For Liseylou and the prompt spin: Infection + Aeroplane with Scott
He wiped his brow. Yeah, he was nervous, who wouldn't be when an aircraft with nearly 1,000 lives depending on him to get them to safety. Never mind that two of those people were his brother and sister.
Scott had been involved in difficult rescues for almost 10 years. Nerves were normal – even he had them, he just knew how to control himself so that they didn't show – but this was more than nerves.
Nerves don't make your breathing laboured, make you feel like you're going to pass out, make your vision swim and double. Ok, yes, he knew that actually nerves did do all of that, but not to him.
Something else was wrong.
Still, it wasn't as if Scott couldn't operate at less than 100%, so he gritted his teeth and tried to keep his mind on the job. Which was to land one of the biggest passenger planes in the world with little fuel and no wheels.
No pressure there then.
He wiped his brow again and shivered. That wasn't good at all. While wrestling with the controls he tried to cast his mind back. He hadn't felt ill earlier at all, otherwise he would have ruled himself out of this rescue. He might be well-known for being stubborn when it came to illness, going out when he had a cold, but this was not a cold.
The plane dipped suddenly and Scott realised he'd stopped paying attention. Get it together, idiot. John appeared before him, concern furrowing his brow. 'Scott, are you alright? EOS says your heartrate and breathing are very elevated.' Scott rolled his eyes. 'Yeah, just peachy. She's fighting me with everything she's got. How are the ground crews doing?' John looked away momentarily, and Scott took the opportunity to close his eyes as a wave of nausea washed over him.
He wasn't quick enough to open them again, and only realised that John was shouting at him several seconds later after another downward lurch. Unfortunately, Virgil was part of the ground crew preparing to receive the stricken liner, so he couldn't be here to help Scott, and Gordon was currently part of the sleeping passengers. Alan would have been some help, but he was with Virgil…as that thought registered Scott realised One was no longer flying beside him purely because she was heading towards him…damn, he'd lost time again.
John had watched Scott close his eyes with mild concern – after all, he could just be focussing, but his alarm grew exponentially when the plane dropped suddenly and Scott didn't respond to hails. He needed to get help in there, so he took One and sent her screaming for the airport where Virgil and Alan were, filling them in during the seconds it took to get there.
While Virgil was the medic, he was also the engineer, and he was needed on the ground to ensure the plane didn't implode or explode on landing, so handing Alan a Medscanner, he sent him off to help Scott. They needed the speed of One, another ten minutes and the plane would hopefully be down. With instructions to keep the comms on, Alan was with Scott within a couple of minutes.
Virgil didn't like what he was hearing over the comms or seeing on the scanner. Even though it was less than three minutes since John had called to say something was wrong with Scott, he had deteriorated rapidly. The Medscanner was sending warnings of extraordinarily high white blood cells, Scott's breathing was becoming more and more laboured, and he was both sweating and shivering. If Virgil didn't know better he would have said Scott was coming down with the 'flu. Unfortunately, Virgil did know better, and the symptoms were classic for sepsis, especially as Scott was becoming confused as to why he was there.
Alan swallowed the panic rising at the sight of his big brother and concentrated on the two tasks in hand. He managed to shift Scott into the co-pilot seat, strapping him in even as Scott was demanding to know what the hell was going on. That Scott was weak enough for Alan to move him worried him beyond belief, but he had a job to do, so he attached the scanner and turned to the pilot's chair.
He had never flown a plane like this, and while Three was one of the biggest rockets on the planet, she was a rocket not an aeroplane, and no, it wasn't the same thing. Luckily, he could fly a plane, Scott had seen to that, and he had John and EOS helping. Unfortunately, he also had a delirious Scott shouting at him, but he could tune out a shouty brother – for now – while there was a rescue to complete.
It was a textbook crash landing.
Scott should have been really proud of how Alan had managed. But Scott had ceased being conscious almost two minutes before they landed. While the rescue services swarmed the plane to help the passengers, Virgil made a beeline for the cockpit and their stricken brother. One look and he was calling for a stretcher, and withing five minutes of Alan touching down Two was screaming off to the nearest hospital.