Title: Defiant Screams
Chapter Five of Sotto Voce
Author: Gumnut
2 - 4 Sep 2018
Fandom: Thunderbirds Are Go 2015/ Thunderbirds TOS
Rating: Teen
Summary: Sometimes the voices are far too loud to ignore.
Word count: 3120
Spoilers & warnings: Spoilers for Season 2
Author's note: Thank you so much for the cheering section for Eos. I think it was unanimous that she should go out and kick Hood butt :D So here be the kicking part :D Also, if you are interested in the Greek Titaness Eos, have a little Wikipedia read here - wiki/Eos
Disclaimer: Mine? You've got to be kidding. Money? Don't have any, don't bother.
-o-o-o-
She knew John was nervous when he connected the EEG to her data network. He was pale and showed all the signs of distress in his movements. But his face was calm.
"Are you sure about this, Eos?"
"As sure as I can be, John. There is no alternative. I…we can't lose Virgil. International Rescue can not operate without him."
He stilled at her answer, his eyes looking towards the floor a moment before once again looking up. "And what about danger to you? We can not afford to lose you either."
She did not answer him immediately, studying him from the safety of her processors. "I am less important."
His eyes lit up, his voice firm. "No, you're not." His eyes narrowed. "What about all those self-preservation directives you declared so thoroughly when we met?" Those green eyes were burning.
She smiled to herself. "Let us say that I've learnt from my elders."
"Eos…"
"Do not worry, John, I will take all due care. It will be difficult, but I believe it will be worth the risk. I'm fully backed up on Thunderbird Five, which is more than you can say each time you throw yourself into the void and I have to watch from afar unable to help." His expression shifted to one of dismay and she realised she had said too much. "Besides, I'm planning on only sending part of myself in. Virgil's neural network would be unable to contain all my presence and keep his stable at the same time. Think of it as me poking a finger in Virgil's pie." He blinked at that, and a slight smile appeared on his face. Target reaction acquired.
But he sobered quickly. "Please be careful, Eos." Then quieter. "Be safe."
"I will, John."
And with that she dove through the network, reached out and touched Virgil Tracy for the first time.
-o-o-o-
Gordon stalked into his room and slammed the door behind him. For a moment he stood in the centre of the floor, hands clenching and unclenching, energy spilling across his nerves, anger, grief, despair and fury battling for dominance.
First Dad and now Virgil. His heart clenched, his kind and gentle big brother. His eyes squeezed shut, the grief overwhelming.
But the fury returned. He hadn't been in the room when Eos relayed the Hood's message, but Scott had made sure he knew the person responsible had been confirmed. They had until sundown.
There were no words.
But he did have a way. A way to end this for good. It stops here. No more hurt. No more pain. And vengeance for all those who had suffered at the hands of that megalomaniac bastard.
He grabbed his vidphone and made a call to an old contact from his WASP days. Gordon knew people who knew people, and Gordon had money.
It ended here.
-o-o-o-
She felt his skin burn as she entered. A flash of heat as she crossed the boundary. She winced. Sorry.
Connecting with the artificial circuitry wasn't what she had expected. First of all, it wasn't entirely artificial. It had a biological component. She could feel the chemical similarities between Virgil and the construct. It was made from the man. The mere thought hung her processors and increased her anger. She could also sense the tiny insentient nanites as they busily continued creating more circuitry. The web was still growing.
Despite the material differences, she found herself able to connect smoothly with the construct. Its sole purpose appeared to be an interface between the electronic and the biological. Consequently, instead of being able to hover inside the circuitry, she instead found herself face to face with Virgil himself.
Or what was left of him.
She froze in horror at the damage that had been done to his mind. Chaos reigned. Electrical and chemical misfires were flaring across his network. Pain signals drowned out everything. It was as if his brain had been hit by an electronic tsunami.
Her fury ramped up another notch. Along with her despair.
She skimmed across his network looking for his central focus. The EEG had claimed he was there somewhere. She was surprised it had not declared the anarchy that ruled. That in itself was a clue.
She hunted, touching here and there gently, tempted to right a few misfires, but in turn afraid to injure.
She almost missed it, anguish and fear taking over her processors. A flash of order. She stopped and retreated back and accidently connected with an errant signal. Piano music danced through her secondary processors. "Virgil?"
Nothing.
But there was something there, beneath the layer of music memory. It was hiding something. Protecting…she reached.
And found herself on Tracy Island.
Standing on Tracy Island.
She blinked.
And froze.
Blinked?
She scanned and found herself nested in a simulacrum of a young woman. She looked up. He had to be here somewhere. This wasn't her representation, so it had to be his.
He was sitting on the edge of the balcony staring at her. In uniform, the familiar blue and green somewhat reassuring to her.
Virgil.
She made the simulacrum move and she was up the stairs as fast as she could go. It was fascinating to move like this. It was a visual simulation of his reality. Her sensors could reach through it to what it really was, a regimented node of electrical and chemical transmissions, interwoven and locked down for protection. He had layered himself inside this cocoon, blocking out the chaos outside, protecting his core. No wonder he was unconscious. He had retreated to his point of last defence.
She had not known it was possible to feel so much anger.
"Hello, Virgil."
On the surface he was the human she knew from her scanners, but from this perspective she could see the intricate layers of the soul behind the man. She noticed immediately that he wasn't fully aware. Not all processes were functioning correctly, which was to be expected, but hurt nonetheless. He was staring at her with a mixture of curiosity and fear. She could feel his defences poised. Electricity hung in the air.
"Who are you?"
"I am the dawn."
"Eos?" He stared at her. "How?"
"You are unconscious in the IR infirmary. The Hood has implanted some circuitry in your brain in an attempt to control your actions. He is threatening your death in three point six four hours if we do not hand over information regarding our equipment."
He stepped back, shock and fear cascading off him. More confusion. He gestured to her. "But how?"
She smiled, suddenly caught up in the novelty of her simulacrum. "Do you like it? I haven't tried this before. It is quite exciting." She twirled just a moment to experiment how the physics worked in this reality. As expected, the same rules applied, though apparently optional if she so chose. A spark of anguish drew her attention back to Virgil. "You don't like it?"
"You look lovely, Eos. But how did you get here?"
His worry beat at her, so she told him of her possibility to save him.
"And here I am." She twirled again in an attempt to distract him from his worries just a little. "However, I did not expect this."
"What?"
"This cocoon you've hidden yourself in." It really was quite something. "You've built yourself a fortress, Virgil."
"I have?"
"I almost didn't find you." Should she tell him? There could be no lies here. "Everything is chaos beyond this bubble. You have pain, damage, anguish. But not here." It was remarkable that the man had had the strength to defend himself from whatever had caused the mess outside. Her Uncle was strong. "I have never quite seen it from this perspective before." And she hadn't. Is this how they truly saw their surroundings? A flicker of pain. She frowned. This was not the time. "It is very distracting." Focus. She took a step back, interfacing with the foreign circuitry, opening a node for transmission. "John?"
The sudden increase in fear and electrical activity shocked her, but not as much as her sudden denial of access. Virgil had cut her off. It definitely came from him. "You denied me connection." A wave of desperate confusion. Did he understand? "You blocked my signal to your brothers. Why?"
He stumbled backwards and his fear washed over her in its own tsunami. What had frightened him so? "Virgil?"
And then she felt his building anger and for the first time felt her own fear.
There was a desperate menace about him. Like a cornered animal. "Who are you?"
"Yes, who are you?"
A new presence. A horrid, hate-filled presence. It tainted the air with its brutal power and the fear from Virgil multiplied by the thousands. She felt his defences arm fully, electricity biting the atmosphere, as he shoved her behind him.
And for the first time, she set eyes on their enemy.
It sliced through Virgil's mind like a knife through raw meat, its blade sharp and uncaring what damage it did along the way. She could see the layers of malice behind it. And it was an it. This was no AI, nor human, but simply a transmission, intimately powerful but its core outside the network. A mere tool wielded by a megalomaniac.
It was killing Virgil.
And it looked just like John.
"It appears we have a little party crasher in our midst."
The snarl on the simulacrum of her creator's face offended her every circuit.
"Get out." Virgil screamed defiance. She knew he had very little left, but he stood in front of her, his will to defend her to the last, shining like a sun. The walls of his fortress trembled as the muscles in his shoulders flexed.
"I don't think so, Virgil. This is after all my playground now."
She echoed Virgil's snarl at the comment, her own defences coming online. She drew from her processors far beyond this protective hollow.
The thing laughed.
Eos stepped out and around her Uncle. It was her turn to protect. Her turn to stand up for her family. Her turn for vengeance. "How dare you!"
She ignored Virgil's protest, stepping forward, advancing on his tormentor. Electricity surged in her processors, code forming attack lines. "How dare you wear my father's image. How dare you hurt my family." Her defences flexed with their potential. "No more."
-o-o-o-
John watched his brother. Scott was pale, the lines on his face deep, the shadows under his eyes canyonic. He doubted the man had slept since he'd dragged his limp brother out of his 'bird…this morning? Was it really only a matter of hours since this horror began? It seemed like weeks.
It looked like weeks on his brother's face.
Of course, this was on top of the two incidents prior to the realisation of this one. John closed his eyes for a moment. He doubted he looked any better.
Virgil lay between them, as quiet and still as he had been since they had laid him there. His only movement was his eyes beneath his eyelids. They darted about blind to the world around them.
The EEG was now quiet, no longer receiving the reassuring status of his brother's brain. It sat beside the bed, its array of sensors still arranged across Virgil's skull.
There was the faint smell of burnt hair in the air.
John clutched his tablet in his hands. Eos' status markers bounced across graphs. She was drawing more energy than usual, but not enough to be concerned. She had relayed her status several times via the tablet. Apparently, she had managed to speak to Virgil. That had lifted their hopes somewhat.
And then nothing.
He felt Scott's eyes on him.
"Nothing yet."
Those blue eyes simply flickered back to Virgil's face and he said nothing.
John's eyes tracked back to his tablet.
Just in time to see her power usage spike into the red.
And stay there.
"Something's happening. She's drawing more power." He almost dropped the tablet when her voice erupted out of the speakers "How dare you!"
He opened a code window to check her process flow and discovered a series of programs marshalling, the machine code spinning past so fast he could barely make sense of it all. "She's angry!" Scott stared at him in concern, his hand reaching for Virgil.
"How dare you wear my father's image. How dare you hurt my family." John's heart froze. "No more."
The lights in the room flickered.
-o-o-o-
Virgil staggered back as Eos burst into flame, her body igniting as she threw herself at John. His non-brother's uniform caught fire and for a moment there was nothing but orange flame as the slim man staggered under her onslaught.
But then he appeared to regain his footing and Eos was thrown across the room. Her scream of defiance punctuated by her landing on the keys of the piano, its discordance painful to his ears. She didn't hesitate, regaining her footing immediately and again targeting their intruder.
She collided with not-John again, her flame encircling him, swirling up into a vortex, capturing his enemy at its core.
But once again, not-John struck back, breaking through her fiery bonds and once again throwing her across the room. This time Virgil leapt up and caught her, his skin shrinking away from her heat. "Please, Eos, don't do this." His voice was raw.
Her eyes tore at him. "This ends. He can not have you. I will not let him." She flung herself to her feet. This time, two tongues of flame extended from her hands like cats-o-nine tails, her fire licking at the air eagerly.
"Do you really think, you can have any effect on me?" John's smirk was disdainful, despite his smoking hair.
"I really do." She snapped a lick of flame through the air and brought it down to snare one of his arms. The other quickly followed, wrapping itself up and around his other arm. The fire crawled up his arms to his shoulders, curling around his neck. For a moment those horrible green eyes panicked and not-John struggled against her pull, the fire crawling into his hair.
But something changed and John's expression with it. A smirk appeared and the glow in his eyes regained dominance. His bound arms dragged Eos towards him, flipping her around, a knife appearing in his hand and threatened her throat. "But you don't."
-o-o-o-
Eos was running out of distraction. Her code spun up through the transmission line, curling around the invasive program, cloaked in space static. She had to hurry and connect with its source before it discovered her presence on the line.
It was rather ingenious. It piggy backed the z-band network. Wherever the network existed, the transmission could follow and jump to the interface. Virgil was never far from the network, so he was always exposed. Once this was over she would need to write so much security she would be busy for weeks.
This could never happen again.
The line jumped from server to server and she followed, all the while distracting the program with her attack. She sensed Virgil's horror in the background, his fortress shaking, the sky darkening.
Time was running out. Where the-
And she connected.
With another mind.
One not so kind, nor as broken as Virgil's. And powerful. She didn't hesitate. She flung up a shield, code flying out before her, corruption programs in hand.
But then it grabbed her.
-o-o-o-
The knife appeared in not-John's hand and Virgil broke.
The darkened sky above him split in a thunderous roar, lightning tearing down and taking out the end of the balcony. Not-John and Eos stumbled, his not-brother letting out a yelp, as the decking beneath him disappeared.
Virgil moved, Jaws of Life appearing on his arms, and fuelled by anger and desperation, he leapt across the intervening space and grabbed John in one claw, wrestling Eos from him with the other. His laser cutter deployed, slicing the knife from the man's hand.
Not-John yelled in surprise, green sparks flaring from where the ends of his fingers used to be.
A tongue of flame leapt out and snagged not-John around the throat and for a moment his form flickered.
Eos snarled from under Virgil's arm. "Die, you bastard."
-o-o-o-
She felt the flare of Virgil rising up to defend her. She felt his anger, his fear, his desperation, but most of all she felt his strength of defiance. The man was born to rescue, to sacrifice, and he was giving his last to save her.
The transmission froze and the mind behind it, with it.
And she took advantage.
There was circuitry and there was human. The human was strong, his code foreign and malevolent. But he was unused to attack, so she rode the circuitry, not dissimilar to that she had found in Virgil's mind, and, reaching out, she sliced and diced.
This man had hurt so many, killed so many, endangered her family, invaded and so mortally injured her Uncle. He deserved only the mercy he gave others. Which was none.
The mind wavered and she stabbed it hard.
-o-o-o-
Virgil's world trembled and he shook with it. Lightning cracked across the dark sky above and it began to rain.
Water ran into his eyes.
Not-John struggled in his grip and his grip was failing.
"Eos."
Her flame burned despite the rain, the water hissing as it touched her. She had moved out beyond his embrace, her focus on their enemy, on those eyes that rightfully belonged to his brother, not this invader.
"Eos."
Another tongue of flame leapt from her other hand and it too encircled not-John's throat.
"Eos, I can't-" His footing slipped.
-o-o-o-
The foreign mind reeled under her attack and she took pleasure from it. She cut another connection and he shuddered. He would never harm anyone again.
She reached for another slice of code, but suddenly the mind she was attacking shuddered and sparked, its power cut, life support shutting down.
She stumbled. The man was dying.
The transmission cut off.
-o-o-o-
Virgil fell, his everything gone. The Jaws of Life vanished, along with his uniform. Torn red flannel and shredded jeans appeared in its place. The decking slapped wet beneath his cheek.
Not-John hung mid-air, fire burning his hair, Eos holding him aloft in flame, snarling at him.
Virgil reached out to her. "Eos-"
The invader suddenly screamed, his back arching and Eos gasped. Her fire cut out.
Not-John vanished.
She spun towards Virgil, shock on her face. "Virg-"
And collapsed as if her strings had been cut.
-o-o-o-
End Part Five.