John was ever so glad he had made the decision to attend the danger zone in person.

"What do you mean it's our fault?!" Scott was covered in dust; his uniform was torn and he had lost his cool about an hour ago. John grabbed at him from behind as his brother launched himself at the weasel of a politician.

John's gravity support hummed as it compensated for the effort of fighting against his older brother. "Scott!"

The fact the suited asshole didn't seem to care, beyond taking a step back, did not help John in the slightest. "Scott! This is not helping Virgil!"

The mention of his missing brother's name was enough to blow the wind out of his big brother's sails and they both staggered as he wilted.

Weasel shifted his stance, straightening almost as if with pride, looking down his nose at them. "You can't expect hundreds to suffer just for the life of one? Your operative had the chance to do his job. He failed and has to face the consequences."

John stumbled as Scott reared up and leapt for the man again. "Scott, goddamnit! Leave him to Eos."

John's heels dragged in the dirt.

"Who is Eos?"

Your funeral, asshole. John thought it, but didn't say it.

There were far more important things to pay attention to. "Scott, Virgil needs us. We will attend to him later."

There was a vibration of sound deep in his brother's chest, but he straightened, shook off John's arms, and turned back to the equipment behind them. His voice only shook a little. "Do we have anything further? Have you been able to locate him?"

John swallowed. "No. The whole site is electrified. Grandma still has his suit metrics, but they are fragmented and he is not responding coherently to comms."

Their brother was one of two victims of the final collapse of a twenty-storey apartment building. All signs were pointing to shoddy construction.

Virgil had been called in due to a partial collapse earlier in the day. It hadn't taken the engineer long to realise the whole building was coming down. It had been evacuated, but there had been a handful of lifesigns trapped by the initial collapse. Virgil, like the hero he was, had donned his exo-suit and rescued them one by one, gambling each time he entered the structure that it was going to hold those few moments longer.

He had lost the gamble on the eighteenth floor trying to save the last of that handful.

John had yelled into comms as the line was overcome with a deafening roar.

They hadn't heard from Virgil since.

At least part of the reason was that the building had collapsed on top of the electrical distribution centre next door, electrifying anything that could conduct power. International Rescue had been trying to kill the electrical input since, but this asshole of a politician was doing everything in his power to hinder that.

Apparently, the local hospital didn't have a functional back up generator.

By the looks of this leading weasel, John was pretty sure he knew why.

Another sticking point was that the politician wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for the fact that Virgil had hauled his brother out of the rubble an hour ago. The man had minor injuries and was being attended to at that local hospital, but the weasel had not followed him to the medical facility, obviously attracted by the photo opportunity of being seen speaking to International Rescue.

Once John had a chance, those photos and possibly a few tactical recordings might find their way to the press with appropriate reality attached.

But in the meantime, he had a distressed commander who was one more comment away from decking the guy.

"Alan, how close are we to securing that hospital's power supply?"

His little brother's voice was tinny on comms. "Working on it. They're certainly happy to have Two's spare generator, but this place is seriously short staffed. I'm thinking I'm the most mechanically adept person here. I'm liaising with Brains. Doing our best." A pause. "Any word?" On Virgil.

"Working on it." A sigh. "Do your best."

Comms flicked over to an emergency override from Tracy Island and John's heart sank. "Boys, please hurry. I'm getting irregularities in Virgil's heartbeat. I suspect there is some ongoing blood loss. You need to get him out of there."

"Working on it, Grandma." He dragged his eldest brother as far away from the politician as he could. "Working on it."

"You need to work faster."

-o-o-o-