Three

The Hood hadn't let him wash his hands.

Scott knew that the blood was fake- from their training supplies in fact- but it looked, smelled and felt real, darkening and turning clotty and crusty as it dried. He'd been wearing his fingerless gloves when he left this morning so now the blood was drying in the lines of his knuckles and around the cuticles of his nails. After laying Alan down between Gordon and Virgil on the deck of the rarely used twin engine cargo plane and securing him with a cargo strap he'd gone to the wash station in the hangar to clean his hands. Pain had suddenly lanced down his nerves like an electric shock and The Hood's sibilant voice hissed in his ear "No, no my boy, you're not washing their blood off your hands until I say you can." So he'd been forced to leave it there.

If he'd been flying Thunderbird One it wouldn't have been so bad, his hands were usually below his eye line in One, but flying this old crate of a plane meant a standard yoke and his hands were constantly in his line of sight. That was probably why The Hood didn't let him wash his hands, just one more petty cruelty added to the pile.

This whole thing was almost a Xanatos gambit, not that The Hood had ever had quite the same level of sophisticated cunning as the cartoon character. If The Hood's plan had worked as intended he'd have eliminated his rival and destroyed International Rescue, leaving Tracy Industries ripe for the picking. If they slipped, if The Hood suspected even for a moment that his control was under threat, he'd blow up Tracy Industries' New York office, killing untold thousands, and The Hood would probably kill him at the same time. If somehow their desperate gamble paid off, Scott knew he'd be seeing today in his nightmares for the rest of his life.

Right now John was almost a literal angel on his shoulder to balance out The Hood's mutterings, feeding him updates as he flew towards the speck of land that was Pitcairn Island. After having been taken over for an Australian navy refuelling station and getting a hole blown out of its coastline by an ICBM during the 2040 conflict it was almost abandoned these days, barring a couple of stubborn holdouts and the tourists who came in summer. Now that it was winter it was a perfect place for the Hood to lie in wait for Scott to arrive with his cargo.

As he checked his heading and finally having had enough time to actually think and dwell on the situation, Scott suddenly felt a wave of empathy for the Mechanic. He felt polluted, as if there was now a bone deep contamination from The Hood's presence- the voice in his head and the will drowning out his own- and it had only been for a matter of hours, not the years that the Mechanic had suffered.

With that empathy Scott now also felt a rising shame for how he'd initially treated the man. Anyone who'd lived under this... he couldn't even think of a word to sum it up… anyone who had survived years of this would have issues. That The Mechanic had escaped with his sanity relatively intact was a testament to his strength. "If I make it out of this, I'm going to make it up to him." Scott promised himself as the dark lump of Pitcairn Island appeared on the horizon and Scott began his descent.

"Scott, it's Dad."

Only years of practice at keeping up the 'rescue poker face' kept him from showing even a twitch of a reaction to hearing his father's voice, comforting and strong.

"John says you're a few minutes out." Jeff began. "Brains and the others are still working on the bomb, they've found some complications and it's delaying them, but we're ready to go as soon as we get the word. Son, I know this is hard, just carry this burden a little longer and we'll be right there to take it from you. I'll be there soon."

Scott blinked away the tears that threatened to blur his vision, kept his expression set like stone and banked his plane into a wide, swooping turn to land on the airstrip that had been cut out of the ground on the western side of the island.