Out Of Place

AN – Thanks again for the great reviews! As it says in the summary, the TOS parts of this story are set post-Unforgotten – but it won't be too dependent on you having read them, any backstory should be self-explanatory in the text.

Disclaimer – I don't own Thunderbirds

Chapter Three – The switch

Brains was having a strange dream. In it, he was sitting with Moffy- ahem, Professor Moffat – in a small bistro. MAX was acting as the waiting, singing opera to them. He brought over soup but the bowls were empty. Brains tentatively raised his hand to complain and instantly alarms began to blare in the bistro.

He clawed his way out of sleep and away from the noise. Except… the alarms weren't stopping. He sat up, reaching blindly for his trademark blue glasses and putting them on. He opened his eyes and tried to work out what the noise was, it was nothing like the alarms that he'd installed on Tracy Island.

As he looked around, a feeling of panic began to steal over him. Because wherever he was, it was nothing like his room on Tracy Island either.

"Tintin?" A voice next to him asked. Brains turned swiftly to see he was in a double bed rather than his small bunk and that the far side of it was occupied. Occupied by a disheveled head that was reaching for their own pair of trademark blue glasses.

"Oh my." Brains breathed. His counterpart blinked a few times and stared back.

"I…err…ok. W-who are you?"

"I'm Brains. I mean, Hiram Hackenbacker. Brains is my nickname. E-excuse me, but where am I?"

The colour left the face of the other man. "Y-you're called Brains? B-but I'm Brains too…"

"…oh my," Brains breathed again, staring at the man he was now sure was his doppelgänger. There was a difference in race, true, and way of speaking, but Brains was still sure that the person he was looking at was also Brains. He couldn't explain it, the knowledge was deep seated within him.

"Y-you're me." The other Brains was saying, eyes open wide. "F-from another t-timeline, I a-assume."

"I…well, maybe." Brains conceded. The two engineers scrutinised each other for a bit. "I don't know how I came to be here," Brains tried explaining. "I went to bed as usual in my room on Tracy Island and woke up here."

"T-Tracy Island?" His counterpart pushed his glasses back against the bridge of his nose. "D-do you work for, er, I-International Rescue, too?"

"Yes," Brains let out a sigh of relief he didn't know he'd been holding. "Yes, I do."

"A-and you're now here. D-did you see anybody else?"

"No, the alarms woke me up just before you."

"The a-alarm!" The other Brains leapt upright, hastily grabbing a dressing gown. He paused, conflicted, before throwing a blazer at Brains. "I-I don't have a spare," he explained apologetically.

"T-that's not a problem. You're being very calm about all this."

"Oh no," his head was shaking vigorously. "I can a-assure you, I-I'm panicking inside. B-but there is a r-red alert so everyone w-will be up, we can tell t-them all about it."

"Oh, because they will think I'm a security risk?"

"No," the other Brains paused as his door slid open with a hiss. "B-but because you are here, and yet Tintin is n-not."

-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-

Alan tried to burrow his head under his pillow to drown out the sound of the alarm. John had really gone overboard this time, setting off an alarm like this instead of just popping in with his hologram. Eventually he conceded defeat and got up, stretching and yawning and blearily walking towards the door. He only half registered that it slid open instead of him having to pull it, still yawning as he stepped into….his bathroom. What? He shook his head. Typical, don't mess up the doors for years and still manage to get it wrong once in a whole. Still, at least John wasn't around to witness it again. One benefit of the alarm is that John wasn't watching over him personally. Probably. It was always pretty hard to tell.

Alan tried again and this time found himself in the hall. He followed it into the lounge, seeing that it was already full.

"Hey John, what's with the alarm instead of that hologram popping thing you usually do? Not that I'm complaining you aren't stalking me, but it's really loud."

Brains leapt up from where he was sat on a small sofa. "Alan, you're here too?"

"Oh hey Brains, what's….whoa." For the first time Alan actually looked around and realised he wasn't in the den. He was in a room full of oriental decorations, bright windows zigzagging out to the sparking sea beyond. There were small items of furniture dotted around but the thing that he really noticed where the portraits on the wall. Portraits of five brothers in International Rescue uniforms, that were definitely not him and his brothers. Plus, everything was so… old fashioned.

"Have I stepped back in time?" He wondered aloud. "Or is this a trippy dream? Maybe Brains did something to that kitchen module and it spiked the pasta?"

"I-I can safely say it is none of the above," Brains replied. "I-I think, in fact, we've slipped sideways."

"Sideways, hm?" This was said by an older man, a man who looked remarkably like Alan's dad. "Like, another dimension."

"E-exactly like a, er, another dimension, Mr T-Tracy." Alan's eyes were on stalks as he looked at the man standing next to Brains. Or, well, Brains 2. Wow, that was creepy. Two of them. Imagine what they could do if they put their minds to it. Alan's mind shuddered away from the concept of total world domination. Then what Brains 2 had said actually registered.

"Wait, wait, wait – you think we're in another dimension? But… how do we get home?"

Brains 2 pushed his glasses back on his head. "And h-how do we get our Alan and Tintin back?"

"We'll get them back, Brains." This was said by a man who was solidly built with brown hair. He was looking sympathetically at Brains 2. Alan was scrambling to work out who it was.

"Wait…if we're in another dimension does that make you…no, wait, let me guess! Virgil?" He was rewarded with a nod and an attempt at a smile, although the worry turned it more into a grimace. Alan turned to the other man in the room, a short and stocky redhead. "Um…"

"Gordon." The man replied with a wave. Alan's jaw hung open.

"No. Freaking. Way. Wait until I tell Gordon his other dimension counterpart is a redhead!"

"He isn't?" The weird red-headed Gordon asked curiously. Alan was about to launch into a description when the older man cleared his throat pointedly. Looking at him, Alan realised that he probably bore more that a passing resemblance to his dad.

"I think we need to work out why John sounded the alarm. Also, has Scott checked in yet?"

"John!" Brains gasped. "He was with us on the ship too!" Everyone turned to face him in confusion, so he elaborated. "If it was the device that caused us to be here then John will have been affected too!"

"You think it was that strange box we found?"

"I-I'm sure of it. With you here as well I can think of no other explanation. John w-was also with us when the pulse struck."

"So John must be here too! In your version of Thunderbird 5! Wait… does John live in your version of Thunderbird 5?"

"He is its main operative," Jeff replied. "Thunderbird 5 this is Base, come in Thunderbird 5."

Alan turned to the series of five portraits. Two he now recognised and he could immediately tell which one Scott was. This Scott bore a remarkable resemblance to his eldest brother. It was the two blonds that stumped him. Both were older than he was, although he wasn't sure which was which. It became obvious though, as with a flicker one of the portraits became a video screen instead.

"Whoa," Alan muttered, moving closer. He could see Brains was doing the same as well. If Brains hadn't said that they'd moved sideways he would have been convinced they'd gone back in time, the technology was so basic.

"Hello father," the blond was saying, crisp and curt tones very different to their John's. "It took you a long time to answer."

"There have been some developments here, John. Can I just say that I'm very pleased to see you safe and sound on Thunderbird 5?"

"I'm not sure where else I'd be, father."

"Well, possibly in a different dimension along with Tintin and Alan. Or at least, this young man seems to think so." Jeff gestured towards Brains, who waved shyly.

"Who…Brains? And… Brains? What's going on, father?"

"I'll explain in a moment, John. First, why did you trigger the emergency alarm?"

The blond in the image straightened, as though to deliver a report to a senior. "I've had a call from Angel, father. She says that Scott has disappeared at some point during the night and that she didn't hear anything. There was also a stranger in her house when she woke up this morning. But the most curious thing is that they seemed to be wearing a sash with an International Rescue logo, but not our International Rescue logo. She sent me a picture." John stopped speaking and instead of a video the frame displayed a picture, of an orange IR sash that Alan recognised all too well.

"That's John's sash!"

"John?" The blond John was back, looking at Alan curiously.

"L-let me see if I can explain," Brains said, looking to Jeff for permission. At his wave, Brains continued. "J-john, Alan and I were on a r-routine mission to support a transporter on its way to the Mars c-colonies. They had a strange box that had a-attached to them and cause interference, it s-stranded them in the path of an asteroid. We tried to remove the box and it emitted a pulse of r-radiation, that I haven't had a chance to analyse yet. We then returned, were passed m-medically fit and retired for the night. B-but we woke up here."

"And Tintin, Alan and Scott are now missing," Jeff summarised grimly. "We assume they went to wherever it was you came from but we can't be sure."

"W-what I don't get is why them?" Brains confessed. "I-I thought, initially, that it was trying to swap with our other selves, that T-tintin," a quick glance to Jeff confirmed the name. "T-that Tintin was unlucky as she was close to, ah, my alternate self. But if John, who was on Thunderbird 5, swapped with Scott then it makes no sense."

"I-I think t-that's where you're wrong," Brains 2 said, nodding to himself. "It, er, it actually makes total sense."

"Go on Brains," urged Jeff as the engineer paused.

"Well, ah, you s-see, about a week ago Alan, Tin and Scott went on that mission t-to the satellite repair shuttle that had malfunctioned a-and was on a collision with the space station, r-remember? T-there was interference there, they didn't know why so they, er, evacuated the crew and blew up the shuttle. B-but Scott and A-Alan said that they thought they had seen a p-pulse of something before the shuttle was d-destroyed. What if it was the same thing?"

"So somehow, your crew c-came into contact with the same strange energy pulse as we did and it tagged them somehow so that after we were hit it locked onto them as possible targets to swap! It must have been scanning any number of different dimensions looking for the right energy signatures to switch!"

Alan was trying to keep up, he really was, but all this talk of different dimensions was beginning to make him dizzy.

"Well that goes some way to explaining it," John was musing as he looked down at a monitor that wasn't in view. "Angel's not going to be happy though."

"Is the other John alright?" Jeff asked seriously. At Gordon's questioning glance he elaborated. "He did come face to face with Angel." Neither Brains not Alan missed John's wince through the video screen.

"I think he'll be ok," the blond started but was interrupted.

"Wait, think?" Alan asked, frowning. "Can't you just ask him and find out? Or let us talk to him?"

This time there was a definite wince. "Well…" The other John started, hedging as he tried to find the right words. "He hasn't regained consciousness yet, but Angel thinks it won't be too long now. She didn't hit him that hard."

Alan took a moment to process what he was saying while Jeff was grumbling quietly to himself. "The sooner Scott decides she's too much hassle, the better. Jaunting off to God knows where all the time, leaving Thunderbird 1 where anyone could find her."

"Hold on a moment, dad." John disappeared momentarily, his video switching to a static portrait. Gordon frowned at his father.

"You know Scott's in this for the long haul, right? He's not just going to get bored with her and come home. Besides, she's helped us out so much in the past."

Jeff looked apologetic for being called out on his inner monologue. "That may be, Gordon, but she's a liability and hardly the type of girl you'd settle down and marry, is she?"

Whatever Gordon was going to say in response was lost as John's portrait started flashing again. "Come in Thunderbird 5," Jeff instructed.

"Angel's been in touch," John started without preamble. "She asks whether you are planning to go and collect the other John, and wants me to remind you that Thunderbird 1 is currently parked in the woods behind her house."

Jeff slumped in his seat. "It's not even two in the morning and this is turning into one hell of a day."