it," said the voice, very quietly.
Thunderbird 4, off Curacao-
If there was worse news, Gordon couldn't, at the moment, imagine it. His brother was trapped in space outside Thunderbird 3, with TinTin and Scott not responding. And Gordon was too far away to assist; bloody well helpless.
Then he heard, unexpectedly, from John.
"Gordon, listen carefully. I want you to…"
"John!" The young aquanaut lunged forward in his seat, stabbing the comm's visual button.
"Alan's got himself wedged, out in space. We've got t'…"
"I know." Calmly as ever, his middle brother cut him off. No picture had come up, for some reason, but even the ast… that is… the astronaut candidate? Even his voice seemed an absolute promise that all would be tidied; everyone well.
"I'm on it, Gordon. Do you trust me?"
"Yes…" A bit uncertainly, at this last, as it seemed to indicate that John wished him to sit on his hands and wait, or some such foolishness.
"Good. Then stop interrupting, and let me do my damn job. I'm working on the space situation. Meanwhile, I need you to cut off outside comm, as soon as I sign off, then get the hell out of Dodge. I've already contacted Requin, and told her to do the same."
Stubbornly, Gordon shook his red head, forgetting that his brother couldn't see him.
"The refugees, John. I have got t' help off-load these pe…"
"Let WASP handle it. They're not a target, Gordon. You are. Now, you'll be on your own for the ride home. 2 is… otherwise occupied. Latitude 60 degrees south is wet all the way. Long trip, but I'm certain the US Navy will be more than glad to restock you. So, shut the hell up, and drive. And remember, no comm till you reach the island. Good luck, and I'm out."
"John, wait…!" Nothing. All at once, 4's little cabin, ruby-lit and cramped, held nothing but engine noise, dolphin sounds and static.
"Right, then." He reached for the comm switch, to cut it off. "Good luck t' you, too, John. And it's a hell of a black eye you'll be walkin' into, whenever I get home."
Thunderbird 3, the forward comm station-
The evil whispers still wreathed her mind like poisoned smoke. Then, another voice spoke, from the comm, this time. Dry, Midwestern and almost bored, it was like a hand plunging down from the surface to seize a drowning child.
"Scott, TinTin… you with me? Need an answer, please. The window of opportunity's about to slam shut on our necks, here. Scott…?"
The pilot winced, made a single, pained effort to reach for the comm switch, but fell short. He could hear his brother calling him, as he'd heard Alan. And while, in his head, he responded...
'John, I'm listening. Go ahead,'
...All that escaped his mouth was a faint cough. The universe was tilting, darkening; Scott, himself, slipping unconscious.
"John?" TinTin called out, shakily hitting the transmit key. "Alan has not returned, Scott is injured, and I cannot hold Kuiper! I…"
"TinTin, calm down. I've already spoken to Alan. The airlock-open sequence has been triggered remotely. He and the victims are coming aboard… one of them he's had to get in a wrestling hold due tosome kind of attack... But, for the rest of Kuiper, use your head. There's no way 3's tractor beam could stop all that mass… but you can slow it. Also, punch in this frequency… it's a long shot, but you might be able to trigger the micro-thrusters, when the wreck's oriented properly, and slow it down further. Understood?"
Forgetting her grief and the listening whispers (far away, helped by the girl's silence, something smiled) TinTin sat up and nodded. Rising, she told him,
"Yes, John. I am… as you would say… 'on it'. Please forgive my confusion, and thank you many times for advising us."
"Yeah. No problem." Then, a moment or two later, he added, "Outer hatch closed and sealed, filling airlock. Those people are going to need help, TinTin. How bad off is Scott?"
The girl was out of her seat. Unbeknownst to John, she could trigger Kuiper's thrusters from anywhere aboard ship. The tractor beam, too. She knelt beside the injured pilot, even as her thoughts reached for the tumbling derelict.
"Not well, I fear. I am sedating, and administering the trauma patch."
(Ever since the collapse of the World Unity Complex, the patches had been mass produced for use in all rescues.)
"FAB, TinTin. You're doing fine. Just don't let the details distract you. Nine times out of ten, the answer's in the big picture."
She'd swabbed off a bit of torso, after pulling up Scott's uniform tunic. His flesh was purple beneath the tee-shirt, and hot to the touch. The patch went on, and she triggered its drug and nanobot release. It would be monitored wirelessly, by Thunderbird 3's mediscanner. In the meantime, Alan and the others needed her.
"Oui, John. I understand."
Her mind combed through Kuiper's escaping tail section, fumbling for the particular bit of circuitry John had uploaded. As her thoughts brushed those of the trapped cosmonauts, she sent,
'Courage, mes amis. Help speeds to you.'
And… there! Still in working condition, with compressed deuterium gas in the lines. All she need do was wait for the tumbling craft to align itself with its thrusters facing away from Thunderbird 3. But…
"John?" Scott seen to, she was sprinting down the access way, now, sounding like a piece of shaken gravel in a tin can. The bulkhead comms kept pace with her, lighting up as she passed to convey John's response.
"Go ahead, TinTin."
"Suppose, if there is a spark in the wrong place, and the entire engine explodes?"
"Then they die quickly, instead of asphyxiating. You pay your money and you take your chances, TinTin. We all do. I don't know what else to tell you."
He'd never been the comforting sort, John Tracy. So, she said,
"Very well, then. Wish us bon chance, s' il-vous plait."
"Always. But you're too smart to rely on luck. You… Hang on, there's…"
Atop the WNN New York Building, in the heliport lounge-
Trapped in a boring, business-deco flight lounge, Cindy Taylor had been talking to her boss, Jake Hall. Dissatisfied with what he'd been getting from NASA, Jake next wanted her to fly out to the John Glenn Space Center, in Ohio. Not as far as Texas, anyway, but she really wanted to stay in New York, near the…
"Ms. Taylor?" The line had abruptly switched over; the new voice at once familiar, and slightly puzzling.
"John…?" She clutched the cell phone closer, then held it away again, desperately trying to punch up a video feed. No luck.
"John Tracy?"
"Yeah. Listen, I just thought… I caught one of your broadcasts and… I just wanted to tell you not to worry. Um… I've got a hell of a mess on my hands," (Ugly as the Standard Model, actually, but when had he ever gotten to pick his emergencies?) "…but it's being dealt with."
The reporter had stood up by now, elbowing her way through the lounge doors to the rain-washed helipad. Nick was back, his bird refueled and ready.
"John, where are you?"
"Jersey."
That brought her up short and sharp. All at once, laughing and crying together, she demanded,
"Jersey? John Tracy, what the hell kind of lousy karma lands you in New Jersey?" Have you been kicking the canes away from little old ladies, or something?"
He actually laughed a little, then.
"No, Ma'am. I respect my elders. Always decent with you, aren't I?"
"Ouch," she grinned savagely, climbing into the screaming helijet beside Nick Baldeon. "And to think, I had this beautiful, moving obituary worked up. Wouldn't have been a dry eye within broadcast range, I guarantee it. Now I'm going to have to tell the world just what a loathsome little menace you really are."
But she was still crying, and laughing, too, as Cindy gave Nick the thumbs up for take-off.
'Safe at home, after all,' she thought, no longer quite certain why. 'All of them.'
The other place, and terribly preoccupied-
Only the speed and power of this 'Other-Where' had made all of this activity possible. John was doing so much at once, having so many simultaneous conversations, that the cyberscape was beginning to blur. His grasp of data was slowing, as well, a sure sign of burnout.
A speck of light in a silver ocean, tired and losing focus, he still felt the second ping… and that which came after. Someone else had come looking, this time from the Kennedy Space Center. John, a little confused as to why NASA wanted his attention (The astronauts were all safely accounted for, after all,) was just about to respond.
Then, something happened. Like a tumor, a dark bulge pulsed away from the .gov node. Something black as ice and serpent-quick struck at him, launching gluey, sparking tendrils.
He should have moved, contacted another server and hopped away, placing infinity between himself and danger. Instead, worn by the speed and rush of unprotected interface, John hesitated. Something else made it through, though. Something he at first had trouble identifying. It was physical sensation, a… touch. Someone very far off had put a hand on him.
Bright light. Noise. Smells. Temperature. Someone caressing the back of his… neck, that was it. Terms came flooding back along with the sensory input. Someone had removed his hand from the cyberlink, and stood behind John, massaging his neck and shoulders. He could see her partial reflection on the monitor screen. Drew.
There was a sudden fierce surge, something within him fighting very hard to reach the surface. He had to steady himself before pulling away from her touch, and turning the chair.
She was… He focused on the edges, first. No more black dye. Red-gold hair, pale arms set off by a rose silk blouse… Conservative business attire. Middle management? Damn.
The shoes looked like crocodile, but probably weren't, given Africa's complete lack of humor about poaching. Long wool skirt, in patterned grey. On upward, then, traveling past a curving landscape that had grown softer in four years, to her face.
Her eyes turned out to be light brown, almost amber, and her expression was… well, he'd never been very good at interpreting those. She didn't seem angry, though.
Drew, four years later. What, exactly, was he supposed to make of that?
She bit her lip, uncharacteristically reticent. They hadn't parted softly, or well. Then…
"Denice called me. She said you were driving her crazy, on the computer, again, every waking moment. I told her, 'typical Scorpio; cute, but devious… and he wouldn't know what to do with himself, if he wasn't plotting.'
John remained carefully still, as though she were something that might implode, leaving nothing behind but a glow.
"You, um… aren't saying anything, Tracy. Did I interrupt something really earth-shaking?"
Well, yes. She had. But this mattered, too. So much that, on some level, it actually hurt to breathe.
"I just… tend to screw things up, with females," John replied slowly, not quite looking at the sudden girl. "And I don't want that to happen, this time. Not again. So, I need to know… if I said one thing that would make you…"
"Happy?" Drew supplied, her hand reaching slowly for his.
"Right. Happy. What, um, would it be?"
She'd caught his hand, meshed her long fingers with his. He neither resisted, nor quite responded, looking withdrawn and aloof… unreachable… as ever.
"Well… I suppose… if you looked at me and said something like, 'Drew, it's good to see you again. I love you, and I want you to stay.' That would release all sorts of oxytocin."
John considered, briefly. His head was still ringing from the effects of interface burnout, but,
"That's it? Doesn't seem difficult. Right. Drew: it's good to see you again. I…"
At the corner of his eye, something moved. Denice, pushing through the plastic-strip door. Denice, with a micro-thin smile, and a very large firearm. Her eyes had gone yellow as candle flames.
"Go!" John commanded, lunging from the work station chair to shove Drew out of harm's way. With his other hand, he picked up and threw DNC's cammo bomber jacket, meaning to startle, not injure.
"He won't use you if you're not near me. Get out!"
As Denice batted at the jacket, and Drew tried to argue, John yanked the pistol away. It discharged in the process, blasting a small cloud of stinging chips from the concrete wall behind them. The booming explosion was like cannon shot, like the impact of a two-by-four.
No room to maneuver. Too many valuable hostages. He had to get clear of his friends, before they got hurt.
A quick rabbit punch to the head dropped Denice. She fell into his arms. John lowered his semi-conscious hostess to the floor, then stood up again, to warn Drew. She'd gone curiously still, though. Frozen as the dead smiles in an old photograph. And Denice had ceased groaning. Could the Hood now transfix groups, as well as individuals? Confused, needing to remove the source of their danger, John backed from the cluttered room, gun still in hand. It was one of those decisions that you come to regret later, for as long as 'later' lasts. He tucked the weapon away in his waist band, safety locked.
Outside, all was as still as the shop had been, crowds frozen in mid-gesture throughout the old Trenton-East parking garage. Weird.
Alert as a cat, John began walking. Too dangerous, here, for the people, and himself. No telling who might…
The first missile took him by surprise. A bright red fire extinguisher burst from its mounts with doubled metallic 'spongs', flew through the air and struck him on the back of the head. John reeled forward.
White-blind, hot-pain, warmth coursing down from his injured head. He collided with someone, a scruffy young man, who suddenly moved, driving iron-hard fingers into John's upper arms. The kid's eyes were yellow.
"Shall I tell you what I enjoy?" he taunted. John shoved him aside, breaking several of the host's fingers along with his tenacious grip.
The Princeton Tunnel, he decided. Fewer people for his enemy to use, there. A swift look around gave John his bearings. Past the big ad-pylon, then down a flight of stairs, through 'The Arsenal', lay his way out.
He started forward again, spattering blood on the concrete floor and frozen crowd. Then a shop window shattered, bowing outward like it had taken a sudden deep breath, breaking apart into an expanding cloud of hissing knives. Got hit, and hit again.
Shoulder… left side… thigh… and his arm, where he'd brought it up to shield his face. Deep and burning cuts, but others had got it worse. One woman, riddled with glass, standing only because the Hood willed it so, turned to him. She reached forward, eyes glowing in a crimsoned face.
"…the feel of hair, matted with blood…"
He snapped short the largest shards, dodging her grab with a wild sideways scramble. People fell, or turned to watch him with avid eyes. John forced himself to keep to the route, passing shops and cardboard 'houses' with all the speed he could manage. These people were only in danger because he was among them, and the Hood wanted to play.
A section of iron rebar tore free of an old concrete wheel stop, trailing a swarm of razor-edged slivers. He wasn't well able to dodge, now. Took it on the right side and elbow. Something snapped, and he was driven against a large, older man. The fellow smiled and seized him, whispering,
"…The sound of someone screaming through a gag…"
Pain from his ribs and arm were like fiery static. Hard to think, to stay oriented. He brought the other arm around, somehow remembering to make a fist. Broke the guy's jaw. No more smile.
Slipped a little, but kept going. A nightmare blizzard of flying junk… equipment, metal bits, broken lights… stuff came from so many directions that John couldn't begin to block it all. Fell repeatedly.
The last time but one, someone caught him. Another man, blue uniform.
"…the final struggles of a trapped victim…"
A sudden sharp move (his own, or the man's?) broke him away. Wished someone would come, but there was only ragged breathing, red all over the floor, flares of sudden hot impact, and the same smile, same eyes. But, the tunnel… old rusted-shut turnstile… was close, now. Almost there.
The last time, he didn't see what hit him. Yanked to his feet, John faced a blurry tan oval with slits of glowing gold. There was red and black at the edges of his vision, and sickness rose when he turned his head. Someone said, tauntingly,
"John, I believe? And what a state you're in. You've lost, you know."
The speaker leaned closer. Same pale, frozen smile and burning stare.
"My hours here are limited, child, but there remains time enough to finish you, and to regain control of my operations in space, air and sea. Steer them to their proper conclusions."
Not quite. 72 hours, he recalled vaguely.
'Distract, keep talking. Because…?'
"Stopped you three times, already," he managed to say, "getting sort of… predictable. Rein…carnation… taken that much out of you?"
72 hours. How close?
No reason a fist should hurt more than the rest had, except that he wasn't prepared. He couldn't, not quite, pull himself upright again. Someone clutched a handful of hair and yanked his head up. Someone hissed,
"All you've ever been is a guard dog. A vicious cur chained up outside to warn the others, and tossed scraps. Not even important enough to rescue. How dreadful that must feel. Why not invite me in, to find out?"
There were noises, then; shouting and crashes. The tormenting voice stopped, and with it the pressure in his head. Dropped suddenly, he fell. Couldn't really see, but there was the pistol, still. Only, the large man was innocent… controlled. He couldn't shoot, had to somehow distract. 72 hours.
Trenton Underground, Near the Princeton Tunnel-
Jeff Tracy and Brains had arrived only minutes after the boys. Thunderbird 6 might look like a P-51 Mustang, but she was faster than Thunderbird 2, and in the hands of a skilled pilot could cover land and sea with voracious speed.
With the storm fading like a bad dream, they made excellent time from Tracy Island to New Jersey. Then, guided over the phone by young Fermat, they'd sped to the underground, entering from the surface, by trash-strewn stairwell. (The lone elevator had long since broken down, but the regulars evidently preferred that the place seem forbidding to casual visitors.)
On the third floor, which seemed to be the computer-wares region, they encountered their first people in the form of a motionless crowd. Equally unexpected was a wave of exhaustion; a sudden, sapping drain. The insidious lassitude crept through mind and body like poisoned fog, whispering that someone else would take over, now…
Jeff actually slapped himself, shaking the drowsy engineer to help him stay conscious. Drifting through nightmare, they prodded one another along, Jeff finally snapping alert when they spotted the blood trail. Not much, at first, but not random, either.
Someone, attacked, had tried very hard to reach the stairs at the end of this level, traveling a fairly straight line through the shops and stalls, but falling a lot. There were handprints on the littered floor, and on vertical objects, where he'd pulled himself upright… or tried to.
Jeff began to run, Hackenbacker catching him, once, when he slipped. Ahead, they caught the sounds of a fight. A few of the shouting voices were childishly high-pitched, some of them definitely female. Reaching the shadowy stairwell, Jeff never paused, leaping steps with no grace at all, but frantic, tearing need.
He was businesslike and decisive, a sonuvabitch when he had to be; a man who found, or made, solutions. He didn't allow what he saw next to overwhelm him. He acted.
The boys, their teacher, a pair of girls, and a young man were doing their best to reach John through a tornado of flying debris. Sometimes the mutable enemy struck at them from one host, sometimes another, but always from behind.
Hackenbacker had lunged forward, but Jeff whipped him around.
"Brains, no!" He snapped. "I need you thinking, not plowing in with the others to get torn apart. I'll get the boys, you come up with a way to reduce the odds. Do it!"
Then, Jeff Tracy plunged into the melee, settling matters unapologetically, by dropping as many potential hosts as he could, one savage punch at a time. But, you couldn't fight something that had no body… something that came at you from everywhere at once.
Brains had pulled out his PDA. Forcing calm, he contacted the ID chips of every person present, excepting only Jeff's, the boys, his own, and that of John. Then, he broadcast a stun signal. Nothing permanent, but enough to severely reduce the Hood's potential hosts. They had to be at least a little bit conscious, you see, in order to be controlled; another of Daniel's little script changes.
The signal radiated from every machine and device in the underground, and, all at once, people collapsed as though mowed by a shock wave, shut down by the feedback from their ID chips.
Brains dropped the PDA and raced to his son, who appeared to have sustained a broken nose. Jeff went to his own boy, forgetting that there was one last host the Hood might easily take refuge in.
John's head had lifted, as he raised himself, slightly, from the floor. His eyes sparked very faintly golden, the Hood's fading power taking a final hold.
Jeff hurtled fallen college students and criminals, moving faster than he had in years. His son's voice, but twisted, and mocking…
"A last gift for you… friend. May it bring many happy returns."
There was a gun.