Five

Two weeks later…

Thudthud thud. Thudthud thud. Thudthud thud. Thudthud thud.

Propped up on the bottom bunk in her cell, Havoc threw the tennis ball and bounced it off the floor, the wall, the underside of the empty top bunk and caught it in her left hand, then passed it to her right and threw it again. They'd finally let her keep something to entertain herself with and she'd perfected the triple bounce last night.

The GDF had caught up about fifteen minutes after International Rescue kidnapped Fury. The usual song and dance had happened with cuffs, searches, cells and lawyers -she'd managed to get an at least halfway decent public defender this time, but someone competent was in charge because they'd gotten her out of her armour and into a prison jumpsuit before she had a chance to slip the cuffs and replace them with holographic fakes.

The Hood hadn't tried to get them out yet, which both did and did not surprise her. He'd gone into a lot of detail about how they were valuable assets to him and how much he relied on their partnership. Maybe he had something in motion? Mind you, he hadn't exactly had nice things planned for the Mechanic- she should know, she'd seen him poring over the plans for The Hex and calculating what size device and yield was needed to destroy the place. Considering how he'd had them waiting in the wings while the Mechanic was running loose, she wouldn't be surprised if the Hood had cut his losses, abandoned them and was busy preparing a new set of 'associates' while making arrangements to 'tidy them up' as 'loose ends'.

She snorted and caught the ball again. It seemed gratitude for services rendered got you as far as the door when it came to the Hood.

But at this exact moment, what really worried her was the massive question mark of what did IR want with Fury? As far as they were aware International Rescue was a bunch of bleeding-heart do-gooders. If the Hood had ordered the grab then she would have been selling him out as soon as the GDF boarded the Cruiser- she had a number of suspicions of what he'd do with someone like Fury on the black market once he'd been leashed like the Mechanic had been- but International Rescue? It was a puzzle with no pieces that fitted.

Havoc snarled silently and rolled the tennis ball between her palms. She hated puzzles.

"Oi! Wakey wakey!"

She sat up at the staticky voice on her subdermal short-range comms implant (and thanked anyone listening that the GDF always missed it!), the tennis ball forgotten. "Fury?" Havoc whispered hopefully.

"One and only." He chuckled, putting on the terrible Cockney accent he used to tease her. "I found this lovely ship in a GDF impound yard- beaut colour, goes like the clappers. Think you'd like it?"

"Does it come with a get-out-of-jail free card?" Havoc bantered back, climbing out of bed and looking out the tiny, barred window for any sign of him.

"It will in about five minutes, get under your bed." He replied, getting down to business. "Once you're out we'll get Fuse, then the three of us need to have a good long talk- I've found out some things. Plus our 'boss' has some stuff he's going to need to come clean about. We've got some decisions to make, big 'uns."

"Understood." Havoc wrapped herself up in her thin blankets and rolled under the bed. Her grin could have lit up the night as sirens started howling and she heard the guards shouting in panic.

She loved Fury-style prison breaks, they were always a blast.

Three weeks later…

"Check." EOS announced happily.

John simply grunted his acknowledgement and reached out to tip over his king before dismissing the holographic chess board. Troubled and discontent, he climbed out of his hanging chair and folded himself down to sit cross-legged on the floor, his head leaning against the side of the gravity ring. He silently watched the Earth go by underneath him and wondered what part of it his brother was on.

Turning her camera to observe him, EOS watched all of this quietly, catalogued the behaviour and added it to the copious notes she was assembling on the entire family. The problem wasn't the data, she had plenty of that, the problem was what to do with it.

If there was a rescue the spark came back temporarily, but a malaise had lain upon the entirety of International Rescue ever since Fury/Scott had left them. She had hoped that continuing interaction and invitations to play might rekindle John's normal self, but it was looking more and more like she'd have to endure the grieving process as the days rolled by with no signs of John's erstwhile sibling or of John recovering his normal mood. She considered attempting to contact Fury/Scott to try to entice him back, but she didn't have any data to suggest that a second attempt at luring him into the fold would work any better than the first.

She considered drawing John's attention to the complete lack of activity from the Chaos Crew ever since Fury had broken his siblings out of prison and the equal lack of activity from the Hood, but decided against it. He would ask if he wished to know.

As dinner time approached and John showed no signs of moving from his place, EOS was pondering how to convince John to eat on schedule for once when an incoming transmission caught her attention.

"John?" She ventured with a little caution- he'd been very irritable lately and had snapped the last time she interrupted his brooding for anything not a rescue.

"Yes, EOS?" He asked dully.

"There's an incoming call, audio only, encrypted. I believe it is the communicator that Fury was given."

John was on his feet in one fluid movement. "Open the channel." He ordered, hope fluttering to life despite his more pragmatic side telling it to go back into hibernation, that this couldn't be what he wanted it to be and real life didn't work like the movies.

"Spaceman?" Fury's voice flooded the space. "You there?"

"We're here Fury, go ahead." John replied, crisp and polite in his usual radio cadence. But something niggled at him. Fury's voice sounded…different.

"Tell EOS to send these coordinates to the GDF." He rattled off a string of numbers. "It's the Hood's main base, Heather's got it locked down and him locked in. He'll be staying there until they come along to pick him up. The door is under the rock shaped like a rugby ball and the password is 'Open Sesame'."

"Acknowledged." John nodded to EOS to relay the information over to Colonel Casey, but his mind was racing ahead. He'd used the name Heather. Not Havoc. The implications that that suggested… he'd have to tread very carefully.

"Is…is that offer still good?" Was the next question, an unfamiliar tentativeness to it. "Us moving into the Round House, maybe even learning to do something different?"

"It is." John nodded even though he couldn't be seen. Plucking up his courage, he dared to take a step of faith. "Scott?"

"Yeah?"

John felt a tension melt out of him and a weight fall off his shoulders that he hadn't even realised was there. He'd answered to Scott, not Fury. He was talking to his brother. "Where can we pick you three up?"

Another string of numbers followed, pointing to a location on the western edge of the Sahara. "If they get lost, tell them to follow the smoke."

"Yeah," Clarence cut in, a chuckle in his voice, "can't have the GDF come looking for us, so we crashed the Cruiser, made it look like we went down with the ship!"

"This all started with a plane crash, makes sense to end it with one." That was Heather. "It was my idea, seemed poetic." He could hear the artfully careless half-shrug in her voice as she spoke.

John had the flight path calculated in moments and an alert sent to Virgil and Gordon to 'get into Two now! Update enroute'. "ETA of Thunderbird Two is fifteen minutes." He reported, and absolutely nothing could keep the smile off his face.