That's Business - Chapter 3
Thanks so much everyone who's following along!
Virgil entered the lounge with slightly damp hair, ready to complete their debrief. It was more of a ritual than a requirement at this point. Land. Shower. Lounge.
Gordon shouldn't be too far behind him, having gone off to take a shower of his own. Anything involving water always took his fish brother slightly longer than usual. It had been a simple rescue, picking up an exploration group who'd lost their way during a blizzard in the arctic. Some mild hypothermia but they'd found them before it could get too serious and both members of the party were now recovering at the hospital.
Things had been pretty quiet since Scott and John had left. It was usually the opposite, like the world could somehow sense they were short-handed. He had to admit it was strange not having John in his ear during a rescue. He'd gotten used to receiving information before he'd even thought to ask for it. He'd need to remember to give his brother some appreciation for that when he got home.
On the other hand, not having Scott here had been weird in a different way. He didn't have his brother micromanaging every rescue and stressing him out about each little thing that wasn't going to plan. But… he also wasn't getting the reassurance he usually got that he was doing the right thing.
He knows why their family dynamic works so well, no one else in the family is interested in leading, in commanding, in making the tough decisions. Not that he can't of course. Especially if Gordon or Alan are on a rescue with him, he's more than capable of taking the lead. He just prefers when there's someone else waiting at home to take that burden.
They so rarely got time off that it was a bit of a shock to the system when someone wasn't here. But it was only a long weekend, so he'd make do.
He'd only just sat down on the sofa when the holo-table activated in front of him. He'd expected to see a brother's hologram, instead there was a message. He stood up to get a better look, it was very unusual to get a message through the holo-table. In a family as busy as theirs they needed to take advantage of all the face-to-face time they could get, so any messages were usually delivered via holocall.
The message had him immediately reaching for his watch to call Gordon down to the lounge. His brother could clearly tell by the tone of his voice that it was important because he didn't protest the rushing.
Trouble at TI. Call GDF.
Such a short message that caused him such intense panic. He itched to call his brothers, but he knew if at John wasn't able to contact the GDF himself then he probably shouldn't be contacting them either. Dammit. They were only away for a business trip. How had they managed to find trouble?
Gordon rushed into the lounge, his wet hair dripping onto the linoleum, just as the holo-projector popped up with a video. It was unsteady and no sign of a brother in front of the camera. It panned down for a second and Virgil could see what he assumed was John's lap. It must be a feed from his brothers new HoloLens glasses.
The camera slowly panned around the room giving them a view of what was happening.
"What the hell is this?" Gordon squawked beside him.
"It's John." Virgil supplied hastily. "He sent a message saying there was trouble at Tracy Industries."
Then the camera panned to their eldest brother and Virgil gave a hiss as Gordon swore beside him. Scott had blood streaming down the side of his face and his arms were pulled unnaturally behind him, the same as all the other members of the board Virgil had spied.
"Let's go." Gordon said immediately, already backing away with his hands curled into fists.
"Gordon." Virgil called, barely able to tear his eyes away from the screen. "Wait. We need more information."
"Move the feed to Two and let's go!" Gordon rebutted. "We know where they are, we can figure out a plan on the way."
Virgil pursed his lips and then nodded. "Go start pre-flight checks."
Gordon rushed off and Virgil went to grab Scott's tablet from the desk, transferring the video. His was downstairs in the lab and he didn't want to miss anything. He was almost tempted to ask Gordon to fly Two so he could keep watching and liaising with Kayo and the GDF.
Almost.
Gordon was probably better suited to the liaison task anyway. His brothers better not get up to anything dramatic while he was in the air though. He wasn't sure whether to be grateful or fearful of the video feed.
He clutched it tightly in his hands and as he reached his chute.
So much for a quick debriefing.
o-o-o
Scott noticed the intruders weren't interested in talking to them as one of them set herself up at a desk to the side of the room and pulled out a laptop. The others dumped all their stolen phones and tablets onto the desk and the room fell silent as the woman started to plug each device into her laptop.
The other intruders were stationed around the room, keeping an eye on the table of board members. Their guns were held in a resting position but still very much in view and at the ready. Scott knew he couldn't do much in his current situation so, with the knowledge that John had sent out an SOS, he was content to sit in the silence. The problem was this room was filled with people who always wanted to speak their minds.
"How long do you plan on keeping us here!"
Scott groaned internally as Litchwell, suddenly feeling brave after the initial excitement, shouted across the room. His voice was strained. Irritated, but also fearful.
"You don't know who you're dealing with, you know? They'll send an army."
Scott tried not to judge people for how they acted in a crisis situation but his underlying feelings for the man made him wince internally. When one of the armed gunmen started walking towards him however, Scott couldn't just sit and watch.
"Hey!" He called, diverting the attention to himself.
He took a deep breath, still not recovered from the last attack but steeled himself nonetheless.
"People here are scared." He tried to reason. "Maybe if you let us know what was going on we could all breathe a little easier."
The man who'd been walking towards Litchwell pivoted towards him and his expression made Scott brace himself even before the butt of the gun was raised towards his head again.
The blow never came.
Scott looked to see another of the intruders holding the end of the gun as if he'd caught it mid-air.
"Maybe Mr. Tracy has a point." The man said coolly.
Scott was surprised, he hadn't worked out if there was a hierarchy yet, but this man was obviously the leader. The other man scowled but lowered his gun immediately.
"We've been hired to get data from your devices." The man started lazily, addressing the room. "If everyone stays quiet and patient." He gave a hard stare towards Litchwell. "We'll all be leaving here within the hour no worse for wear."
"Okay?" He queried, hands outstretched and face in a comical smile. No one said anything. "Great."
Scott studied him closely. This guy knew how to control a room. Scott was tempted to say military but there was something about the way he held himself that suggested otherwise. Well, he was clearly a mercenary for hire now anyway. And now he knew for sure this was a targeted attack. He didn't like that he didn't know the benefactor behind the operation and if they did as these men said they would likely never find out.
Scott couldn't help feeling slightly relieved that it didn't look like they were here to hurt anyone. He wasn't going to stir the pot and risk changing their minds. If they could just bide their time they could investigate after everyone was safe. He hoped it would turn out that simple.
He turned his attention to the woman at the desk, she had thrown a number of the personal phones to the side, finished with whatever data download she was doing. She clearly knew what she was doing, managing the personal devices with speed even though Scott knew all the board members had good security. Their high-profile personas required it.
She seemed to be struggling with the Tracy Industries tablets though. Scott wasn't surprised, those never left the building and operated solely on their network which John had secured himself.
"What's the hold up?" The leader Scott had identified earlier asked quietly. The room was eerily silent after Litchwell's outburst however, so Scott picked it up easily.
The woman gave a scowl.
"I don't know, it's like someone's fighting me." She glared at him. "You told me no one would know we were up here."
"No one saw us." The man replied with certainty and a hint of anger. He fired back. "Maybe you tripped an alarm with your digging."
"I didn't." She rebutted with equal certainty.
Scott glanced at his brother and John gave him an almost blank look. No one else in the room would have been able to pick up on it but Scott knew his brother had just confirmed it was his doing. He was the one fighting back through the HoloLens.
Scott was torn, on one hand he wanted them to get what they came for and go, on the other hand he knew that they had a lot of dangerous information that they couldn't afford to let leak out. John was right to put up the defences, but Scott didn't like the potential for the situation to go downhill once the mercenaries realised they weren't getting what they came for.
He had to remind himself that help was coming.
The man in charge scrubbed a hand over his face. "Check the news. Any buzz around TI?"
"Nothing in the last hour. Business Insider reported about the board meeting this morning but no further updates." She supplied quickly.
"Okay. Just get what you can, our window is closing."
"Wait." The woman said. The leader had started to turn away but turned back with a hard expression.
"What?"
Had the media somehow gotten word about the hostage situation? Scott thought. He was sure John would've taken precautions to avoid that.
Then she looked directly at his brother and Scott's stomach dropped as her eyes widened in recognition.
She spoke, still not taking her eyes off of John. "An article from yesterday. John Tracy, son of the late Jeff Tracy, unveils his new HoloLens prototype in a spectacular display at the Harris Auditorium this weekend."
Scott felt helpless as he glanced at John again, but his brothers face remained impassive, no one could poker face like John, but Scott was pretty sure that wasn't going to help at this point.
"HoloLens?" The leader questioned with a tone that suggested he was not happy with the lack of information.
"The glasses." She clarified.
The leaders face turned sour as he swore and stalked towards John, ripping the glasses off his face. He immediately put them up to his own eyes.
"I don't see anything." He said suspiciously, a hint of relief in his voice.
"Maybe they're just normal glasses." Another man supplied from across the table, Scott could see that he was scared by the way his hands were tightening and untightening around his gun.
The leader proceeded to snap them at the join between the lenses and a trail of wiring pulled out keeping them together.
The man scowled. "Ever seen a normal pair of glasses do that?"
The room was deadly silent for a beat until the leader screamed. "DAMMIT!" and threw the glasses to the ground, crushing them under his foot.
"The whole goddamn GDF is probably on their way here now."
He strode back to John and backhanded him across the face. "What did you fucking send out!? Who's coming?"
John remained silent even as he flexed his jaw from the hit. Scott was straining against the zip ties and could feel them cutting into his skin.
Scott was glad when the leader simply looked at his watch instead of trying to push John any further. He exchanged a glance with his brother and John looked at him guiltily. Sorry.
Scott tried to give a reassuring look back. His brother had only been trying to help, they'll never know what might've happened if they'd managed to get into the TI network.
"Screw it." The leader said, pulling out his own phone. "I'm calling the boss. We're cutting this short."
The boss. Now Scott was interested.
The phone only rang once before Scott heard someone pick up on the other end. He couldn't make out the voice though.
"The operations blown, send the chopper."
Scott couldn't hear what was happening on the other end of the call, so he had to piece things together with what he heard.
"No, we didn't get everything." He said flatly, pursing his lips.
"If you don't send it now, you'll be getting nothing because we'll all be dead."
"It wasn't our fault." The leader was getting frustrated now. "One of the Tracy boys had these special glasses; he was sending out messages. I've never seen anything like them."
"I destroyed them."
Scott could hear the expletives on the other end of the phone now as the leader held it back away from his ear with a wince.
"Wait, wait, wait." He the man growled. "You're telling me the only reason we were here was for them?"
Scott didn't like how that sounded. They were here for the glasses? They'd been paid to break into TI, hold the entire board hostage just to get data on his brothers' glasses?
"This is what happens when you send people into a job with only a fifth of the information." The man growled.
"Did you not hear me? We don't have time to get anything else, the encryption is too advanced and now we'll be on the GDFs radar."
There was a long pause as the person on the other end of the conversation talked and the leader took a deep breath, calming down slightly.
"Yeah, I see it." He said while walking towards the window.
Scott looked out the window too. He could see what looked like a chopper in the distance.
"He's here yeah." The man said, glancing at John and Scott got worried again.
"No way." He said still looking eerily at John. "I did not sign up for that."
"Double?" He deliberated briefly. "No. It's not worth it, this is International Rescue we're talking about. We'd have every intelligence agency in the world on our tails."
He exchanged a glance with his team. There was tension amongst them. Scott could see the greedy looks in some of their eyes.
"Triple?"
The man scrubbed a hand over his face. "Fine. But once we deliver him, we're out."
Scott's stomach dropped. Deliver him. He gritted his teeth.
"Let's move out." The man declared as the call ended. "Jackers get the window."
Scott watched as one of the men pulled out a small contraption that he placed onto one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. It stuck and started screeching as it automatically dragged itself round the frame in a rectangular shape.
"What's the deal with the boss?" One of the men shouted over the noise.
The man scowled as he gathered up all their equipment.
"We're taking that one with us." He pointed at John and the two brothers exchanged a worried look. In fact, Scott was pretty sure it was the first time today that he'd actually seen real fear on John's face.
Before his brother had had something to focus on, he'd been helping. Now he'd lost his only means of contact and was facing being separated from his brother. Scott found himself echoing his brother's fear tenfold.
"Don't touch him." Scott growled.
He was pointedly ignored and that just made him strain even more against the zip ties, feeling the blood dripping down his arms.
"There's no where you could go that we won't find you." He tried again. "Think about this, do you really want to take this big a risk?"
He was grasping at straws, and he knew it. He hoped someone was here, that someone was ready. He hated that he couldn't do anything. If these stupid ties would just break.
The man in charge just shrugged. "Sorry kid. The money's good."
With that he swiftly cut the ties around John's wrists and grabbed a hold of his suit jacket, yanking him out of the chair.
John grabbed a hold of the man's wrists and tried to pry the hands off him, struggling as he was dragged towards the window. He dug his heels into the ground and pulled his body weight towards the ground but the man dragging him only tugged harder forcing John forward.
Scott hadn't noticed their machine on the window had finished cutting. His eyes had been on John but the pane of glass that had been present was now propped up against another window. There was nothing but air and Scott could feel the icy wind blowing into the room.
John was still struggling as they reached the destroyed window.
"ENOUGH!" The man dragging his brother shouted and Scott's heart leapt out of his chest as he appeared to throw John out of the opening in the window.
"NO!" Scott shouted, almost toppling in his chair.
But the man had kept a hold of John's jacket. His brother was now hanging out of the open window, heels scrabbling at the edge of the floor, trying to keep himself from falling. Scott knew that if John lost his footing, the grasp on his jacket that was keeping him from falling wouldn't hold his weight.
"Stop. Struggling." The man seethed.
John was breathing heavily, holding onto the man's forearms in a death grip. Hanging half out a window, 30 stories up.
"We're about to climb out this window and onto a helicopter so unless you want to end up a pancake in the street-" He shook John violently, forcing his brother to readjust his footing to compensate. "Then you're going to cooperate. Okay?"
There was a brief pause before John nodded shakily and he was pulled back into the room. He fell to his knees from the yank and breathed deeply, hands outstretched on the floor as his arms shook.
A gun was trained on him as the leader pulled out a walkie talkie, appearing as though he hadn't just held his little brother's life in his hands.
Scott let himself let out his own shaky breath. Too close.
"Yeah, bring it over. We're ready."
Scott heard a rumbling and the wind powering through the room increased as the helicopter flew closer. If the company still used paper, Scott knew it would be flying.
The helicopter stopped just short of the building and Scott couldn't help but wince at how close the rotator blades were to the building. A man, Jackers, Scott recalled from before, held out what looked like a very large grapple gun and fired.
The thick cord spun out, attaching with a clang to the open side door of the helicopter. He gave it a tug before clipping the other side onto the edge of the sliced window. Scott couldn't help but worry about the security of the line. Was it up to safety standards? Definitely not up to Brains' safety margin.
His brother's life was about to depend on that cable.
John was yanked up again and Scott grimaced as he saw the leader attaching a belay cable from himself onto John's belt buckle.
"That won't hold if he falls." Scott growled loudly above the roar of the helicopter, wheeling himself slightly closer to the window.
"He better not fall then." The leader panned back, more to John than him, giving his brother a fierce look.
And with that the mercenaries started to zip across the line to the helicopter. The woman with the laptop was first, her equipment secured in a rucksack hanging off her back. The two other men went next, easily zipping across.
"I don't have another zipline cable." The leader said to John actually sounding serious this time. "So, we're both going to crawl across. Hook your feet around the cable and pull yourself along with your hands."
The man looked as uncomfortable as Scott felt but he knew John would manage. They were international rescue after all.
His brother caught his eye then and Scott gave a reassuring nod.
Go. We'll find you.
He hated that he couldn't do anything. Hated that they were both so helpless. But they would figure it out. The others would be tracking the copter, Scott was sure of it. He had to be.
John nodded back and headed to the window. He went first, the cable between him and the other man just long enough for him to get a grip on the cable without pulling the leader out the window.
John slowly pulled himself further along the cable, the leader climbing out soon after to keep slack on the cable. Scott watched with bated breath as they both shimmied along the cable.
John was almost at the helicopter when the cable gave a jolt. Scott watched in horror as the clamp around the edge of the window began to slip. The weight of two men putting too much force on the mechanism.
Scott swore and started trying to pull his rolling chair closer to the window, the vacuum of wind from the helicopter making it all the more difficult. He didn't know what he was planning on doing but if he had to prevent that clamp from failing with his hands tied behind his back, he would sure as hell do it.
He didn't get the chance.
The clip broke free and Scott was sure he was screaming as he watched John and the other man fall freely down the now hanging cable. The leaders zipline clip yanked against the clamp at the bottom of the cable, stopping his fall. John fell past him also jolting to a stop as the belay between them held.
However, with Scott's vantage point now right at the windows edge he could see the panic on his brother's face. John desperately grasped at his belt buckle, but it was too late.
Scott saw the moment it broke.
Saw his brother trying to grasp for the cable but not able to get a grip.
Saw him in free fall but this time with nothing to catch him.
Saw his brother disappear out of his view as he fell to his death.
Tbc.