Chapter 9

John mentally pushed at the intense wall of pain in his head. He was fighting the foreign force for control of his senses. He felt weak and small; pushed to the corner of his mind. He remembered seeing his father, and attacking him, which filled him with shame but now managed to see that he was standing on the control platform next to Thunderbird 1. The craft was partly descended down the ramp. He was suddenly terrified, as he found himself standing very close to the edge, with no recollection of how he got there.. He tried to step back, but had no control over his body. He could not cry out. He watched as his hands worked the controls, trying to initiate a launch sequence. There was no power to the ramp mechanism, and his hands were trying to reroute power to it. He battled to tear his hands away, but he could not. Something was pulling at him. It was as if somebody were giving him orders, and he could not ignore them; it was the deepest psychological torment John could ever have imagined. In his mind, he clutched at his temples, but his body disobeyed him and carried on working the controls.

"What am I doing?" thought John.

"I am taking Thunderbird 1," his own mind seemed to answer. John was horrified.
"Why would I do that?" he thought.

"I am taking Thunderbird 1. I am going to spread us."

"Us?"

John felt a prickling sensation in his head, and felt his consciousness fading."No!" he tried to shout. Briefly, his touch sensation was restored, and he felt the most dreadful crawling sensation coursing through his veins. He filled with terror as he was shown images of unfamiliar beings taking over Thunderbird 5, then Tracy Island, and stealing the Thunderbird machines. Moving images of staggering, automatic people filling large cities, and fighting eachother, taken over by the same force that controlled John. The last image he saw before his consciousness was forced back into suppression, was the exsanguinated bodies of his family lying in the Tracy lounge.

"Someone is trying to reroute power to the launch controls of Thunderbird 1!" cried Tin-Tin from the power management console.

"Lock him out!" shouted Scott, and jogged over to join her. He slender fingers whirred over the keyboard, and power was once again cut off. Tin-Tin sighed.

"Keep an eye on it, Tin-Tin. And keep power for anything away from John!" said Scott.

Tin-Tin nodded. "Now, control for the entire base is down here. Is John trying to steal our technology?"

"I don't know. But I think we have to assume the worst. Any of our craft could become a devastating weapon in the wrong hands, whether John's or someone else's," said Scott. "He is certainly after something. If he wanted to escape to somewhere, he would have gone by now."

Virgil took Scott to one side. "What are we going to do about Dad?"

"What?"

"Look at him."

Scott turned to look at Jeff. He was leaning against the cupboard on his stool, with his head tilted to one side and his eyes glassy. Blood still trickled slowly from the bandage on his head. "Hmmm," said Scott. "I don't know. We can't leave him in the sickroom."
Virgil nodded to him. He went to his Father and gently roused him. "Father? Why don't you lie down for a while?"
"I'm not tired, Alan," said Jeff.

Virgil smiled at him. "I know, Father, but you can't be worn out if we get a rescue call, can you?"

"Alright, Alan."

Virgil and Scott helped him up onto a bench, and Grandma covered him with a blanket. He was soon asleep, although he mumbled incoherently.

"Someone should probably wake him up every couple of hours," said Gordon. Scott nodded.

Brains punched up a screen showing a schematic of the base. A small, red light was pulsating in the corner of the Thunderbird 1 hangar. It glowed eerily in the dim room.

"Is that John?" asked Gordon.

"I'm not sure. I think so," said Brains. There were other, smaller lights in various other locations. "We have a lot of equipment that emits electrical fields. That reading is the strongest, though, Gordon, and I think that it might be him."
"So are we actually any closer to being able to track him? Or are we still going to be crawling around in the dark?" asked Virgil, impatiently.

Virgil screwed his mouth up, and looked at Scott. Scott shook his head.
"If you check out the smaller signals, I'll be able to fine tune it. You can track all the signals with this." Brains handed Virgil the hand-held scanner, and inserted a data card from the computer. The image on the computer screen appeared on the hand held.

Virgil eyed it with a little suspicion. "Okay. So we can find him. How do we bring him down?"

"I am trying to interface with the nanobots, Virgil. If I can communicate with them, I should be able to reprogramme some of them to disable the others. Then we have to get them into his system," said Brains.

"Will he be back to normal?" asked Gordon.

"I don't know. Clearly the nanobots have made some changes to his physiology. I don't know if we can undo them, Gordon," replied Brains.

"How do we get hold of him? I mean, to get them into him?" asked Virgil.

"What do you think, Brains? We could use a tranquiliser gun," said Scott.

"I don't know if that would work, Scott. Virgil and Gordon said that he was able to move very quickly, and we know his enhanced hearing would make it difficult to creep up on him. Also, we could not pierce his skin with a needle," said Brains.

"You could when he was out cold, so maybe if he wasn't expecting it-" began Virgil.

"What about gas?" asked Gordon. "We could flood some of the rooms with halothane."

"I suppose that might work, Gordon," said Brains.
"Can you do it, Brains?" asked Scott, excited.

"Yes, Scott, I think so. We can connect the carrier gas to the citadel air-filtering system. That way we could localise the gas to a single room, if necessary," stammered Brains.

"Make it happen, Brains," said Scott. Brains looked over at Jeff, sadly, nodded to Scott, and set about his preparations.

"Virgil, Gordon, go out and try and eliminate some of those electric field sources Brains was talking about," said Scott.

"What if we run into John?" asked Gordon.

"I guess we'll gas you, too!" said Scott, and patted Virgil on the shoulder. He and Gordon did as they had been asked.

Gordon and Virgil made their way through the house, checking on the hand held device for sources. They found several electrical appliances giving off a signal, and fed the information to Brains. He seemed to think that John was in the Thunderbird 2 hangar, as the signal there, with the new information, was most likely to be him. On that basis, Virgil and Gordon headed for the Thunderbird 1 hangar, one of only two other signals. The hangar was trashed, with equipment and parts strewn all over the place. There were mission log files and data cartridges out, and some in the viewer. Someone had been reading them. They approached with caution. As they crept toward the end of the hangar, Thunderbird 1 was out of it's normal position, and so blocked their view of the control gantry. As they rounded the craft's thruster exhausts, they stared, surprised, at John, standing at the controls.

"Come down from there, John!" shouted Virgil. John stared at him, with a wicked smile on his face.
"Virg," said Gordon, quietly and out of the corner of his mouth. "I think we'd better get out of here."

Virgil looked from John to Gordon, and in a split second felt a biting pain in his leg. At first it was a little like a small scald from hot water, but then it radiated out from the centre and spread up and down his leg. He fell down, and felt another bite in his arm.

Gordon yelled into his watch. "He's shooting at us! He's fucking shooting at us!" while dragging Virgil underneath Thunderbird 1. He opened a hatch, and the two of them dropped through into the service tunnel below.

"Turn on the gas!" yelled Gordon.

"Too late! He's on the move!" yelled Scott through Gordon's watch. "Get out of there!"

"You okay, Virg?" he asked his brother.

"'Tis just a scratch, Gordy," he said, weakly, and Gordon threw him over his shoulder in a fireman's lift. He ran back to the lab.

"Shit! Virgil!" shouted Scott when he saw them enter. Gordon gently laid him down on the bench opposite Jeff, who was still sleeping. Brains and Tin-Tin left what they were doing, and came to tend to Virgil. Virgil cried out as Brains poked his wounds. He injected them with a pink polymer compound, dressed them, and covered Virgil with a blanket. Tin-Tin fetched an oxygen bottle, and put it on Virgil's face.

"How is he, Brains?" asked Scott in a low voice, with Gordon standing behind him.
"He'll be alright, Scott. His wounds are not too serious, although he will need surgery later, but he's in shock. We'll have to keep an eye on him," stammered Brains. He lingered over his words more than usual; he was exhausted.

"What the hell do we do now?" said Scott, with his head in his hands. "Dad and Virg are out for the count, I have a broken arm. We're all crippled and holed up in the lab! What's the son of a bitch going to do next? Hell in a handbasket. That's where we're going!"

Gordon put his hand on his brother's shoulder. He was not sure what to do, as it was almost always Scott who provided comfort in the event of indecisiveness. His musing was interrupted by a signal from the radio.

"Base from Thunderbird 5. I'm under attack! Request immediate assistance."

"Intruder alert!"

"I'm being boarded!"

Scott looked up and frowned, severely.

"Thunderbird 5 from base! Come in Alan!" He got no response after several attempts, and took a few seconds to think. "Gordon, you need to go up in Thunderbird 3."

"Alone?"

"I need to stay here."
"But what if-"
"I'll go!" said Tin-Tin.

"No, Tin-Tin," said Scott.

"Needs must," said Tin-Tin, calmly. She looked to her father for reassurance, who smiled and bowed slightly. She looked at Scott, hard.

"Okay, Tin-Tin."

"FAB, Scott," said Gordon.

"I can restore power to Thunderbird 3 for long enough for you to launch. Keep in contact and I will seal off the section with you inside," said Brains.

"Okay, Brains."

"And Gordon?" said Scott.

"Yes?"

"Arm yourselves."

Tin-Tin and Gordon headed for Thunderbird 3, weapons drawn. Gordon slipped into his 'on duty' frame of mind, and was acting in a clam and calculated manner. Tin-Tin had never been so excited in her life, and was breathing so hard that it made the ends of her hair fly up and down. But her delight at finally being 'one of the boys' was totally overshadowed by her trepidation about what lay ahead, and her fears for Alan's safety. They made it in one piece to Thunderbird 3, and launched into the darkness.