zero point

seven

It was pleasant here, in Tin-Tin's bed, with the sheets still damp beneath his back and the ceiling fan spinning slow and lazy circles in the air above his head.

Cameron closed his eyes, enjoying the feel of sweat drying on his skin and basking in the afterglow of a session of hot, naked wrestling with the object of Alan Tracy's desires. He didn't feel any guilt at the thought of snatching Tin-Tin out from under the cherub's little nose, but he did wonder if he should have let it get this far.

Christ. He hated fucking up. Fraternisation was a punishable offence back where he came from – he could still hear the words ringing in his ears, as loud and clear as the day he'd first ever had them shouted at him: Fraternisation compromises the chain of command! Feelings confuse decision making! Relationships impact your ability to complete your mission! Cameron hated having to admit it, but Alan had been right to keep Miss Kyrano at arm's length – it was just a shame that Alan's noble sacrifice had been no match for Tin-Tin's exasperated libido.

Cameron opened his eyes and turned his gaze towards the bathroom door. The object of his attention was still in there – tinkling, or whatever it was that women did in the bathroom after sweaty sex. Arranging her hair, probably, even though he preferred it the way it looked after his fingers had mussed it up, and the thought of his hands in her hair and the way her lips felt against his body sent a wave of blood rushing so fast to his groin that he had to pull the sheets up to cover the rising swell of his erection. The damn thing was a liability – and look at the trouble it had got him into now.

Sometimes words were felt more than heard.

'What took you so long,' Virgil said.

It was the sort of question a child might ask when his mother was late for the afternoon pickup. Five small words, full of pain and abandonment and sharp enough to break a heart.

'We didn't know you were here,' Scott said. 'We didn't even know you were – ' Scott closed his mouth. Alive, he had been going to say. We didn't know you were alive.

'Virgil.' Jeff sat unnaturally still in his seat. 'Son.' He waited until Virgil's gaze turned to meet his own. 'How are you?'

A troubled crease made itself visible between Virgil's brows. 'I'm okay, I guess.' He indicated the cuffs clamped around his wrists. 'What's going on, Dad? Have I done something wrong?'

'No.' Jeff shook his head with emphatic certainty. 'You haven't.'

The crease deepened. 'Then why am I here?'

Scott cleared his throat and Virgil turned to look at him. 'We don't know what to tell you, Virg. You've been gone for two years and they think – '

'What?' Virgil stared, his gaze fixed and disconcerting. 'Two years?' Darkness flashed momentarily in his eyes, his face ghost-like in the glare from the overhead lights. He looked different suddenly, not quite himself, and his fingers twitched where they rested on the table. He laughed, a short, sharp burst of mirth that dissipated on the sterile air. 'Huh. I didn't expect that.'

Jeff felt a tremor run through him, involuntary, that detached sensation of somebody walking over your grave. 'I think,' Jeff said, hating that Spectrum had made him wary of his boy, 'that we need to go back to the beginning.'

Cameron listened as the toilet flushed and the faucet turned on and off, and there was silence for a moment as Tin-Tin arranged whatever it was that needed arranging, and then the door swung wide and silhouetted her sylph-like in the frame before she switched the light off.

'Damn,' Cameron murmured, genuinely disappointed. 'You put clothes on.' Not that she was wearing much – a tiny white kimono that skimmed the top of her thighs and was barely enough to cover her modesty. Not even enough, he noticed, as she softly moved towards him.

'I thought I would get us something to eat,' she said, turning on the bedside lamp because the sun had set hours ago and the moon was somewhere on the other side of the Earth, and maybe she wanted to see the hard contours of his chest and his stomach, and the sand-brown trail of hair that led down beneath the bunched-up silk of the sheet.

'Not,' he said, his eyes widening in surprise, 'dressed like that, I hope!"

She pouted prettily by the side of the bed, her tanned thighs long and lean and perfectly positioned in his field of view. 'Why ever not?'

'Because!' he said in imitation of an indignant Grandma Tracy and fighting against his impulse to reach out and grab ahold of her and wrestle her back onto the bed. 'Land sakes, girl, there are grown men out there!'

'Nobody will be around,' she said, frowning. 'I've done it a thousand times before.'

'You have? What if Alan saw you? Or Brains,' he said, outraged, and finally giving in to his impulse. He tugged at the hem of her kimono and pulled her down towards him. 'I've seen the way he looks at you.'

'That's not funny,' she said, unresisting as he pulled her down beside him on the bed. 'Brains is a friend and a colleague – '

'He's a hot-blooded male,' Cameron interrupted, 'who's been saving his testosterone for just the right woman. I've seen it a million times before. The man's a volcano waiting to erupt, so in order to save the villagers I'll be the one who goes to the kitchen for vittles tonight, thank you very much.'

'You shouldn't joke like that,' she said, still frowning as she rested her head against his shoulder and made herself comfortable in the crook of his arm. 'Do you really think Brains could…' She never finished the question, the words trailing off as Cameron pulled her closer.

'I don't think,' he replied. 'I know.' He slid his free hand across the smooth, cool silk of her kimono. 'Because this…' he said as his fingers came to rest against the curve of her hip, '…is definitely worth erupting for.'

It was maybe the wrong thing to say or maybe the wrong thing to do, because she was suddenly distant and cool beneath his fingers and Cameron knew well enough by now when to leave things alone. He took his hand from her hip and used it to prop his head up on the pillow, happy enough just to feel the warmth of her body where she nestled against him. Forget fraternisation, he told himself ruefully. He was beginning to have honest-to-god feelings…

'I used to always play the part,' she blurted out, defensive suddenly. 'I always tried to be a lady, and dress properly, and be the sort of person everybody thought I should be.'

He blinked, because where was this coming from? 'Okaaaayyyy,' he ventured. 'Everybody like who?'

'My father, I suppose. Mr Tracy. Alan and his brothers. Every man I ever dated.' She sighed, whether from disappointment or frustration he couldn't properly tell. 'They all seem to have the idea that I'm made out of porcelain, and they all expect me to be a perfect lady as if butter wouldn't melt in my mouth.'

Cameron smiled. He knew from experience that butter definitely melted in her mouth. 'So what changed?' he asked, wondering if he was about to get the blame for her total lapse in morals.

She shrugged against him. 'My priorities, I guess. I see the world differently now. It's that saying about living every moment like it counts – I try to be in every moment fully now, because everything changed the day Virgil didn't come home.'

He shifted his arm beneath his head. 'You make it sound like he got lost on the way home from work.'

'That's how it felt,' she said, and then she added, 'It's hard when you don't… when you've got nothing left. I don't know… maybe I am waiting for him to come home.'

She lay quietly in the lamplight, remembering, and then she said, 'there wasn't a body, you know. Nothing we could bury. No proof that Virgil was dead. No proof even that he had ever been alive. All you have left are your memories, and then your memory starts to play tricks on you.' She sighed and moved and her hair tickled him where it touched his skin. 'It was like he was sitting out on the terrace one morning, wearing his robe and trying to wake up with his morning cigarette, just the same as every other morning, and by the afternoon he was completely and utterly gone.'

She didn't cry. Her voice didn't even tremble, and Cameron supposed she was cried out after all this time. 'But you have his paintings,' he reminded, waving a hand towards the wall and trying to be helpful. 'That's proof.'

She tilted her head so she could see the canvas that hung over the dresser, pink paint splashed across a landscape in broad and confident strokes. It was proof, alright. It was gilt-framed graffiti, screaming "I was here. I was here!"

'I remember when he painted that,' she said. 'We hadn't been on the island long, just a few months, and we had the first cyclone of the season. The first proper cyclone. It was insane, with lightning and thunder and the wind breaking the trees to pieces, and waves that were taller than the cliffs on the point. I thought our little island would be washed away, and I remember the rain coming in sideways and beating against the villa so hard I was sure the windows were going to break. And maybe after two days of that, after two days of us thinking that it was the end of the world and that we were all going to die out here – don't laugh, it was terrifying – the storm blew itself out.'

She held up her hand and waited for him to take it, his strong, suntanned fingers locking reassuringly into hers. 'It was unreal,' she continued, 'miraculous, the way the clouds parted and the sun came through and turned the whole world pink.' Her gaze never moved from the landscape on the wall. 'That painting is more than just a sunset,' she told him. 'There's gratitude layered in amongst all that paint. I remember the relief I felt when the storm broke, and how grateful I was to see the sun. I felt, at the time, that I'd never seen the colour pink before. Maybe Virgil felt that way, too.'

'It's a nice painting,' Cameron said. He meant it. He liked it better than the grotesque oriental sculptures that were the signature of the villa, their bronze bodies leaping unexpectedly from their alcoves to frighten the unwary wanderer. And then he said, 'Virgil seems to be on your mind a lot today.'

She didn't reply, and he didn't expect her to.

'Does it have to do with where Mr Tracy and Scott have gone?' he asked.

She didn't answer that, either, so he turned on his side to study her, her profile perfect in the oblique light from the lamp.

'Maybe they've found a body,' he said, watching her closely.

'Maybe,' she said, not turning to look at him.

'What was he like?' Cameron asked. 'I mean, what was Virgil really like? Not what he was like as an engineer or a pilot or an artist. What was he like as a person? As a man?' He waited, and when she didn't answer he asked again. 'Tin-Tin?'

'Why do you want to know?' she asked, and he could hear her breathing as she contemplated the bright pinks of the sunset on the wall. 'You never asked before.'

'Because it never seemed like a good time.' He nudged her, the movement loosening the silk of her kimono and exposing a sliver of sun-browned skin. 'So maybe now's a good time. It's just you and me and the painting...'

She exhaled delicately as he slid his fingers through the opening of the kimono. 'What do you want to know?' she asked.

'I don't know.' Her stomach was warm beneath his hand. And soft. 'Tell me the first thing that comes to mind. How about his habits?'

'His habits,' she mused as his thumb settled into the shallow dip of her navel. 'Alright. Virgil slept too much, he smoked too much, he was vain about his appearance and he wore a cravat.'

'I see.' Her skin pulsed warm beneath his fingers. 'And did he have any bad habits?'

'He snored,' she told him.

'So the man was a saint,' Cameron laughed.

'In his own way, he was.'

'Wow.' Cameron leaned in to nip gently at her earlobe. 'Sounds like you had a thing for him.'

She didn't answer, her lips sucking in a tiny mouthful of air.

'You did?' he asked, his breath hot in her ear.

'Cameron…'

'Seriously?' He pulled back to look at her. 'You had a thing for Virgil?'

'No,' she said, not meeting his incredulous stare, and there was that delicate sigh again. 'I mean, there were times when I could have, when we...' She shook her head. 'You need to understand. Virgil was a very handsome man. Very masculine. Women were drawn to him.'

'Masculine and cravat are not words that usually go together.' Cameron grinned hugely at the thought. 'Are you sure the girls weren't after him for his money?'

'That's not fair.'

He sighed melodramatically. 'Gimme a break. Until now I thought my only competition was Alan. And now I find out I'm competing with a saint!'

'The beginning?' Virgil asked.

'The rescue.' Jeff could really use a coffee, but there was nothing in this small, sterile room. Just three men looking at each other across a gulf of time and space. 'The last rescue.' The one you didn't come home from. 'Faulkner Labs. Do you – '

'I remember.' It came out woodenly, like a tale Virgil had told too many times.

'Do you remember what happened in the lab?' This wasn't what Jeff wanted to be, inquisitor to the son he'd thought was dead. And what use were words, anyway? He needed to touch Virgil, to smell him. Then Jeff would know. He'd know beyond a shadow of a doubt.

'Virg.' Scott leaned towards the table and Jeff could feel the heat of him as he moved, burning its way across the narrow space between them. 'Are you okay?'

Virgil's gaze moved from his father to his brother, and then passed vacantly across the small white room as though he had never seen it before. 'I just want to go home.'

'I know,' Scott said. 'I hate this as much as you do. I hate this entire fucking setup. They're getting us to do their dirty work and I can't stand it. But this is only way we can get you out of here.'

There was anger in Scott's voice, Jeff could hear it. The rising kind of anger that usually ended in an explosion.

'Maybe you can't remember where you've been,' Scott was saying, 'but there must be something you remember. There has to be something. Anything!'

Virgil flinched. He tried to hide it, but it was too late, his brother had seen it.

Scott took a breath. He rubbed a hand over his mouth as if he could somehow wipe the anger away. 'I'm sorry,' he said. He sounded tired as he loosened the tie at his throat. The navy silk that he reserved for weddings and funerals – Scott had never said it out loud, but weddings and funerals were all the same to him. 'Spectrum have made it clear,' he continued as he worked at the knot in the silk, 'that the only way we can take you out of here is if you tell us where you've been and what you remember.'

Virgil watched silently as the tie came loose.

'Son,' Jeff said. He spared a glance towards the two-way mirror, and the who knows how many pairs of eyes that were watching from the other side of the glass. He could practically feel those invisible watchers breathing down his neck. Jeff moved, the plastic frame of the chair creaking loudly in the small, quiet space. 'Son. Help us. Please.'

Virgil breathed. Inhaled air. Slowly moistened his blood-drained lips. 'There was light,' he said at last. Whispered it. 'Too much light.'

'That's right.' Scott leaned closer to hear. 'There was a light. Gordon told us about the light.'

'Gordon's alright?' Virgil said. 'They told me he was alright.'

'Yes,' Jeff affirmed. At least on this one point Spectrum had been honest. Almost. 'Gordon is alright.'

Virgil swallowed, his throat visibly tight. 'I didn't believe them. I thought maybe he was here, somewhere.'

'No,' Jeff said, even though Spectrum had almost had Gordon permanently in its grasp. 'Gordon's safe. He's at home. He told us you fell into the light. Do you remember falling?'

The crease reappeared between Virgil's brows. 'Yes,' he said, his voice low and his hands turning on the table so that he could stare down at the creases in his palms. 'I fell. The floor was shaking and I fell. I fell into the light and the light was everywhere…'

He looked up at his father, at his brother, and he smiled a sick kind of smile as though he were about to throw up. 'The whole world was made of light.'

'You fell into a field of some kind,' Scott said. 'Some kind of device...'

Virgil's head shook, a palsied kind of tremor. 'I'm not making sense,' he said. 'Nothing makes sense. Nothing, no matter how much I think about it.'

'Virgil.' Jeff was finding it hard to act natural with all those unseen watchers hanging on to every word. 'If you could tell us a bit more, Scott and I could try to understand.'

'You could never understand,' Virgil said.

'We'll try, son. Tell us more about the light.'

Virgil nodded, a doomed man headed inexorably to the gallows. 'The light,' he said, lifting his cuffed hands and spreading his fingers wide. 'It was everywhere. It was all around me…all over me, like lightning on my skin, crawling, and burning….' He swallowed, and Jeff saw that his hands were shaking. 'I was inside the light, but the light was inside me.'

Virgil paused for a moment, licked at his lips again and continued on. 'It sounds crazy I know, but for a moment,' he breathed, 'I felt like I was made of light.' His lips quirked as he turned his hands again, the cuffs heavy against his wrists and making noise where they dragged across the table. 'But look at me,' he smiled, showing them his trembling hands. 'I'm not made of light.'

'I knew it.' Scarlet turned to face the collection of personnel crowded inside the observation room. The Colonel. Doctor Fawn. Captain Blue and himself of course. And a pair of med techs monitoring the sensor outputs. The room was nowhere near large enough for a half-dozen paranoid and sweaty men.

'That's all the proof we need,' Scarlet continued. 'Straight from the horse's mouth.'

'Your opinion is noted,' Colonel White replied, his attention never moving from the tableau in the adjacent room. 'But I would like to give the experiment every chance of success.'

'Success?' Scarlet was incredulous. 'The man just admitted – '

'Virgil Tracy has admitted nothing other than that he remembers a very bright light.' Colonel White reached for his tea, took a sip, and returned the cup to the table in front of him. 'We need more information than that.'

'All due respect,' Scarlet said, 'but we have what we need. Recommend we terminate this farce as soon as possible.'

'Careful, Captain.' Colonel White turned from the window, his cool grey eyes fixing on Scarlet. 'I understand your frustration, but this type of challenge will not be tolerated.'

Scarlet crossed his arms and glared around at the other occupants of the room. Only Captain Blue was game enough to meet Scarlet's gaze, and Blue's barely-perceptible head shake and silently mouthed 'no' only served to rile him more.

Scarlet turned pointedly away from Captain Blue's exasperated expression. ''This is new information,' he said. 'Virgil Tracy has admitted he remembers more than he says he does.'

'All the more reason for the experiment to continue. Perhaps the family can draw more out of him.'

'Begging the Colonel's pardon, but we need to close down this reunion now and question Virgil Tracy until he breaks!'

Colonel White skewered Captain Scarlet with a glare. 'You're taking this too personally, Captain. Perhaps you're too close to this situation to remain objective.'

'No, sir.' Scarlet returned the Colonel's glare.

'No sir what?'

If the air in the room wasn't already thick from the exhalations of six crowded men, it now became positively congealed. Scarlet's lips twitched. He turned back to the two-way mirror and watched as Jeff Tracy asked his son the same series of futile questions that had been asked of him before.

'Perhaps,' Doctor Fawn ventured into the uneasy silence, 'Captain Scarlet is correct.'

Five pairs of eyes turned to look at the doctor.

Fawn ignored the curious stairs and addressed his comments to the Colonel. 'Our instruments have detected no anomalies in Virgil Tracy's physical state, although his mental state appears to be entering another period of mild dissociation. Perhaps we could conclude this session and re-evaluate our approach?'

'What do you suggest, Doctor?'

Fawn cleared his throat. 'There's no doubt that this tactic has proven profitable – the subject has divulged more information during this interaction than he has during eight weeks of interrogation – '

'Probably because for eight weeks he's been playing us,' Scarlet interrupted.

'Captain, please.' Fawn looked aggrieved. 'Perhaps a series of these contacts, spaced out over a period of weeks – '

'The family will never agree to that.' Colonel White turned to observe the players on the other side of the glass. 'We're going to have trouble enough as it is.'

It had started as a trickle, a slow and steady build-up of warnings and broadcasts that had deteriorated in the last half-hour to a veritable deluge. TC Elinor had skimmed the north coast of Madagascar and was making violent landfall on the shores of Mozambique. The coast was going under, and from the surge of panicked voices that were crowding Thunderbird Five's speaker array, it was going under fast.

Hard to believe, John thought, given how serene the globe of the Earth looked from his cold and silent vantage point. He couldn't see Africa from here, couldn't see the swirling eye of Elinor wreaking her havoc on the other side of the globe. All John could see was the midnight peace of Oceania – the electric-light hubs of Honiara and Suva, and tiny flashes of lightning that flickered in shades of pink and orange in the dark. Fortunately there were other satellites that could see Elinor, and John was currently tapping their feeds and routing them down to the island.

'The port town of Nacala seems to be hardest hit,' John told the team assembled at Jeff Tracy's desk – even the absence of the man himself couldn't break the focus of his authority. 'Suggest you commence your efforts there.'

It was twenty-three hundred hours on Tracy Island. More exactly, 23:01:03 – a mere two-point-three minutes since he'd activated the callout. He had a real-time satellite feed displaying on Alan's portrait screen, and a situational analysis scrolling across Scott's.

'Orders?' Gordon asked. He had parked himself in the middle of the room to study the displays, and all John could see was the top left-hand quadrant of his head.

'You and Four piggyback with Cam in Two,' John replied. He was getting used to directing rescues from Five's console. 'Alan can FC in One. There are reports of vessels capsizing in the harbour – if Brains is up for another rescue he can double-duty in Two. You may need an extra pair of hands.'

Brains nodded his assent. Jeff Tracy's resident genius was looking crumpled and disheveled and John had no doubt the scientist had been burning the midnight oil when the call came through.

'Tin-Tin,' John said. 'Can you stay at the desk? The World Navy has already dispatched a complement of airborne carriers out of Djibouti. They'll have assistance on the deck in forty minutes and I need you to direct ground control. We may need to coordinate with those troops.'

'Of course, John.' Tin-Tin tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She had gotten dressed in a hurry, and it showed.

'Alright, let's move!' Cameron was already on his way to Thunderbird Two's hangar entry, t-shirt half-peeled over his head as he backed up against the hidden wall panel. John had no doubt Cameron would be down to his underwear by the time the chute deposited him into Two's cockpit – said it shaved off 43 precious launch seconds and he didn't care who complained. The man could be an ass when he wanted to, but there was no questioning his devotion to the cause.

It was a study in practiced efficiency as the rest of the team made for their respective Thunderbirds, Alan taking his position between the wall sconces of Thunderbird One's hangar entry and spinning silently out of sight as Gordon shunted Brains towards Two's passenger lift. Tin-Tin settled into Jeff's high-backed chair and activated the console behind the desk, glancing up as the lounge's secret panels all slid silently back into place. In the space of twelve seconds the room was as quiet and deserted as it had been just a few minutes earlier, the midnight silence broken another sixty seconds later by the rumble of Thunderbird One racing skyward and Thunderbird Two following shortly after.

John logged the radar returns of One and Two tracking west from the island and then returned his attention to the other problem at hand – namely that Scott's transmitter had been stationary at forty thousand feet for hours now. Back-dooring into NORAD's polar array had brought up an image of Spectrum's airborne aircraft carrier at the same coordinates, drifting east at a leisurely sixty knots over the North Sea.

John hadn't yet been successful in tapping into the carrier's incomings and outgoings thanks to a clever phase shift transmission protocol, but a phased transmission was only as good as the transmission cycle it was carried on, and John Tracy had cracked far more difficult problems than that.

Colonel White had endured countless uncomfortable silences throughout his career but this one probably topped out for the title of most uncomfortable, the agitation palpable in the air and distinctly visible in the twin glares of Scott Tracy and Captain Scarlet. There was anger and frustration engraved in the lines of Jeff Tracy's face as well, but where Jeff Tracy managed to at least look outwardly calm, Scott Tracy gave every appearance of being barely under control. They were tired, the Colonel reflected. They were expecting answers he was not at liberty to give. They probably also needed to eat, but Colonel White needed them immediately off his boat.

White reached for the cup that had been placed in front of him, sipping at the tepid brew and peering over the rim at the war being waged by the combatants at the far end of the conference table. The Colonel would not be exaggerating if he said that the temperature in the room had palpably plummeted the moment Scott Tracy had taken a seat opposite Captain Scarlet. International Rescue's field commander had fixed Spectrum's finest with a cold-eyed glare that Scarlet had spent the last few minutes pretending not to notice, his face steeled into an expressionless mask as Tracy attempted to burn holes in it with his eyes – all to the undisguised interest of Captain Blue, who cast surreptitious glances between the combatants whenever he thought his commanding officer wasn't looking.

The Colonel sighed inwardly, or possibly out loud, as the two combatants and their interested observer turned suddenly to look at him. A few seconds after that Jeff Tracy concluded his scrutiny of the faux-wood of the conference table and slowly raised his head. The man looked more haggard even than when he had first arrived at Cloudbase, the creases of age showing up more sharply around his eyes and mouth as the weariness of body and spirit etched itself inexorably across his face.

'We should begin,' the Colonel said. He returned his cup to its saucer with a muted clink. 'Gentlemen, it's time for your evaluation.'

'You've got to be joking,' Scott Tracy said, the anger and frustration plainly evident in his voice. 'Evaluation? That's – '

Colonel White held up what he hoped was a calming hand. 'The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the events of today and review the preliminary data that the Doctor will provide when he arrives. While we wait I had hoped that you could share your thoughts, or your insights, as a father and a brother. Is that man Virgil Tracy? Are you thoroughly convinced of his authenticity?'

'Yes,' Scott snapped out, exactly as the Colonel anticipated. 'No question.'

'I am,' Jeff Tracy added carefully, the delay in response telling the Colonel all that he needed to know. 'I would like to make arrangements to take Virgil home.'

'Mr Tracy,' the Colonel said. 'You don't sound completely convinced.' He watched as Scott turned to stare at his father.

'I don't need to be convinced.' Jeff ignored the questioning gaze of his son. 'That's my boy. Despite all of your warnings and your cautions and your threats, it couldn't be anyone – or anything – else.'

'I see.' The Colonel's eyebrows raised infinitesimally. 'Could you tell us what you base this opinion on? Were there any signs, any indications, that unequivocally mark this man as your son?'

'You can make your own assessment,' Jeff replied. 'I'm sure you recorded every word that was said.'

And every heartbeat, brainwave and facial tick as well, the Colonel thought. 'But a father knows,' he said out loud. 'Isn't that what you mean?'

'Are you a father yourself, Colonel?'

White smiled ruefully. 'This situation is far too dangerous to rely merely on a parent's intuition.'

'Given the circumstances,' Jeff replied evenly, 'that's all I have to offer.'

'Unfortunately it is not enough.'

'My father knows his sons,' Scott interjected. 'And I know my brothers. If we say we know – '

'It doesn't work that way!' Captain Scarlet rose abruptly from his chair. 'You say that you 'know,' but there's an almost hundred percent chance you would be wrong! Fathers don't know, brothers don't know, husbands and wives and children don't know! A Mysteron can take on any form, any, and nobody ever knows until it's too late!'

'Captain.' Colonel White waited as Scarlet reluctantly resumed his seat.

'Forgive the interruption,' White apologised. 'The Captain is too close to the subject matter. We're all too close to the subject matter. We've seen good men die,' he told the Tracys. 'Colleagues and friends and yes, even family, lost forever to the Mysterons. It's an invisible war and we are fighting it hard.' White looked pointedly at Scarlet, but the officer wasn't looking back. 'Some of us are fighting it harder than most,' he finished.

Colonel White leaned back in his chair. He surveyed the occupants of the room and then fixed his careful gaze on Jeff Tracy. 'Let me make this clear. If you have any doubt about the man who claims he is Virgil Tracy, who you claim is Virgil Tracy, if there is any question at all that he might not be your son, then you need to tell us.'

Jeff shook his head. 'It's impossible,' he said. 'Even if I accept what you're saying as true, how can one hour of conversation tell me what none of your instruments and tests have been able to? I admit it, Virgil doesn't seem to be the same. But two years have passed – are any of us the same? Even I'm not the same as when Virgil disappeared.'

'My father's right – how could Virgil possibly be the same?' Scott Tracy's temper was on the boil again. 'You've been holding him in isolation for weeks – he has no idea where he's been or what's happened to him, and you people locked him away and traumatised him. You tortured him – '

'We didn't torture him,' Scarlet said.

Scott glared at the captain. 'Let's see what the courts say.'

'Scott,' Jeff said. 'This isn't helping.' The Tracy patriarch inhaled a deep and steadying breath. 'We need more time,' he said to the Colonel. 'We need to take Virgil home. Where he belongs.'

White hated himself. He was about to break a father's heart with all the cruel efficiency he was capable of. 'I'm afraid that Spectrum can't agree to that. If Virgil is in any way compromised we can't afford to let him loose on the world. There's too much at stake. The fate of the planet – '

'Listen to yourselves!' Scott's voice fairly dripped with contempt. 'The fate of the planet?'

Colonel White could feel the situation slipping out of his control. 'I don't think you understand what it is that we're up against.'

'No,' Scott agreed. 'I don't. Because you haven't given us anything concrete to go on and you keep talking in circles. That man is my brother. I know it!'

'That's not enough,' Scarlet countered. 'You need to prove Virgil Tracy is not a Mysteron.'

'Oh, for fucks sake!' Scott Tracy was suddenly on his feet. 'Prove to me that he is a Mysteron! Prove to me that Mysterons even exist! Until then, I am finished with all this round-table bullshit!'

He was gone before the last sentence was out of his mouth, the door sliding shut behind him with a hiss that accentuated the sudden silence in the room. Beyond the door, there was a sound like furniture breaking.

Captain Blue pushed his chair away from the table. 'I'll go.'

'No.' Scarlet was already on his feet. 'I will.'

Goddamn son of a bitch!

It had been an exit, alright. Scott couldn't have gotten out of there fast enough – had barely made it out without leaping bodily across the conference table and smashing a fist into Scarlet's smug, annoying face.

Instead he took it out on the desk in the anteroom, waiting until the door slid shut behind him before he slammed a fist onto the moulded plastic and made the desktop crack so loud they must have heard it in the meeting room. He imagined his father wincing and the look Colonel White would be giving Jeff about now, and the glances that Scarlet and Blue would be giving each other and fuck!

Scott's fist hovered impotently over the desk – he wanted to smash the damn thing apart, wanted to rip it bodily into pieces and hurl it against the walls. They wouldn't get away with this. He wouldn't let them get away with it.

He unclenched his fist and slid his thumb behind the buckle of his belt – he didn't have time to rip the furniture apart, not when he had a mainframe terminal sitting unguarded on the desk. Scott extricated a chip from the back of the buckle as he scouted the terminal's data access point. Sweat dampened the back of his neck as the device came free and he affixed it to the port, straightening from the desk a mere millisecond before the door behind him slid open with a pneumatic whoosh and wafted a wave of cool air in a faint eddy around him. He didn't turn around as footsteps sounded in the anteroom, but he would bet dollars for donuts that he knew whose aftershave that was.

'Mr Tracy?'

Scott stared down at the paperwork he'd dislodged on the desk when he'd thumped it. He had been right about the aftershave – it was Captain Scarlet's voice, as irritating as ever.

'Is everything alright?' Scarlet asked.

Goddamn it, the man never knew when to give up.

Scott forced a lungful of air past his gritted teeth. 'What,' he asked as he turned to face Scarlet, 'do you think?'

Scarlet smiled. The son-of-a-bitch actually smiled. And then he murmured, softly and conspiratorially, 'Go on. You know you want to.'

Without warning Scott's fist came hurtling out of nowhere, impacted crushingly against Scarlet's jaw and sent him reeling back against the wall.

'You're right.' Scott brought his knuckles to his mouth and licked the sting out of his skin. 'I've been wanting to do that for two fucking years.'

Scarlet pushed himself away from the wall. A trickle of blood had appeared on his chin, and he tested the split in his lip with his tongue. 'Well done,' he said, erasing the blood from his chin with the back of his hand. 'Now we're even.'

'Oh no,' Scott told him. 'We'll never be even. Not until I've got my brother out of here and I've wiped that stupid smile clean off your face.'

Scarlet raised an inquiring eyebrow. 'Is that a threat, Mr Tracy?'

'It's a promise.'

A smirk tugged at the corners of Scarlet's lips. 'It's a challenge. Pistols at dawn? Or would you like to get it over with now?'

Scott took a step towards the Spectrum agent. 'Now,' he told him, sizing him up. They were almost matched for height and weight, and while Scott was no slouch when it came to personal combat he suspected Scarlet would have training in at least a half-dozen obscure martial arts that Scott wouldn't have a hope in hell of countering.

Scott bunched his fists and met Scarlet's challenging gaze – he was prepared for this to hurt.

Captain Blue turned his head to listen as a thump sounded against the conference room wall.

'Are you sure you don't want me to go out there?' he asked his commanding officer. 'Somebody might get hurt.'

'No, Captain.' Colonel White reached for his cup. The tea was cold already, but he sipped at it anyway. 'Unfortunately this is a necessary evil. Could you pour Mr Tracy a fresh cup of coffee?'

The officer unfolded his six-foot frame and squeezed his way around the conference table to the sideboard. 'I guess Doctor Fawn has decided not to come,' he said to the coffee pot.

Another thump sounded against the wall, and Jeff Tracy turned to look. The wall was white and blank and unadorned, and it didn't tell him anything.

Scott's fist lashed out – aiming not for Scarlet's impeccably chiselled jaw, but for the man's kevlar-covered solar plexus, hoping that with sufficient force and weight behind the punch he'd be able to knock enough air out of Scarlet's lungs to bring him down – if not all the way to the ground, then at least far enough down for Scott to bring up a knee and jam it into his mouth.

It didn't work out that way, of course. Scarlet's face registered enough surprise to indicate that he hadn't expected a body blow so soon in the proceedings, but he was fast enough on his feet to slide out of the arc of Scott's onrushing fist and bring his own fist smashing down onto Scott's shoulder-blade as he followed through.

It hobbled Scott – for about a second, and then he had righted himself, turning on his feet to face his foe's new position and rising to his full height to meet Scarlet's bemused gaze.

'You're fast,' Scott conceded.

'Unnatural, isn't it?' Scarlet moved like a predator as he readjusted his position. 'Some have even said it's not human.'

'Arrogant, too.' Scott squared his feet. 'And arrogant pricks like yourself deserve everything they get.' He launched himself bodily at Scarlet, grunting with satisfaction when their bodies collided with a bone-crunching thunk and Scarlet was knocked back off his feet by the force of Scott's six-foot-plus-inches slamming into him. Scarlet sprawled onto his back, clipping the chair behind the desk as he fell and sending it spinning noisily across the room. Scott went down with him, close enough that he could smell the salt-water tang of Scarlet's aftershave as he pinned him to the ground. In a split-second he had a hand clamped around Scarlet's throat and was tightening his other hand into a fist, hauling it back with the full intention of slamming it into the officer's clean-shaven face – so intent on Scarlet's impending knuckle sandwich that he was completely unaware that the tables were turning and somehow Scott found himself flipped onto his back and Scarlet was on top of him, the officer's knee digging hard into his chest and the bastard hadn't even raised a sweat.

'Fuck,' Scott grunted as he aimed a fist wildly towards Scarlet's head, unsurprised when the officer raised a hand and caught it and crushed it in his own.

Scott would have expected Scarlet to smile, or to smirk, or to make some kind of snide remark that he was no match for Spectrum training. Instead Scott saw a shadow pass across Scarlet's face, the officer's eyes suddenly growing dark, and Scott would swear he glimpsed a flicker of green at the back of those blue-water irises as Scarlet loomed above him.

'What the hell,' Scott breathed, because a knife had appeared like magic in Scarlet's free hand and the officer was aiming it towards Scott's captured fist. Scott's eyes widened, because what the hell was this crazy fuck doing, and he found himself pulling away, his hand sliding free because Scarlet had abruptly let it go.

Scott watched, dumbfounded, as the blade disappeared into the palm of Scarlet's hand, sliding through the flesh like it was butter and bringing forth a stream of thin, dark blood.

Distaste marred Scarlet's lips, the officer withdrawing the knife and turning his palm so that Scott could see the wound and watch the blood well in crimson drops to splash down onto the white linen of Scott's shirt. Scott stared, mesmerised by the wound scored deep into Scarlet's flesh, his eyes widening as the neatly sliced edges sparked with green and Scarlet's palm began to rapidly knit itself together.

'What the fuck?' Scott scrambled back across the floor, a slow horror dawning on his face.

'Now,' Scarlet said, and this time he had Scott's full and undivided attention. 'Now you understand what we're up against.'