Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.
It wasn't often that Adam found himself overwhelmed by a flood of information, but in a very short span of time, he was suddenly learning a lot about International Rescue.
The first realisation had come with Dr Fisher's call, all but buried underneath the woman's fury and the tsunami warning, but Adam hadn't missed that she'd said Tracy. If she'd been talking to Gordon at the time, he'd have thought nothing of it, but she hadn't. She'd been talking to Scott.
Scott Tracy. Combined with the photographs lining the walls of the lounge – luxuriously furnished inside, and not just a guise on the outside to look rich if anyone ever got close enough – and the facts clicked together fast enough to almost give him whiplash.
He'd heard of Scott Tracy, mostly because he knew of Jeff Tracy – of course he did, even if the man hadn't been the first to visit Mars, home of the Mysterons, he was a household name when it came to the world of aviation. Tracy Industries was one of the many companies involved in the long and complicated process of constructing new Angel Interceptors. With the man's death a few years prior, it was his eldest son who had stepped up.
In hindsight, it was so obvious he wondered how he'd missed it. The man even looked like his father!
Family photographs with Scott and Gordon – and also John, and two other boys beside. Adam vaguely recalled that the astronaut turned multibillionaire had five sons, and now he was looking, he could see the family resemblance.
International Rescue didn't just have some support from a Tracy. It was the Tracys.
Which meant that Scott hadn't begrudgingly surrendered their location to protect his team, he'd done it to save his family. It also meant that, in the bunkers, there was a kid. This base was probably their actual home, and not just a station in the way Cloudbase was.
Adam barely managed to get a grasp on all of those facts before the next blindside hit him: International Rescue's defences failing. All of them, at once, and the swimming pool he'd seen and wondered at rather derisively on approach was moving. A large hole was yawning into existence underneath it, and logic immediately dictated that it had to be one of the Thunderbirds' hangars, hidden in plain sight just like Spectrum hid their SPVs all across the world.
Which one, he didn't have time to ponder, because then the obvious thing, too obvious, slapped them all in the face, and he felt like kicking himself. How many times did the Mysterons destroy something and then rebuild it to use in their attacks? They'd even been wary of John, until International Rescue had promised he'd evacuated before the communication hub's destruction, but they hadn't thought to consider the hub itself.
Then again, there had been no indication that the hub was still up and running. Their communications had been as limited as they said, and International Rescue had been convinced that it was gone. With their confidence, he and the other Spectrum officers had simply taken it as fact and passed on.
There was a sheer horror on John's face as the man all but hurtled Lieutenant Green out of the way to access the desk, bringing up hologram after hologram at a speed that Adam had never seen anyone operate a computer before.
They'd known International Rescue operatives were good, but this was something else entirely.
Their own technology was working against them, and it was immediately clear that John was taking it personally as he snarled silently at the holograms.
"We need to destroy the Mysteron-controlled hub," Captain Scarlet said bluntly, striding over to the desk, where the four International Rescue operatives had gathered, barring the incandescent John looking more shell-shocked than anything else. "Give us the location and we'll get the nearest officers on the case."
"There's no time," Scott said.
"We have officers all over the world," Adam insisted. "We can make it."
An icon flashed up over all the holograms John – and Kayo, he realised – were fighting with. Orange, triangular, and unfamiliar. Probably the callsign for the hub, Adam almost dismissed, before he realised what it was.
The shape of the symbol didn't mean anything to him – a circle with a line passing vertically through the lowest point – but the number that appeared gave him pause.
Five.
"Spectrum won't get there in time," Scott repeated, insistently.
"Why do you think we're International Rescue?" Gordon added. The young swimmer was as rigid as his eldest brother, hands balled into white-knuckled fists and back ramrod straight. "Why do you think our communications were so crippled when we lost her?"
Her. Not it. Not the hub. The facts – more facts about International Rescue, on top of the pile he'd already found himself buried under – were slotting into place, but before they quite finished, Lieutenant Green inhaled sharply.
"A space station."
"Thunderbird Five," Captain Scarlet realised, clearly having noticed the number on the icon, too. "You have five Thunderbirds."
If Scott clenched his own fists any tighter, Adam thought his nails stood a good chance of coming out through the back of his hand.
"We can't get to her without Thunderbird Three," he said. "Spectrum and the GDF don't have space craft fast enough."
He was right.
"Why can't you use Thunderbird Three?" Adam asked.
"With the Mysterons in control of all our technology?" He even laughed, although it was bitter and entirely devoid of humour. "Thunderbird Five has the most powerful computers in the world. She controls everything, including the other Thunderbirds. We launch, we'll be entirely in the Mysterons' control."
"Is there nothing we can do?" Captain Scarlet sounded almost uncharacteristically desperate, a feeling Adam was sharing. After all, the Mysterons were right – International Rescue was a symbol of hope.
International Rescue's destruction would be a symbol of despair.
"There's only one thing we can do," John said, his voice tight with concentration. "We have to take back control of Thunderbird Five."
Adam blinked. "Hack the Mysterons?"
"That's impossible," Captain Scarlet finished for him. "That's simply not possible."
"We're International Rescue," Gordon ground out. "We do the impossible every day." Despite his words, he was tense.
"There's still time to evacuate the island," Captain Scarlet insisted. "Machines can be rebuilt, you can't." He stepped forwards, towards the desk. "Captain Blue, get them out of here. I'll-"
"Do no such thing," John snapped. "You wouldn't know where to begin."
None of them were batting an eyelid at the underlying self-sacrifice Captain Scarlet was offering, just like they'd never turned their hastily-composed Mysteron detector on him.
They knew, Adam realised numbly. How they knew, he had no idea, but they knew.
"Evacuation won't do anything," Gordon added. "Scott said it; Thunderbird Five is the most powerful computer in the world. That plane you came in will be hacked the instant you try to take off with any of us on board."
"If it hasn't been already," Kayo muttered.
"Spectrum-"
"Lieutenant Green," John said sharply, interrupting Captain Scarlet. "I need help." He moved over minutely, a clear invitation – no, demand – for Spectrum's communication officer to join him.
"Whatever you need," the man said instantly, occupying the vacant space.
It was not the first time Adam had found himself feeling helpless in the final moments of a Mysteron attack – with Captain Scarlet and his self-sacrificing, indestructible, nature, it was becoming almost common to find himself side-lined right at the apex of the action. That didn't mean he liked it, and a glance at Scott and Gordon, still stiffer than steel, showed their own frustration at being unable to do anything.
On his other side, Captain Scarlet seemed completely flummoxed by the realisation that, for once, he too couldn't do anything. Indestructability had nothing that could halt a tsunami. There was no plane or boat he could pilot out to miraculously stop it at the expense of his own life – or what would be his life, if not for his retrometabolism.
Welcome to my world, Adam thought briefly, and a little pettily, although he'd never admit it.
"Nothing's come out of that gap," he said out loud, gesturing at where the swimming pool had vanished and a chasm yawned down into the volcanic rock below. "Why did the Mysterons open it?"
Scott let out a short, sharp, hiss of frustration from between his teeth before begrudgingly giving him an answer. "They didn't open it to let anything out, they opened it to let the water in," he said.
"They've opened all the hangar entrances," Gordon added. "The bunker is still sealed because that's purely manual with no electronics, so the rest of our people are safe for now, but they'll be trapped down there when the water comes in."
Up in the villa, the seven of them were going to be drowned, or bashed to death, by the incoming wave. In the bunker, however many people were in there were going to face a long, slow end by starvation or suffocation, Adam realised.
It was one of the crueller deaths the Mysterons had orchestrated.
"They're going to flood out your technology and kill all of us at the same time." Captain Scarlet said what they were no doubt all thinking. "And there's nothing we can do to stop it."
"Nothing we can do," Scott said, but nodded over to the desk, where the two men and one woman were so obscured by holograms and streams of data Adam couldn't even begin to decode that they were barely visible. "It's up to them."
He sounded frustrated, but not defeated. As though he honestly, genuinely, believed that his brother, head of security, and Lieutenant Green, could actually hack the Mysterons.
If that was possible, Spectrum would have found a way to do it a long time ago, Adam thought, but kept it to himself.
"How many people are in the bunker?" he asked, more out of curiosity than anything else. It was better than standing around and going crazy while a giant wave of water advanced on them and their only hope of survival was the Mysterons being hacked.
"Four," Gordon said before Scott could say anything. The commander looked like he'd wanted to tell him to stuff his questions somewhere unpleasant.
"Four?" Adam had been expecting at least three times that number.
"Five if you count MAX," the swimmer shrugged.
"MAX?"
"Gordon," Scott growled. "Shut up." The commander stalked over to the balcony, and after a moment, Adam and Captain Scarlet decided to follow him.
From there, the swimming pool – or rather, the gap where it should be – was revealed to be even closer to the house than Adam had realised.
The industrial-grade glass blast doors that had been slid shut earlier made sense, all of a sudden. Not just tsunami protection, but Thunderbird-launch protection.
There was no way Thunderbirds Two or Three could fit through that hole, from what Adam knew of them, and while it would be poetic for Thunderbird Four to be tied to the pool, the submersible had to have a direct access to the ocean. That left Thunderbird One, although even peering down into the hole didn't show any sign of the machine herself.
"Angel Leader, do you copy?" Captain Scarlet said abruptly from beside him. His mic was dropped down again, and he was frowning. "Harmony Angel, come in."
Adam didn't have to have his own comm active to tell that there was no reply.
"Rhapsody Angel, Destiny Angel, come in. Angel Squadron, come in."
"Comms are down," Scott informed them. "We're being jammed."
"Why are our comms down, too?" Captain Scarlet demanded, turning to face him. Adam stepped back slightly, out from between the two men.
"Maybe the Mysterons just felt like jamming everything," Gordon intercepted with a shrug, clearly unafraid of the two taller men. "Your Angels are still in the air, though – look."
He pointed out over the ocean. In the far distance, smoke appeared to be faintly rising on the horizon. "That's where the Sea Leopard went down," he said. "See for yourselves."
Captain Scarlet caught the binoculars that were tossed his way and peered through them for a moment, before his shoulders relaxed slightly. Adam stepped up next to him, and the binoculars were passed to him.
He couldn't see the remains of the Sea Leopard itself, nor could he see what was causing the other trails of smoke, although a quick count put them at sixteen, and logic thereby dictated that the Angels had taken it upon themselves to destroy the rest of the Hummingbirds even if it was too late to stop the tsunami. He could, however, see three craft still in the air, predominantly white with bold black 'A' markings, circling over the destruction zone.
"They must be waiting for orders," he mused.
"Or they're still in contact with Cloudbase and the Colonel has ordered them to remain where they are," Captain Scarlet pointed out.
"True," Adam conceded. "Are they circling over Raoul? I can't see the island."
"That's where Raoul is," Scott confirmed, "but you should be able to see some sign of it on the horizon."
"Well, I can't," Adam said, peering harder through the binoculars in an attempt to see what was presumably a similar jagged rock to the island they were currently on. "All I see is water. Water, water, and more water."
A split second later, he realised what he'd said and almost dropped the binoculars. They were rescued by Scott, who snatched them from his fingertips and almost smashed them into his face in his hurry to look through.
"It's coming." Gordon was the one to voice their shared realisation. "John, it's coming."
"Shut up and let us work," came a distracted snap.
Adam turned to Scott. "Is there nowhere we can go that would be safe?" he asked. "Even just for the ones in the bunker?"
Unlike International Rescue, he had no such faith that they would hack the Mysterons in time.
"It's not got the wash to get too big," Gordon said.
"Oh, I'm an idiot," Scott growled, facepalming and almost forgetting to lower the binoculars beforehand. "The peaks."
"Uh, Scott, not all of us climb those for fun," Gordon pointed out.
"Alan does."
That was a new name, and Adam filed it away for reference.
"Brains doesn't."
Yeah, Adam could see that.
"He's going to have to," Scott retorted, back straightening in a fashion that looked pure commander. "Gordon, go to the bunker and get them to climb as high as they can. Now."
For a moment, Adam wondered if Gordon was going to protest, but it passed in silence and then the swimmer was running, hurtling for the stairs.
"We could help?" Adam offered, watching him go.
"I think we've got more practice getting people up and down mountains quickly," Scott said dryly. "They'll be fine."
Reading between the lines, the bunker was certainly down in the hangars, but Adam wasn't about to argue about Scott's last-ditch attempt at keeping secrecy - even if it was almost certainly going to be pointless.
He just couldn't see how they were getting out of this one alive. Any of them.
The wall of water bearing down on them was visible with the naked eye, now. Far enough away that he had to know what he was looking at to recognise it, but unmistakable with the knowledge of what was coming.
"Captain Blue, go up to the peak," Captain Scarlet said. "Commander, you go with him."
"What? No!" The two of them argued back in the same instant.
"There is no point throwing away your lives," Captain Scarlet told them firmly. "Go."
"I'm not leaving," Scott retorted. "You do not get to give me commands in my own base, Captain."
"You must," he insisted. Adam stayed back and quiet, unwilling to leave, either. Captain Scarlet was begrudgingly one thing, but he also wasn't going to leave Lieutenant Green behind to face certain death if their desperate attempts failed. No doubt Scott felt even more strongly about leaving his younger brother, and whatever Kayo was to him.
He hadn't missed that she was in most of the family photographs, either, even if she clearly wasn't related by blood.
Captain Scarlet and Scott continued to argue and he stepped back a little, out of their immediate lines of sight, to watch the incoming wave.
Gordon no doubt knew better than any of the rest of them about washes and tsunamis and the rest of it, but to Adam, that wave was starting to look uncomfortably big as it loomed closer and closer, blotting out more and more of the sky with every heartbeat. Rationally, he knew that the peaks of the island would be high enough to escape the incoming devastation, but the fear that the four – five, including Gordon, and six including this mysterious 'Max' – sheltering in the bunker had just been sent to their deaths in an attempt to escape that very same fate settled in regardless.
He forced himself to ignore it. It was just another aspect of the situation he could do nothing about – not, he thought somewhat bitterly, that there was anything he could do about any of it. No-one to get to safety – International Rescue had that covered far better than he ever could – no threat to stop – there were things in nature that were unstoppable and tsunamis featured highly on that list – and not even any research or piloting to do.
Despite his petty thought earlier, he wasn't quite sure how to compartmentalise the fact that Captain Scarlet was just as useless, for the first time on a long time, and from the way he was almost bickering with Scott, the other man wasn't entirely certain what to be doing with himself, either.
Over at the desk behind him, he could hear three quiet yet urgent voices as their tech experts waged a battle Adam didn't think the Mysterons had ever faced before.
To his knowledge, no-one had ever even tried to hack the hackers before. It just didn't seem possible.
Then again, as Gordon had said, if there was anyone who did tackle the impossible, it was International Rescue.
Adam still thought they were all going to die. There was a reason no-one had tried to beat the Mysterons at their own game, and the wave wasn't slowing down. If anything, it seemed like it was getting faster.
Faster, and faster, and faster.
It was too late for him and Scott to make a break for the peaks now, even if they wanted to. They'd never make it.
"John." Scott's voice was strained.
His brother ignored him entirely, entirely buried in the holograms. Adam still couldn't decipher any of them enough to even hazard a guess if there was any success on the horizon.
A horizon that was now entirely water.
Adam took an unconscious step back, away from the very open balcony, and then another, more conscious, one. Captain Scarlet retreated alongside him, and Scott all but ran to the desk.
"John!"
Lieutenant Green made a noise that sounded suspiciously like triumph, as impossible as it seemed in their current situation. John responded soundlessly, hands flickering almost faster than Adam could follow through the holograms. They vanished as he did so, zipping down into a glowing holographic globe that meant absolutely nothing to Adam but clearly meant something important to the communication officers.
"Kayo," the ginger called urgently the moment he'd drawn all the holograms down, and the young woman slammed her hand down onto a button instantly.
To Adam's disbelieving delight, the glass doors across the balcony began to slide shut. Outside, the swimming pool was also moving again, closing over the gaping hole outside the villa, and further out, the huge barriers once again erupted from the surrounding ocean.
No way.
They'd done it? They'd really done it?
The rising defences said yes, they had. They'd somehow, impossibly, regained control of the Mysteron-duplicated Thunderbird Five – or at least overridden the commands the Mysterons were sending.
But, as Adam watched the advancing water, he realised that they weren't safe yet. It was close. Too close, and the defences weren't rising quickly.
They'd done the impossible, but had they done it in time?
Frozen to the spot, Adam could do nothing but stare as the water bore down towards them.
Thanks for reading!
Tsari