One

The hanger for One, Three, Four and Shadow was eerily dark when Alan found his way down after landing Three, guided by the green light of an emergency glow stick. His boots sounded abnormally loud on the metal-plated floors as he searched the cavernous space for someone, anyone, after arriving back at the Island and finding the automated systems that should have fetched him from the cockpit unresponsive to his commands and his Thunderbird locking down and locking him out of every system. Even comms were out.

Not too far from Brains' mobile lab he spotted Scott, sitting on a crate and looking down at something he was moving in his hands, a battery powered lantern glowing beside him. Alan almost called out to him but something stilled his tongue. Scott looked…defeated. His head was bowed, shoulders slumped, sitting far too still.

Scott was never that still.

The whole picture had such an innate wrongness to it that it had the hairs on the back of his neck standing up in alarm.

But with everyone else gone, the Island dark, the Thunderbirds unresponsive and comms dead, Alan didn't really know what else to do except go to his brother. If anyone would know what to do, it would be Scott...right? He'd gotten back to the Island way before the rest of them, he had to know what was happening.

With that in mind Alan crept closer, just enough to see what Scott was passing hand to hand as if it hurt to hold it for too long- a gun, 9mm Glock, if his video games had been correct.

"Alan."

He almost jumped out of his uniform at the soft call. Scott glanced up for a moment, his face pale and drawn as he beckoned Alan closer and into the pool of yellowish light thrown by the lantern, then looked back down at the floor. He looked exhausted.

Alan edged closer, his voice pitching higher in his fear. "Scott, what's going on, what's happening?"

"I swear I'll explain everything later." Scott murmured softly, still looking at the ground and his lips barely moving as if he was afraid someone else was listening. "Alan, I need you to trust me. Please, promise you trust me."

Alan swallowed hard, his heart beating hard enough he could hear his pulse thundering in his ears. What was going on here? "I trust you." It was the only answer he would ever make to that question.

Scott looked at him, stricken. "I'm sorry." The words came out in a hoarse whisper as he brought the gun up and shot Alan in the chest.

The sound of the shot was like a thunderclap in the cavernous space of the hanger and Alan felt himself being thrown backwards, hitting the ground like he'd been struck by one of their grapple launchers, the air knocked out of him. Breathing hurt. He could see the ragged hole in his chest plate and when he brushed his fingers over it, they came away red.

Then Scott was there, casting the gun aside and gathering him into his arms, head bowed and face twisted in anguish. "Play dead!" He hissed into Alan's ear as he scooped him up and cradled him close. It took a moment for the message to register and more effort than he thought it would take but Alan made himself go limp. "Bite this." Was the next instruction as Scott passed one hand over Alan's face as if to brush his eyes closed. Alan found the hard pellet that Scott had slipped into his mouth with the motion and bit down on it, swallowed the slightly bitter gel inside and feeling a wave of lassitude tug him into the warm darkness of unconsciousness.

0o0o0

He woke up some time later, his limbs feeling like they were cast from lead, lying down on a hard surface. It was vibrating under him, so some kind of vehicle? The whine of engine noises sounded like one of their civilian planes but he wasn't sure which one. Still mindful of Scott's instruction to play dead, Alan lay still but cracked an eyelid open. He was looking left and Gordon was lying next to him- eyes closed, abnormally pale and the sheet pulled up to his shoulders had two dark red stains over his chest. For a moment Alan was sure he was dead but Gordon's head was angled in such a way that Alan could see the faint flutter of his pulse under the skin of his throat, barely visible in the dim light.

"Alan, don't move." John's voice sounded over the earpiece that had somehow appeared in his left ear while he was out cold. "Gordon's just unconscious, so is Virgil."

Virgil was here too? What was going on?

"Let me explain what's happening." John continued, almost as if he'd read Alan's mind. "The Hood has control of Scott."