zero point

three

About ten seconds after the roar of Thunderbird 2's thrusters subsided into the steady hum that indicated cruising altitude had been reached, Gordon Tracy unhitched his restraints, got up out of the jump seat, clapped a hand on the warm meaty slab of Cameron West's left shoulder and said 'I'm heading for the pod. You got this?'

Cameron twitched the rock-hard trapezius beneath Gordon's fingers and smirked. Just a little. Cameron West didn't have enormous muscles, but they were hard muscles, and he was justifiably proud of them – it was just a shame that his devotion to his physique had turned out to be such a source of entertainment to the Tracy brothers when he first arrived on the island. Until he started slamming Tracys down on the judo mats, that is.

'Por supuesto,' Cameron said to Gordon in mangled Spanish. It wasn't only his physique that Cameron took seriously – his entire life was one of focussed dedication, and since he'd joined International Rescue he'd been learning the basics of as many languages as he could. Enough at least to be able to land Thunderbird 2 in any country on the planet and say 'stand back,' 'you're welcome,' and 'can I have your number,' because you never knew when a lovely lady might be just grateful enough to oblige.

'Obrigado,' Gordon replied in pretty good Portuguese, taking a moment to inspect Two's flight displays over the pilot's shoulder. Cameron twitched his trapezius again, hard enough to make Gordon pull his hand away.

'You do recall,' Cameron reminded his supervisor with exaggerated politeness, 'that I flew C-four-tens for the Marines? And you seem to have conveniently forgotten about my secondment to Glenn Field, flying transport for the Zero-X. God,' he tutted emphatically, 'that transport was a pig.' Cam cocked his head reminiscently and stared at the blue sky out of the forward window. 'And how could anybody possibly forget that blissful summer I was posted to Marineville and was opted in to pilot Stingray because Troy Tempest sprained his ankle in a dance contest?'

Cameron's tone was both amused and amusing, but after a year of one Tracy or another peering anxiously over the muscular planes of his shoulders, the not-so-subtle surveillance must have been starting to grate. 'This big green monster is nuthin,' he drawled, oblivious to the eye-rolling of Gordon still peering proprietorially over his shoulder, 'and that little yellow boat of yours would be a picnic in the park – if you would just let me in it.'

Gordon snorted derisively. 'You never piloted Stingray you big fat liar, and your fat ass is never getting in my boat.'

'Then I've got news for you bucko – my fat ass has already been in your boat and I farted in your seat.'

There was an unholy silence as Gordon considered the possibility of any truth behind that statement. And then: 'That better not be true.'

'My best one ever,' Cam sighed wistfully, 'fuelled by your grandma's bacon-fried beans.' He shook his head in self-admiration. 'It was a beautiful thing, a perfect storm of sound and vibration. Alan was up on Five that day, and he told me it triggered all the tsunami buoys stationed off Honolulu.' Cameron paused for dramatic effect and leaned back with satisfaction. 'All of them.'

Gordon couldn't help but laugh as Cameron grinned sideways at him, the pilot's elbow darting out and missing Gordon by millimetres as the younger man neatly sidestepped away. 'Now piss off,' Cam said. 'Me and my baby have got some flying to do.'

That checked Gordon in his tracks. He still thought of Two as Virgil's baby – hell, they all did – and it still jarred to see another pilot sitting so comfortably at the stick. Fortunately for the Tracys that's where any similarity to Virgil ended – ex-Captain Cameron West was Marine through-and-through, from the over-pumped thighs that held up his muscular body to the light-brown hair that he kept in regulation buzz-cut with the help of his handy-dandy solar-powered all-weather clippers. He was pushing 32, or maybe it was 33 – he was vain enough that he'd started being cagey about it – and creases were tracking faintly at the edges of his pale green eyes, but Cameron had somehow retained the physical and mental stamina of a 20-year-old, and at times it was hard for them all to keep up.

But then, Gordon had been having trouble keeping up ever since the incident at Faulkner's, when he'd woken in a hospital bed with the imprint of strange lightnings flash-burned onto his hands. Two years later the marks still hurt, the scars too tight for his skin, and they still held the delicate, gossamer-like tracings of the mysterious vortex that made them.

The red arrow of Tracy 1 spun her circle at the end of the runway and poised, nose pointed towards the horizon and a sea that shimmered white with diamonds. Scott reached for his aviator glasses, settled them on his nose and pushed his hair back from his forehead – he was sweating, and it wasn't just from the sun beating down on the tinted glass of the cockpit, or the button-up shirt that clung suffocatingly to his body in the humid island air. Scott's fingers settled on the yoke and stayed there.

'Dad.'

Jeff stared at the foliage that lined the runway, at the hibiscus flowering in random bursts of orange among a sea of green. Here and there a yellow hybrid turned its blooms towards the sky, the exotics a stark contrast to the natives of the island. Kyrano had planted them as an indulgence for Jeff's second son, the contrast of yellow petals with a central blush of pink among Virgil's favourites for watercolour.

'What are we doing – ' Scott said when his father didn't reply, ' – walking into that lion's den after what they did.'

Jeff's eyes trailed after a butterfly that burned iridescent in the undergrowth. 'Whatever game they're playing,' he said when the bright blue wings had been swallowed by the murky green depths, 'we need to shut it down.'

'Except we don't know what game they're playing.'

The tone of Scott's voice made Jeff turn to look at him. There had been a thousand times in Jeff's life, a million times, when he'd looked at his sons and tried to find himself in those untroubled faces – if he could see himself in the arch of an eyebrow or the curve of a lip, or the clean, square cut of a jaw. Now, as he looked at Scott, he wondered if he was as changed as his son was. If any of them realised what the last two years had taken away from them.

'We've never known what game they were playing,' Scott was saying with bitterness and recrimination and hatred scorching his words, and Jeff was glad he couldn't see his son's eyes behind the mirrored lenses of his glasses.

Shit.

Shit!

This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening!

Scott had fallen a dozen times in the pitch black of the tunnel, his feet stumbling and twisting as he loped over the broken surface the Mole had dug through to Faulkner labs. The torch he carried was useless, its narrow beam barely picking out rocks and stones in the debris field ahead of him, but it was the only light that fractured the darkness of this empty, hollow place, and the only sound to be heard was the heaving of his lungs and the blood pounding, loud, in his ears.

Scott's foot twisted over a stone and he went down on one knee, cursing as the torch slipped from his fingers and bounced along the tunnel floor. He lunged desperately after it as it clattered down the incline, its beam bouncing drunkenly around the walls of the tunnel as he lurched back to his feet, swearing and sweating and feeling blood trickling from his knee and gravel stinging in the palms of his hands.

He should have been able to see the lights of the Mole ahead of him.

He should have been close.

He should have been fucking there by now!

'Virgil!' Scott bellowed into the darkness, because the comms were dead and he'd heard nothing since Gordon's last frantic transmission.

Don't think about it…

'Gordon!' Scott bounced the torchlight around the rough-hewn walls of the tunnel.

Don't think about it!

And then he saw it, highlighted abruptly by the beam of his torch – the dark hulking outline of the Mole.

'Virgil!' Scott sprinted towards the dead, dark shape, the torchlight picking out the dirt-encrusted drill, the open, gaping hatch, the yellow paint chipped and streaked with something black. 'Gordon!' He leapt into the cab, the beam of his torch jerking crazily across the empty interior. Nobody was there. Nobody was there! Scott turned to the console and jabbed frantically at switches but the board remained dead. Dead. Everything was fucking dead!

Scott lifted his arm in the torch-lit darkness. 'John,' he snapped into his wrist-comm, but the comms still refused to activate, the residue of whatever had fried the Mole interfering with the signal. Dammit. John would be organising help, he knew, but it wasn't coming anytime soon – unless that moron Brooks had enough brains to send somebody straight down after him.

Scott's hand fell back to his side, his fingers balling into a fist as he stared blind into the darkness. There was something in the air… the odour of newly-turned earth and the iron tang of stone, an afterburn of ozone and the unexpected taint of burning meat. He jumped down from the cab and back onto the dirt, cursing as his feet hit the uneven surface and nearly took him down. He made his way towards the nose of the Mole, the beam falling on the bright white outline of an IR hazard suit, sprawled in a heap just metres ahead of him.

No...

Scott scrambled to the crumpled form and dropped to his knees beside it. He shone the torch onto the faceplate of the hazard suit, the perspex smashed and the face beneath it cut and bloodied. Gordon. Scott propped the torch against a rock and used both hands to ease the helmet off, his fingers reaching blindly for the pulse at his brother's throat.

'Gordon.' Scott cupped his palm against Gordon's cheek, his thumb wiping at the blood in his brother's eye. 'Gordon... c'mon. Speak to me. Open your eyes and speak to me.'

Shit.

What was wrong?

What was wrong?

His eyes dropped to his brother's chest, his gaze falling on the gloves shredded from Gordon's hands and the burns that forked like lightning in the yellow beam of the torch.

Jesus…

Scott turned to survey the darkness beyond the nose of the Mole. What the hell happened?

'Listen.' Scott wiped again at the blood in his brother's eye. 'I'll be back,' he said. 'I'm coming back, okay?' He waited a beat, watching for a flicker of consciousness that never came, then scooped up the torch and lurched towards what he hoped was the lab. There was an opening there, barely visible in the thin light, and Scott's free hand caught hold of the smooth, cold edges, the torch shining through the gap and into a void of nothing.

'Virgil!' he shouted, his brain taking a moment to process what he was seeing as he swept the light in an arc through the darkness. He was looking at a perfect sphere, a hollow, empty void that swallowed his voice the same way it swallowed the light from his torch.

'Virgil!' Scott played the beam around the vault of the dome, the walls as smooth as black glass and the darkness as deep and dangerous as a dead and bottomless sea.

'Virgil!'

Shit.

Fuck.

Scott hesitated on the lip of the sphere, the torch useless in that gaping void of nothing. Light. He needed more light. He turned back towards the tunnel. And Gordon needed help.

Scott loped the short distance back to the Mole, leapt through the open hatch and played the torch around the cab to get his bearings. The medpac was still in place, the oxygen cylinders untouched in position beside it, and Scott dumped the torch on the floor as he unclipped one of the tanks, his fingers fumbling at the metal fastenings until the cylinder came free. He rolled it towards the hatch, hauled the medpac from its niche and tossed it after the cylinder, then scooped up the torch and turned to face the pitch-black rear of the cab. There were arc lights in the equipment bay, and if their circuits hadn't been fried like everything else in this fucking –

'Step out of the vehicle.'

Scott froze. He turned his head. Had John got help down here already? He could see light out in the tunnel, the beams of torches slicing through the darkness beyond the hatch. There were voices coming closer, shouts, directions being issued with well-ordered efficiency, and yet more lights appeared out of the dark. They converged around the Mole and moved on towards the lab, and Scott could hear the sounds of feet crunching across broken rock.

The instruction came at him again, the inflection the same, a complete carbon copy of the original. 'Step out of the vehicle.'

That didn't sound like any help that John would have sent.

Scott took a step towards the open hatch, one hand moving to rest on the pistol holstered on his belt. He aimed the torch out into the darkness and found a uniformed officer caught in the yellow glare. Zipped up tight in black and blue kevlar, the officer's clean-cut face was impassive and unreadable in the steady beam from Scott's torch.

'How about it,' the officer asked, not even blinking as the torchlight played across his face. He gestured with the business end of his gun. 'You coming out, or do I have to come in and get you?'

Scott's lips tightened, the muscles of his jaw working as he considered his options. Beyond the blue-suited officer he could see lights moving, men in coveralls setting flares and perimeters. And Gordon was out there. Any minute now they would find him, and –

'Do you have medical personnel?' Scott challenged. 'I've got one man down and another's – '

'Just step out of the vehicle.'

'I've got one man down,' Scott said again, because apparently this asshole was deaf, 'and – '

'Your pal's already being taken care of. Now, I'm not asking you again – '

'What?' Scott leapt from the cab, brushing forcibly past the officer and knocking him sideways on his feet, his elbow making deliberate contact with the man's solar plexus as he passed. The officer grunted and folded at the waist, one arm reaching for him blindly as Scott dodged away, his eyes on the officer's gun and oblivious to a shadow peeling wraith-like from the dark and launching itself towards him.

'Big…' wheezed the man in blue as he dropped breathless to his knees, '…mistake…', and Scott moved too late to prevent a second man impacting heavily against him, the air exploding from his lungs as he was tackled face-down to the rock-strewn floor. He crashed heavily to the ground, too stunned to prevent a knee from digging into his spine with an audible crack and sending a bolt of pain sparking through his body like lightning.

'Take it easy,' a voice said before Scott could draw breath. 'We're here to help.'

'Get…' …Scott dragged air back into his lungs... '…the fuck… off me!'

'I said take it easy,' the voice repeated, and what felt like the hard, bony spur of an elbow lodged itself roughly against the back of Scott's neck and mashed his face down into the dirt. 'Be a bit more cooperative and I might consider letting you up.'

Scott writhed beneath the assault on his pressure points and twisted his head towards Gordon, his cheek scraping painfully through gravel. 'What,' Scott grunted towards the group that were crouched around his brother, 'are they doing to him?'

'They're taking him to a hospital,' the disembodied voice said, clipped and British and annoying. The deadweight shifted and seemed to get even heavier. 'Your turn. How many of you were down here when the device malfunctioned?'

'Get off me!'

'How many?' The elbow dug hard against the base of Scott's skull.

'Two,' Scott ground out. He could feel his spine compressing, his legs numbing as sensation leached out of them. 'Gordon,' he huffed as he tried to get his arms up under him, his fingers scraping futilely through broken stones, 'and Virgil.'

'Who's the one over there?'

'Gordon – '

'Which makes you…?'

'Scott, dammit! I need to – '

'You weren't down here when it happened?'

'No! I was – '

'You were on the surface?'

'Yes!' Scott twisted violently and managed to dislodge nothing more than another grunt out of his own lungs. 'I've answered your damn questions, now get the hell off me – I need to find Virgil!'

There was silence for a moment and the elbow lifted from the back of his neck. 'We haven't found anybody else.'

'He was here,' Scott said. 'He has to still be here!'

There was another stretch of silence, another shift of the knee against his spine. 'Where was he when it happened?'

'In there,' Scott said, his head jerking towards where the lab was supposed to be, and the deadweight shifted as it followed his direction.

'There's nothing in there,' came the voice again, and the prissy, British tones were really starting to piss. Scott. off.

'I know,' Scott growled, his anger and his frustration unleashing in a guttural, inhuman sound as he struggled beneath the weight on his back. The group around Gordon turned briefly at the sound and then turned away again.

'You really need to calm down,' said the voice.

'Fuck you.'

'Tsk,' said the man on Scott's back. 'That's no way to speak to an officer of the law. The sooner you get a grip on the situation the sooner we can start looking for this Virgil.'

The rock-hard lump that was crushing Scott's ribs suddenly lifted and he was hoisted roughly to his knees, his legs numb and nerves burning as the sensation painfully trickled back into them. He had time for one deep inhalation before a beam of light was shone blinding into his eyes and Scott raised a hand to deflect it, found himself blinking at a dark-haired man in a red uniform.

'Now,' said the man in red, and there was an unmistakable tang of steel behind the tightly-clipped vowels. 'Play nice and don't make me restrain you.' The officer leaned cautiously forward and removed Scott's pistol slowly from its holster. 'Smart move – ' he said as he straightened up, one eyebrow rising in appreciation as he inspected the compact little weapon, '– not using this.'

Scott used the back of his hand to wipe the dirt from his mouth. 'This was supposed to be a rescue,' he said as he rose warily to his feet.

'Not any more.' The man in red turned Scott's weapon over in his hands and then slid it snugly into his belt. 'You won't mind if I keep this,' he inquired politely. 'You seem a little unpredictable.'

Scott spat, but could still taste dirt on his tongue. 'What the hell are Spectrum doing here?'

The man in red took a step closer and looked Scott carefully in the eyes. 'Faulkner Labs is a Spectrum research facility,' he told him. 'Technically, you and your team are trespassing.'

Gordon activated the Pod's internal comms station and positioned the headset mic an approximate centimetre from his lips.

'Thunderbird 5 from Thunderbird 2,' Gordon said, his voice just loud enough to carry over the hum of Thunderbird 2's engines. The deck juddered beneath his feet as the aircraft passed through a patch of turbulence, metal rattling around him along with the creaks and groans of equipment as it strained against strapping and webbing. 'John. You read me?'

'Thunderbird Two from Thunderbird Five. I'm reading you, but your mic's on its way out. Can you speak up?'

'I'm in the Pod,' Gordon said, as if that explained it all.

It didn't. 'Why?'

'Because…' Shit. 'John, what's going on?'

Silence chewed through the connection.

'John?'

'Spectrum have been in contact,' John said, from a million miles away.

Gordon closed his eyes to better feel the burning in his hands. 'Do you know why?'

'Father's been called in,' John said in reply. And when Gordon didn't answer: 'He's leaving now. With Scott.'

Gordon opened his eyes. 'Leaving for where?'

Thunderbird 2 passed through another patch of turbulence. They were over the South Pacific now, the warm air rising from the sea in violent and unseen updrafts. Gordon watched as the Firefly strained against her clamps – he could smell her from here, her body caked with soot and the overpowering stench of smoke and charcoaled wood and, maybe he was imagining it, burning flesh. For a moment Gordon could smell his own body burning, could see his hands immersed in that green ball of light, the gloves of his hazard suit disintegrating like cobwebs being blown slowly apart by a green and fiery wind.

And over it all there was the noise...

…and Virgil, immersed silent and screaming inside that sphere of sound and light.

Gordon inhaled, a deep shuddering breath, and pressed his fingers against the pounding in his head.

'They're headed for Spectrum HQ,' John's voice said.

The pressure in Gordon's head increased – he could almost feel the blood pulsing beneath his fingertips. 'Do you know why?'

'No.'

'John.'

'I said I don't know.'

'Tell me why!'

'Calm down,' John said. 'You sound like – '

'What? I sound like what?' Gordon clamped his teeth down on his words. He knew what he sounded like, but god help him, his hands hurt, and the stink from the Firefly was triggering memories that were more painful than the scars on his skin.

There had been no clocks in what Gordon had generously called his 'room.'

No windows.

No daylight and darkness.

No time and too much time, all rolled into one.

In his waking moments, when the darkness faded enough that the pain would spark from his hands to his brain and nudge him out of his dope-fuelled haze, Gordon would blink at the light that blazed too bright in the ceiling and close his eyes again, ignorant of the voices murmuring at the periphery of his hearing, and of the shadows that passed like clouds across his face.

It was pleasant. It was like floating on a sea, the waves drifting him gently to the shore and then just as gently drifting him back out to the deep again. Gordon would have liked to stay there in the deep, sinking slowly into a place that contained no light and no sound, and where the image of his brother wasn't flash-burned in green on the surface of his retinas. But the sea was cruel, even the sea that flooded the spaces of his brain.

'Any change?' said a voice from somewhere far away.

'Nope.'

'Doc been in yet?'

'About a half hour ago.'

'You see the kid's hands yet?'

'Wish I hadn't.'

'Weird, huh. Kind've looks like he got struck by lightning.'

'Except he didn't. He got caught in that – '

A tray dropped. The sound of metal hitting the floor and spinning out across vinyl tile.

'Shit.'

'Watch what you're doing.'

A knee cracked, and Gordon could hear objects being carefully scraped up from the floor.

'He wake up?'

'No.'

Aftershave swirled in his face and Gordon slid open his gummed-up eyes.

'Yes,' corrected the voice.

Déjà vu. Gordon had the uncanny sensation that he'd been caught in this nightmare before. He squinted at the blur of face that hovered above him, at the dark hair that stood out against a halo of too-bright light.

'Scott?' Gordon croaked, his throat closing on nothing.

'What did he say?'

'I don't know.' Footsteps moved around the bed. 'They got him flying so high he shouldn't be able to talk at all. I'll call the doc. And keep back – Fawn says he's human, but how can you can be sure?'

'He's human.' The blur passed out of Gordon's field of view. 'You've seen his hands. He's not healing so fast.'

'Nix it – he's looking at you. Think he's awake enough to understand what we said?'

The blur stopped and turned, the features coalescing into an unfamiliar face as Gordon blinked in confusion. Two uniformed men observed him from the foot of his bed, their hands on their holsters and their eyes locked warily on him.

'What…' Gordon said, tried to say, his words slurring and his lips feeling like they were a million miles away from his brain. He tried to sit up and felt the world tilt with the effort, the monitor beside the bed pinging loudly to betray the rapid beating of his heart.

'Take it easy,' the man in the brown uniform said, his eyes moving to watch the peaks return to green on the monitor. 'Doctor's on his way.'

Gordon was having trouble breathing against the flutter in his chest. 'What happened?' He tried to sit up again, but vertigo laid him back down on the bed.

'You're in a hospital,' the second man told him, the one in pink. 'Try to stay calm. You've had an accident.'

'An accident?' Gordon's fingers twitched inside their sheath of bandages. It hurt and he grimaced, and the man in the pink uniform took a sudden step towards him.

'Don't,' the one in brown warned.

'He's gonna throw up,' the man in pink said, ignoring the warning and reaching for a bowl.

'Leave it. Doc'll be here any minute.'

The dish was thrust beneath Gordon's chin. 'It's my rotation and I'll be damned if I'm going spend the next twelve hours inhaling eu de puke.'

'Have it your way, but the Colonel will bust your ass if he finds out.'

The man in pink's lips pursed, as if he were considering that possibility, but he kept the bowl lodged firmly beneath Gordon's chin. 'What about it, kid?' The man stared questioningly into Gordon's face. 'Want me to keep this here?'

Gordon didn't know. His head hurt. His hands hurt. The light was too bright and he didn't know where he was or how he got here. He was trying to remember… what was he trying to remember? His mind quested backwards, like a film moving in reverse, but the last thing he remembered, the last solid thing he remembered… was the sun. Sunshine. The brightest sunshine he had ever seen.

'You look like a sunset,' Gordon said to the man in pink, stupidly, irrationally, his words still slurred and his mouth still positioned somewhere far away from his face. He stared up at the figure that stooped over him, at the face that he'd confused with Scott when he had first opened his eyes. Sunset had the same dark hair, slicked back straight from a neat, square face, and the same strength in his features that Scott had. But the brown eyes were wrong, and they stared down at Gordon with a disquieting unease. Despite the fact that Sunset was close enough to keep the bowl positioned right beneath Gordon's chin, the officer seemed poised to snap the bowl – and himself – away at any moment.

'Where's Scott?' Gordon asked through the sandpaper in his throat.

Sunset glanced back towards his partner and the man in brown gave a tiny shake of his head, his face and his hair as nondescript as the colour of his uniform. He was weaker around the chin than Sunset, his expression tense and disapproving as he balanced on the balls of his feet, his hand never leaving the weapon holstered at his hip. 'Doc'll be here soon,' he said, like a record stuck in a groove. 'Better get away from him.'

Sunset removed the bowl and stepped away, and the overhead light glared down full into Gordon's eyes, sickly and yellow and burning. It wasn't the sun Gordon remembered, it was –

'Where's Virgil?' Gordon moved in the bed, because maybe Virgil was here, or maybe he was in another room, or maybe – 'I have to get up.' Gordon tried to get his legs out from under the covers, pawing ineffectually at the sheets as pain sparked through his hands, the sensation as clean and sharp as though daggers were stabbing through his fingers. An IV tore stinging from his arm, and there was blood, he knew there was blood, and a cacophony of beeps sounded loudly from the equipment parked beside his bed.

'Calm down,' somebody said, and there was a blur of pink at the edges of his vision, feet scuffing fast across a vinyl floor, and Sunset was beside him again, his hands pushing Gordon back down to the bed. 'You're going to get hurt.'

'I have to find Virgil,' Gordon told him, annoyed because he shouldn't have to explain himself and he shouldn't be here and this stupid pink bastard should just be letting him up out of the bed. The officer's aftershave wafted again into his face, strident and suffocating and maybe Gordon was going to throw up after all. 'I need to find Virgil!'

'Jesus kid, calm down.' Sunset leaned his full weight against Gordon and pinned him down to the bed. 'There isn't any Virgil,' the officer said to him calmly and considerately and looking him square in the eyes. 'And you're not going anywhere.'

'We'll be on the ground in twelve minutes,' Cameron announced when Gordon returned to the cockpit. 'Give or take a minute.'

'Great,' Gordon replied, his voice low enough that Cameron had to turn his head to hear.

'Great,' Cam parroted beneath his breath, wondering what the hell that meant. He turned back to the board and toyed with the idea of taking Two off auto, but decided another few minutes or so wouldn't hurt. 'So,' he said with what he hoped was the right amount of nonchalance, 'what did he say?'

'Who?' Gordon asked as he adjusted his harness for descent.

'You think I don't see when a line to Thunderbird 5 goes across my board?'

Gordon stared at the back of Cameron's buzz-cut head. 'He said 'hello'.'

'That it?'

'That's it.'

'Nothing about why Scott took off so fast I can still taste his dust in my mouth?'

'No,' Gordon replied, wondering how easy they were to see through these days.

'Okay.' Cam glanced at his watch, cross-checked the chronometer on his board and looked out of the forward window to see Tracy Island cresting the horizon, right on schedule. She was a beautiful sight, an oasis of green in an endless stretch of cerulean blue, the rocky outcrop of her volcanic cone wreathed with marshmallow puffs of cumulus. There were mornings when Cameron West would wake in his double-wide bed and imagine he must be still asleep and dreaming – not only had he landed one of the most coveted jobs on the planet, along with a salary that was still capable of making his eyes bulge whenever he checked his bank account, but he had all of that and paradise too. If the Tracy family wanted to keep their secrets then they were entitled to. He reached for the autopilot release, but was stopped in his tracks by the voice behind him.

'Spectrum have been in contact,' Gordon said.

Cameron's hand moved away from the auto-release and he turned in his seat to look at Gordon. 'Is this about you,' Cameron asked quietly, knowing enough of the story to ask, 'or your brother?'

Gordon shrugged, his body pinched so tight that it looked to Cameron like the movement hurt. 'Father and Scott are on their way to Spectrum HQ.'

'Now?'

Gordon nodded, his face twisting with unexpected fury, and Cameron had the distinct impression that if Gordon hadn't been secure in his harness he would have got up and punched a hole in something.

'What more do they want, Cam? They got everything they could out of us – one way or another.'

'Don't sweat it.' Cameron attempted what he hoped was a reassuring smile, but knew he'd botched it at the last second. 'You know what the military are like. It's probably follow-up – Spectrum are just making sure IR is keeping their secrets.'

'Sure,' Gordon responded tonelessly. 'Spectrum knows all about keeping secrets. They hide them away where nobody will ever find them.'

One door with a lock.

The nauseating stink of antiseptic.

An expanse of featureless beige walls.

And a pair of colour-coded Spectrum officers, rotating watch at the end of his bed.

Mudpie and Sunset, Gordon had christened them – although 'Mudpie' was too kind an analogy for the uninspiring colour of that particular uniform. 'Baby-shit brown' was more apt. Or, as Gordon had referred to him in the darkest hours of his incarceration, 'The Stool.'

Both officers were armed, their fingers resting on the holsters of their weapons, their eyes full of mistrust as they rotated their watch. They never answered any of Gordon's questions, though he asked the same ones every damn day. Where was his family? Where was he? When would he be able to leave? Sunset and Stool bore the bombardment with well-trained indifference, and the doctor, when he would show, would insist on just one more blood sample, please. 'Just the one,' the doctor would smile around his flat Australian vowels, and another vial of Gordon's life would be leached away. 'And let's take a look at those wounds,' the doc would add, his tone friendly and reassuring despite the smile never reaching his eyes. And then he'd be gone, with his needles and his vials and his fake fucking smile, and Gordon would be left with nothing but the tracks on his arms and the colour-coded officers watching him from the foot of his bed.

'Hey.' Gordon's voice broke the silence of the small room. 'Captain Sunset. You busy?'

Captain Sunset's attention had been focussed on a handheld tablet, but now the officer's head lifted to look at Gordon, his dark eyes appraising the patient with critical attention.

Gordon twitched his bandaged hands to remind the officer of his invalidity. 'Could you help me out with some water?' Christ, he was getting tired of begging for the necessities of existence – he even needed help to piss, but Gordon wouldn't be asking Sunset to help with that anytime soon.

The officer rose to his feet and poured water into a cup. 'It's Captain Magenta,' he reminded as he kinked a straw into an appropriate bend and slipped it into the cup. 'That must be the fifteenth time I've told you.'

Gordon eyed the hot-pink kevlar of Magenta's uniform. 'Sorry. I can't hear you over the noise that uniform is making.'

Magenta's lips tightened, but it wasn't into an amused smile. More like a pained grimace. 'You know,' he said as he held the cup in front of Gordon's face, 'I've heard about you.'

'I thought the court established that it wasn't me.' Gordon closed his lips around the proffered straw. At any other time the crack would be amusing, but there was no humour in Gordon's voice. He was in too much pain to put the effort in.

'From a friend who served in the WASP,' Magenta continued.

Gordon worked at draining the cup.

'Shame, what happened to you back then,' Magenta said.

Gordon's lips let go of the straw. 'Is that what you people do all day? Sit around in a candy-coloured knitting circle?'

Magenta smirked a little at that, because sometimes, he had to admit, it did feel like a knitting circle.

Gordon shifted in his bed, the movement sending sparks of pain through his arms and making sweat break out across the back of his neck. He abandoned his attempt to get comfortable and avoided the gaze of the dark-haired man who watched him so closely.

'Want me to call a nurse?' Magenta asked when Gordon slumped back into his pillows, not surprised when he shook his head in the negative.

'No.' Gordon stared at the ceiling. 'I'm tired of trying to figure out the looks on their faces.'

'Well,' Magenta put the cup back on the table, 'I can tell you that at least one of them wants to screw you, and I wasted ten minutes of my life trying to figure out why. Fifteen minutes, maybe. It took a while.'

Gordon's eyes widened slightly at the inappropriate remark. 'Ex-Olympic athlete?' he suggested helpfully.

'Millionaire rich kid,' Magenta countered sarcastically.

'Jealous, much?'

'A little.' Magenta had plenty of money now, but he'd scraped his early years up from the streets of New York and the hardships of his childhood still chafed. He stared thoughtfully at the patient, then slid a hand behind Gordon's back, adjusted the pillows and carefully lowered him back into them. He had strict orders not to interact with the prisoner, but Magenta had a rebellious streak that surfaced whenever he thought he wouldn't get caught.

Gordon looked up at him when he was done, the eye contact between them unexpectedly frank and disarming.

'When can I see my family?' Gordon asked.

'I don't know,' Magenta hedged. 'You'll have to ask the doc.'

'The 'doc' doesn't tell me jack.'

Magenta's lips quirked in sympathy. He couldn't help but feel sorry for the guy – Gordon still didn't realise he was a 'guest' in a Spectrum facility, and that his family didn't have a clue where he was.

'Some officers from HQ will be here tomorrow,' Magenta finally told him. 'The doctor has said you're well enough to answer questions.'

'But I've answered questions.'

'There's more they need to know.'

'My brother's gone.' Gordon closed his eyes and ended the conversation. 'That's all anybody needs to know.'

Lieutenant Green, recently of Trinidad and dreaming right now of white sands and waving palms and, let it be said, cool green coconuts, logged receipt of transmission and turned to face his commanding officer.

'Colonel,' he said, but Colonel White was engrossed in his report, his paperwork splayed in untidy patterns across his desk. Green's gaze moved to the observation port at the colonel's back – at this altitude the sky was so thin and pale it was almost white, and the only thing keeping the inhabitants of Cloudbase from an icy, terror-filled death was the two-inch steel of the pressurised hull. Two inches between life and free-fall was not something that Lieutenant Green liked to think very much about, but the sound of the jet stream barrelling past his window could still get him up at night to check the seals around the glass.

'Colonel,' Green ventured again, and this time White's head lifted to look at him, the colonel's mouth pursed into a contemplative scowl.

'This entire affair is damn peculiar, Lieutenant,' White said, pronouncing Green's rank the old-fashioned way.

'Yes, sir,' Green replied as the colonel shuffled his papers together and stuffed the dog-eared wad inside a manila folder. The colonel preferred printed words to those on a screen – he saw patterns better when they were laid out on paper, and when the papers were laid out across his desk. But not this time.

White slid the folder aside with a look of disgust. The Faulkner situation had been cold for two years and looked to be staying that way – until Virgil Tracy had made his unanticipated reappearance on the scene.

'What is it,' the colonel snapped at Green, looking sternly at the lieutenant and noting with irritation the layer of tan on the young man's face. White hadn't felt the unfiltered sun on his face for a year. At least.

'HQ report that Scott Tracy has logged flight plans to Heathrow,' the lieutenant told him. 'ETA is estimated at oh-nine-hundred hours, London time.'

'Damn his hide!' White glared across at Green as though the lieutenant were personally responsible for the crack in his plans. 'I thought our understanding was that Jeff Tracy would come alone.'

Green looked back at his commanding officer and resisted the urge to shrug. 'Yes, sir,' he said, because the colonel was expecting a response and Green didn't have anything particular to say.

White glared at the lieutenant for another thirty seconds and then redirected his anger to the sheaf of documents on his desk.

'Alright,' he snapped at the manila folder with its unyielding pile of information. 'It is what it is. Arrange a ground escort from Heathrow to London HQ, and organise for Captains Grey and Magenta to accompany me to London.'