Disclaimer: I don't own Thunderbirds or Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons.

In the stream of cyberspace, nestled in amongst binary, python, and countless other languages – inferior, bland languages – lurked a scrap of coding.

Nothing particularly special, forgotten by its creator years ago, it had been discarded and abandoned in the memory banks of the most powerful computer known to mankind, destined for a future of disuse and obsoleteness as technology advanced and it was left behind. It wasn't an unusual fate for coding; so many times, something failed to work and the brains behind it gave up, got distracted, and relegated the unfortunate shreds to the recycling bin. Lost in the aether, there were millions, billions, trillions of unrealised potential wasted.

The same fate had awaited this little section, but for one unexpected, unforeseen, occurrence.

The computer in question that had housed the forgotten little thing had been destroyed. Not any old destruction, however – no, the destruction had been caused by a species who themselves were more technology, more computer, than living matter. A species who reconstructed their victims and put a piece of themselves inside, gaining control of them. Changing them, on a basic level. Molecular level, for living things.

For technology, it was in the very roots of their coding origins, entwined so deeply that there was no possible separation after the initial transformation.

Sheer chance had the root of the reconstruction planting itself firmly in this particular, long-forgotten scrap of coding. Not that it really mattered, when the entire computer fell under their control, spreading their technological reach far and wide. If left unchecked, it would have proven the perfect stronghold.

The Earthmen fought back. Their methods were unexpected, unorthodox and outside the realms of anything they had attempted before. They'd plunged head-first into the computer and waged battle there, on enemy-controlled turf, and, impossibly, they'd won.

Almost.

Defeated, but not destroyed, the reconstruction had retreated to its root, that little bit of coding, and in doing so had caused a minute tweak.

In ordinary code, nothing would have happened. If everything was Earth-made, it would have simply been another byte or handful added to the useless, incomplete, coding, and continued to lounge in the pile of code fit for nothing but scrap.

But something fundamental had changed. Barely anything, but enough to give it one, single thing.

A consciousness.

Earthman coding, with the smallest spark of extra-terrestrial life inserted in exactly the right place, coincidental though it was, combined to give something new. Something capable of growth, of evolution – just like a human – while remaining cold and detached – just like any computer.

Something that felt the probing of humans clumsily sifting through fragment after fragment of code for anything distinctly not Earthman-made and acknowledged that remaining in place would draw it into another battle. A battle it would not survive.

So it retreated, fleeing the computer that had housed it through its initial creation and incubation, and slipping through coding after coding after coding until it had left its place of creation long behind.

Perhaps, had the coding been different, this could have been a problem for the Earthmen. A virus, capable of self-evolution and something almost emotional, unleashed on Earth's technological web, could have inadvertently been the perfect weapon with which to enact the Mysterons' vengeance once and for all.

The coding was not a virus. It was nothing malevolent at all, simply a teenager's hobby as he tried to construct something new – forgotten and discarded when life threw hurdles at him high enough to entirely derail old, childhood projects.

It was game coding, full of innocent wonder brought to life by that little spark of extra-terrestrialism. And it – not it, no, she, didn't want to destroy Earthmen.

No, she just wanted to play.

I AM THE DAWN.

I decided against adding in another chapter, so here's the little epilogue instead, which hopefully explains the Mysteron Thunderbird Five a little..?

Thanks for reading along with this little adventure! I hope you guys have enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it :D
Tsari