Hi, there! =) It's late, but it's here. Trying not to rush things, because it's got to fit with the rest of the puzzle, just so. I have placed a small model of Thunderbird 2 on my desk, for inspiration... and I really miss the boys. Thanks for reading and reviewing, you guys, and for sticking with a long, weird story.
53
West Dome, in his reclaimed bio lab-
Over those seven hundred, very eventful years, the dome residents had converted his research facilities to other, more mundane purposes. In the case of the bio lab, they'd been using it to store and recycle organic waste. Had Virgil or Gordon been present, they'd have said that it smelt "tangy". Brains just breathed through his mouth.
Having cleared off and wiped down some work space, with eager native assistance, he found what equipment he could, and got down to "brass tacks" (as Jeff would have put it). The remaining Mini-Maxes could link together like Legos to form a white and black, instrument-packed lab bench. That's what they did, as Brains brought out all of his latest blood and virus samples.
The Mechanic had once remarked that if "Two of my problems want to solve each other, h*ll, I'll take bets and sell tickets." The muderous cyborg (and sometime customer) had been talking of the Tracys and Kyranos, not an insidious, fatal virus, but his philosophy was sound. Why not use the virus to solve this "blight"?
As nearly as Brains could determine from examining that vicious pathogen, A: it had begun to work its way into the visitors, too, and B: it was somehow related to the original Tracy virus, H3N17. Perhaps they'd come from the same source. Perhaps it had mutated, after centuries of coexistence with a badly depleted and sick human race. In them, it existed at very low levels; nearly dormant, but deadly. In the visiting travelers, it might do anything at all.
Whatever the case, his job was to stop this monster, then start on the next. Even in here, almost subliminally, Brains could hear and feel that organic-hunting nanite cloud, scratching away at the dome outside; fighting to extinguish humanity's final outpost. If he did not act successfully now, life would forever end on Earth and all of her colonies.
According to local myth, the "dust" had arrived with a giant, crashed ship; taking centuries to replicate, spread and then devour. The people had had time to construct their network of domes, but only just. Now, all but one of these last-ditch structures were gone, and the natives looked to him, their "Speaker", for help.
Hiram Hackenbacker might have quailed at this terrible responsibility. Yudisthir Rama-Singh would not let him. One could only walk a road one step at a time. Brains held to that thought and remained on task, first isolating a sample of the virus, then removing its devastating "payload" and replacing it with fresh, healthy genes taken from his beast of burden, who'd been brought in by Moffy.
"You wanna use my genes, for a cure?" Caleb blurted, an awed look on his freckled, dark-eyed face. "Dude, that's… Yeah, totally. Go ahead! Gotta do what I can for the future-bros, yo."
…which Brains took for medical consent. He got a blood sample from Caleb and Kaise, both, as she would be his first test subject. Strangely, the girl cowered at the sight of that approaching needle, but Caleb held her hand, saying,
"Easy, future-babe. It's all part of the magic, and I'll fix you right up, afterward. I promise."
Taller than Caleb, she nevertheless seemed somehow younger, and terribly frightened. Her people… Sharl, Kym and the few surviving others... gathered close; worried, but trusting their Speaker implicitly.
No, Brains was not an expert on everything… but he could read, study and invent new technologies "like a boss" (as Alan would say). He just dug in and got to work, concentrating ferociously and downing many large mugs of the weak native "coffee".
Over several hours, he teased Caleb's immune system genes from the blood sample, and then packed those into the hollowed, waiting viral shells. Switching ammunition, basically, from deadly ordnance to replenishing flood. Then, he had to cultivate the altered virus, which would grow best, fastest, in a Tracy. Fortunately, he had four of them here, still locked in cryo-sleep. Still just barely alive.
"Sh- Sharl," Brains said hoarsely, long after most everyone else had gone off to food, gentle games and then bed. "I must, ah… must r- request that you c- conduct me into the chamber of W- Words, please."
Sheffield was still present, but he'd fallen asleep in the least odiferous corner of the lab, on a pile of old clothing. Sharl had grown as attached to him as Kaise had to Caleb, Brains noticed, seeming to regard the man as almost an avatar of Krishna, himself. Leaving Sheffield, the woman came cautiously forward.
"Is to be going so late, Honored Speaker?" she whispered; for Moffy, too, was nodding off, and Sharl did not wish to disturb her. Brains removed his glasses and rubbed at his tired brown eyes.
"As a v- very wise man once p- put it, Sharl, "T- Time's a-wastin'". We m- must proceed in haste, as s- speed is very, ah… very m- much of the essence."
The inscribed words themselves were not his goal, however. Those cryo-sleep tubes were. Sharl led him through sadly changed hallways to his cryo-lab, unselfconsciously holding Brains' hand. They were an interesting people, child-like and kind, and he'd come to feel very protective of them.
Sharl brought him out to the dim, dusty lab, which had the aspect of a temple, now. She would have drawn him over to his own blazoned Words, but Brains stopped short halfway.
"Speaker…?" Sharl asked him, uncertainly.
The scientist gave her a reassuring nod, then turned off the "path" and stepped out onto the un-trodden floor, crossing his lab to the place where his friends had slept for seven hundred long years. Trembling and wide-eyed, Sharl followed.
"Speaker," she repeated, almost choking with awe. "This is being a place of waiting. Nothing is knowing to us, of their role. They sleep."
Brains managed a tight, grim smile, saying,
"B- Believe me, Sharl, no one, ah… No one kn- knows that better than I."
Thinking quickly, Hackenbacker sorted through his options. Of all the boys, only one... John... had any chance of surviving long enough to culture a cure. His bio-circuitry and suit would support him a few hours longer. The rest were alive solely because he'd interrupted their deaths. And so, like it or not, there could be only one choice.
Others were gathering, drawn by that mysterious group awareness this folk seemed to share. Sheffield and Pope had come in, as well; sleepy, but ready for action.
"W- We will need to be swift," said Brains. "Once the tube is opened, th- the timer begins." And, he'd calculated that John had eight hours of life remaining, if the cold-shocked pathogen stayed dormant a while. If not… then all was lost, and his friend would die before the virus bred in sufficient amounts to work as a cure.
Everyone fell silent as Brains walked past the ice-coffins of Alan, Virgil and Scott, coming to the last in the row: John's. The natives murmured among themselves, shifting and fluttering like autumn leaves, when the scientist blew the dust off the cryo-tube's control panel. He paused, then, because it felt very odd, very disturbing, to be looking at something that he'd just loaded and left, seven hundred years in the past.
Squaring his thin shoulders, Brains took a deep breath, punched in his access code, and then keyed "release". The long-quiescent tube began to vibrate strongly and hum, shaking centuries of dust onto the concrete floor.
Unconsciously, the gathered folk held their collective breath. So did Brains. On the tube's dark plastic control panel, the digits spooled slowly down toward zero. Status lights flashed. A chime sounded. Then, with a sharp click, and the whoosh of escaping cold air, that long-sealed tube opened up.
XXXXXXXXXXX
London's Bridgetown, present day-
This time, Havok and Fuse had completed their task. True, Jeff Tracy was still unaccounted for, but either crushed with that bombed-out hospital, or back on his island, where the Hood could destroy him, at leisure. There would be no escape for the Tracys, this time. Not with four missing sons and an injured patriarch, on top of a probable kill.
"Gordon Tracy's dead," Havok assured him, as she keyed open a private account, for her fee. "Y'r mate, there, offed him when the fire alarm sounded. Little extra, f'r repeat customers."
"Excellent," the Hood responded, pleased enough to include a small bonus. To be safe, though, he also reached out with his mind and searched for the swimmer, sifting through nearly a thousand unpleasant, low-wattage minds. Thought he had something for a moment, but it vanished in less than a heartbeat, so perhaps the assassin was right.
"You've done well," he told her, rubbing hands that shed great flakes and patches of skin. "You may expect my custom again, in future."
The assassin produced that sly, razor-thin smile of hers, and accepted the transfer of credits.
"Any time, Guvnor," she replied, backing out of the room. "Usual contact, usual terms, special rates, if we gets t' go after th' Tracys. Got a score t' settle with that lot."
"I shall be in touch," the Hood told her, nodding grandly. When at last the purple-clad chit had absconded, (slamming the door) he turned to regard his frozen, time-bending prize. Collared and stiff, the Dos Santos was ripe for control; a weapon with which he could do great and terrible things. After, of course, he dealt with his own… condition.
First, he would require a regeneration vat and a powerful energy source. As neither were available in this squalid bolt-hole, he would just have to shift his base of operations. The difficulty lay in the appearance of his current body, General Steele. What remained of the man had grown stomach-turning and increasingly verminous. At first, the Hood had thought that bugs were infesting the room. Then he'd realized those swarms of flies were coming from him.
As he could no longer feel bites or egg-laying, he hadn't noticed their briskly industrious flesh-mining. Such an appearance was not worthy of his might and magnificence, and was likely to complicate business transactions, besides. Already, his neighbours had begun to hammer on those flimsy chipboard walls, and demand that he "toss out th' bodies!"
Small people, small minds, small worth. Once he was back in his own, re-grown form, the Hood vowed, he would fire-bomb the entire bridge and all of its squirming, mating, bleating H-Typical scum.
The thought warmed him. Or, would have, had his blood still been flowing effectively. The villain took a step toward that collared and glowing time-bender, leaving part of his left foot behind. It was time to awaken his prize, the Hood reckoned, and to launch an attack on the Kanes.
XXXXXXXXXXX
Very far elsewhen-
Dragged through a wall of fever and ice, John woke up in the lab, again. Brains was there, reaching to help him sit up. He felt cold. Terribly weak, but clear-headed. Or... maybe not. There were very strange, scarecrow people staring at him like he'd blown in from Krypton, or something. Also, the place was a mess. Brains didn't tolerate mess. So, yeah... what the h*ll?
XXXXXXXXXXX
West Dome, in the Chamber of Words-
Sharl-who-waits stood beside the Speaker, one spindly, twisted hand at her open mouth. Here, at the end of all things, she had seen miracles: The Words had come to pass. The Lost Squadron had appeared. The Speaker, himself, had taken form to walk among them, bringing "heal" and "repair". Now, he had wakened a sleeper; one of those whose purpose had only been guessed at, all these long, fearful years.
Taking a blanket from Kym, her second, Sharl brought it forward. The wakened sleeper… small, but broad, like his fellows… was sitting now, and seemed ill. He was shivering, dressed in a close-fitting suit of blue, shot through with flashes of streaking light. To touch such a being, much less drape a blanket about him, make eye-contact, was a thing disbelieving.
He was beautiful; pale, smooth and undamaged, with eyes almost the colour of hers, and hair like the pictures of fire. Sheefold had brought warm-drink, in a cup. He offered this to the risen sleeper, as the Speaker said,
"J- John, I must be quick. I have, ah… have r- reawakened you very far in the future, in hopes of c- culturing a genetically altered cure for these people, and p- perhaps your brothers, as well. May I inject you w- with doctored viral agents? If this, ah… this w- works, you shall heal many, and I will be c- closer to finding a cure for your sickness. If n- not, then…" The Speaker's head lowered. "Then I am sorry, my friend."
Jann, that was his name. Sharl would remember, for all that remained of ever. He seemed only partly awake, as though the mist of deep-time still clouded his thoughts. He coughed and shuddered, taking some warm-drink in small, well-spaced gulps. Then he looked at the other tubes and said, in a scratchy and stopping voice,
"Yeah… do it."
He nodded to the Speaker, but also partly at Sharl and her people, who had lived to see legend and magic.
XXXXXXXXXXXX
London's squatter-packed Bridgetown, present day-
Inside his rickety wood and tarpaulin booth, the Hood examined his prize, smiling with part of a lip and not many teeth. Something moved in his chest cavity, detectable because of the wriggling bulge it made in his soggy dark shirt. He ignored it, choosing to focus instead on the captive time-bender, who stood rigid and still at the back of the room.
A notion occurred, as he looked over the slight, long-haired man, with eyes that were losing focus; beginning to dim. Why not take this body, gaining its power and strength for his own, dumping Steele to the eels and the fishes? The Hood smiled once more. Then, he acted, or tried to, lashing out with all that was left of his psionic might.
Only, the subtly glowing time-bender moved faster. With a surge of power, he at last broke free of that time-lock and aged the collar to crumbling bits. Sensing attack, he struck like a snake, causing everything in the room but himself to accelerate wildly through time. Ten years passed in a second. Then twenty. The walls caved into splinters and sawdust. That blue plastic roof first shredded and faded, then tore away flapping, lost in the night. The creature before him shrieked aloud, collapsing and shriveling to sift away in a dribble of thin, greyish dust. Perhaps the mind within had escaped, but that festering body was gone.
Stefan Dos Santos stirred what was left with a booted foot, watching the wind take away what remained of a mighty Kyrano. He was a disciplined man, and not much given to gloating. Those who attacked him, paid with their lives. That was all.
The rusted structure beneath his feet trembled and groaned, fatally weakened by onrushing time. The people atop it panicked and screamed as they struggled to reach the illusion of safety. Pitiful, and unimportant.
Stefan Dos Santos shook his head in disgust, then strode from the shattered booth and away. He had a mission to complete, a stolen boy to retrieve; whatever the cost, and whomever was killed in the process. That Anton did not wish to come made not one iota's difference. The Dos Santos had willed it, and would be obeyed.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX
Earlier, in the GDF Tower hospital-
Gordon Tracy was tense, and he needed to hurry, but he kept things light; teaching Charlie to fist-bump, and fielding that non-stop barrage of questions.
"What place is this?" the kid asked, still holding his hand as they hustled their way through the physical therapy ward. Up ahead was a quiet, hopefully deserted stairwell.
"It's a hospital, Big Guy. This is where they fix people up who get sick, or hurt."
"I'm sick, Gordon?" Charlie's brown eyes were big and confused. "That's why they put me here?"
"Well..." tough question. "They found you, I think, after someone, um... took away most of your memories. They wanted to help make you better, but they didn't know how. They were scared."
"I don't like hospital," Charlie decided, lower lip starting to shake.
"Yeah, me either, Kiddo. Thing about doctors is, they're always trying to find something wrong with me. Why should I hang around all those negative vibes, y'know? Whenever I need therapy, I go to the water. Get better on my own."
Charlie absorbed all this, and nodded.
"Mr. Personality's a doctor," he announced, making a little more sense of his chaotic and frightening world, his own gutted mind. "He wants me to stay here, but we're going home. Intermal Reckscu's good at that."
Uh-huh. Well, y'know... baby-steps. The kid wanted to learn. More than that, he could actually help. As Gordon opened the stairwell's big metal door and glanced within... expecting bombs, bullets, or Havok... he said,
"Listen, Big Guy. We need to get out of here fast, and I'm not sure regular speed's gonna cut it. This is only the seventh floor, and I can't call my sister. Can you make both of us fast, compared to..." he waved around at the blinking lights and deserted therapy ward. "...all this?"
Charlie bit his lower lip, hand unconsciously tightening on Gordon's.
"Not for me," he said, looking like he'd broken Dad's favourite award, or something. "I can make you fast, Gordon, but I stay the same. That's bad?"
"Nah! Heck, no. That's great, Kiddo, 'cause I'm going to carry you. I'll be faster, and you'll come along for the ride. Teamwork, remember?"
The boy nodded, trying out a wide, quite sunny smile. As Gordon was reaching to pick Charlie up (seriously, Anton? What kind of name was that? Sounded like the sort of kid who attended boarding schools, and got luxury air-cars for his birthday each year. Anton? Pheh!)
...a cold, searching presence swept over them. Not Kayo, either. it was moving fast; scanning at thoughts and looking for someone. The boy, maybe? Scooping Charlie up and lunging into the stairwell with him, Gordon snapped,
"Hit it, Big Guy!"
The presence went suddenly flat, and winked out. Sounds changed, again, and so did the feel of the air all around them. To Gordon, sped up in relation to everything else, it felt like pushing through golden syrup, as waves of distortion messed with events. To Charlie, it seemed that a powerful wind had sprung up, and that Gordon's motions were blindingly, jerkily fast.
The swimmer plunged down those stairs, moving like something was chasing him. Would have got clean away, only there was a peace officer with a service dog, there on the third floor landing. Risking his life to look for stragglers, probably. So, maybe he didn't have the time of day for doctors, but Gordon Tracy had always had a soft spot for cops, who put their lives on the line every day, with only a popgun and badge for protection.
Impulsively, he tapped Charlie, who released his time-grip. The officer leapt backward, astonished by the sudden, roaring speed and materialisation of IR's Gordon Tracy, with a young boy. The shaggy black dog didn't bark, but alerted, ready to defend his startled partner. A lot of stuff could have happened, then, most of it bad. But Gordon said,
"Sir, bombs have been planted all over this place by the Chaos Crew. I've just come from the thirteenth floor, and there's no one else on the stairs. Looking for a friend of mine, who may be in danger. Could you help me?"
The officer hesitated, then reached for his clip-on radio. It was then that they heard and felt the rumble and crump of that first detonation.