Hey. First off, I uploaded a new chapter on Tuesday, so if you missed that one go check it out now or you'll be very confused. If you're up to date already then hey, awesome, thanks for reading! Get ready for yet more questionable science... Things are changing...


Tracy Island had been their home for years now. It had seen the dawn of International Rescue and had kept them safe as the world burnt to ashes around them. As Scott wandered the corridors, he found it difficult to imagine leaving and yet he knew, as he trailed a hand along indents in the wall from a young Alan's failed attempt at riding a hoverboard inside the house, that this would be the last time he'd be here for a very long while.

The past week had been filled with preparations for their departure. There'd been the matter of sealing the hangars - just in case someone human washed up on the shores and got it in their head to take a Thunderbird for a spin – and then there was supplies: picking what to take and what to leave as a temporary stash for their inevitable return. Medicines with date stamps, data that they'd collected over the past couple of months, personal items and clothes… all of it had to be carefully loaded into Three's cargo bay.

Scott had already faced the crocodile tears from Alan after informing his younger brother that a guitar was not necessary – although the crocodile tears had won and now there was a guitar sitting in pride of place alongside a collection of sweatshirts, childhood treasures and a weighted blanket as well as a certain tank of bearded dragons – Alan's crate of stuff was one disaster zone that Scott wasn't willing to touch. And that was before he got onto the topic of Gordon's cursed aquariums because goddam, but it wasn't as if he were about to refuse, not when Gordon had been withdrawn and not quite present all week – although Gordon had since backed down, admitting that the bots on Tracy Island could care for the fish better than he could in Space.

"Technically," Virgil had pointed out as he stood beside Scott on the observation deck, watching MAX attempt to stack yet more crates into Thunderbird Three. "We're going to live on Mars. It's a bit like moving house, only on a different planet. You can't expect them to leave half their stuff behind."

"I don't," Scott had replied, leaning against the railing. "But c'mon, Virg, does Alan really need every single t-shirt in his closet?"

Virgil looked away to hide his smile. "Apparently so."

Now, peering into Alan's room, Scott was faced with the sight of a blank canvas. It was void of any personality. It felt wrong. Stepping onto bare carpet without having to watch out for fear of tripping over something… it almost seemed like trespassing.

He was having one of those days where he felt impossibly sad, all the time. Experience had taught him that nothing he did would shake the feeling. It was like a wave – he simply had to ride it out. But this empty house was not helping. Neither was the thought of leaving half his family on Mars, even if he was spending a few months with them first.

"Hey." Kayo rapped her knuckles against the doorframe in greeting and slipped into the room to join him. "Man." She ran a hand over a paint splodge on the wall. "This place is weird when it's empty."

Scott resisted the urge to tug the curtains shut properly. "Tell me about it."

Kayo frowned, rotating the hairband around her wrist. "Soulless," she said suddenly. "That's the word I was searching for."

Scott sank onto the bare mattress. "Yeah," he agreed. Gravity seemed too strong all of a sudden, as though a great weight were pinning him down. He rolled a shoulder, feeling the phantom pain of an old injury long since healed. "Soulless is a good description," he said quietly.

Kayo reached out and pulled the curtains tightly together. "You know," she ventured, strangely unsure of herself in a manner that had Scott wanting to put an arm around her, "this is the first place I truly called home. Before this… I was happy here. I didn't know that was possible until I met your family."

"Our family," Scott amended.

Kayo turned away from the curtains with a faint smile. "Our family," she echoed, shoulders slumping as she brushed a hand across his back on her way past. "Take your time. There's no rush." She offered a teasing grin. "It's not as if we're going to launch without you."

The door brushed against the carpet as it swayed in her wake. Scott listened to her footsteps fade in the corridor and flopped back on the mattress. A spring – broken years before and never replaced – squeaked. He folded his arms beneath his head and examined the glow-in-the-dark stars decorating the ceiling. In the distance, the ocean sighed. He closed his eyes and tried to ignore the pressure in his chest.

"I can't believe we're actually leaving," Alan announced, materialising out of nowhere.

Scott jolted upright. "Holy hell, Alan." He clasped a hand to his pounding heart. "Don't do that. Jeez. Kayo's taught you well."

Alan ducked his head with a sheepish smile. "Sorry." He crossed the floor without a sound, sinking onto the edge of the mattress with a wide-eyed stare. "Seeing it empty… it makes it real. I think it's finally hit me that this is it." He drew a knee up to his chest and propped his elbow on top, gnawing at his thumbnail. "Is there a chance I'll ever come back?"

"Hopefully," Scott replied quietly, unwilling to evoke that strange echo that came with four walls and no soul. "That's the plan, anyway. I'm just not sure how long it'll take." He examined Alan's forlorn expression and injected some encouragement into his tone. "You'll make Mars your home too, just like you did here."

"But home isn't a place," Alan whispered. "It's people. Isn't that what they say? And I'll only have half my people. I know you're staying for the first few months but after that… I'm tired of losing people without answers, Scott. If something happens when you guys are back here, there'll be no one to tell us how or what happened. I'm not asking you to stay on Mars forever, I'm just… thinking. I dunno." He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes with a heavy sigh. "It's just a weird day."

"It's a weird day," Scott agreed.

For a moment, they sat in silence, simply watching the stars on the ceiling, knowing that they would very soon be surrounded by the real thing.

Alan closed his eyes. "I miss being a kid."

"You are a kid."

"Then I miss being naïve. Innocent. I miss not worrying too much because I genuinely believed that everything would just sort itself out, or that you would fix it."

"Alan," Scott began, and cursed the way his voice cracked, but it hurt to hear those words.

Alan shrugged. "For the record, you didn't fail me, so you can stop thinking that. The world's just a crap place sometimes. I'm lucky, really, because I still have my family and my life, and I get a second chance on Mars. I just wish the price wasn't…" He pressed a fist to his chest with a sad smile. "…this. This feeling. And I know it'll get easier but… it's like a scar, right? Some of them never fade. Doesn't stop anyone from living but it is a reminder."

He uncurled his fist and examined the tiny silver nail marks across his palms, old and healed but telling their own story. "I survived. I get a new life. But also… I've got to find a way to live with that." He exhaled shakily. "I've got figure out who I am now, who I'm going to be. It's weird being the hero when you reach the end of the story and there's no one left to save. Who are you then? I dunno. That's what I've got to learn. But… I've still got parts of me that are never going to go away, right? I'm still a brother and a friend."

"And a son," Scott added, very quietly.

Alan bumped their shoulders together. "Yeah," he murmured. "And a son." His smile was fragile but genuine. "You did good by me, y'know?"

Scott took a moment to remember how to speak. "I tried my best," he replied at last.

"Your best was fricking awesome. So… Thank you." Alan pushed himself up off the bed and hesitated in the doorway. "You're a good dad," he said in a rush. "And you'll always be my hero, whether you save the world or just save yourself."

Scott lost the ability to breathe. Which wasn't ideal, but hey, that was life. It was never ideal, but it was whatever you made it.

"Alan," he called out. "Love you, kiddo."

Alan grinned. "Love you too. See you in Three."


Grandma was in the kitchen. For once, this did not mean the fire alarm was about to be activated. She leant against the counter, observing the poolside and the ocean beyond. There was a great sense of melancholy in her face and in her hunched shoulders. Scott was struck by how old and fragile she suddenly seemed. She'd always been such a big presence in his life, full of energy and never knocked down for long by anything. But now she seemed exactly who she was – an elderly woman who'd lost too much too quickly.

He crossed to her side, treading heavily so as not to startle her, and gently settled an arm around her shoulders, drawing her close. She'd never seemed so small.

"I remember the day your dad told me he'd bought this place," she mused. "He rang me up and said, Mom, I've just bought an island. And I told him, now Jefferson, most people start a phone call with hello. He just laughed. But he loved this place, Scott, and I remember how happy he was when he first brought you boys here and saw how you loved it too."

"This will always be our home."

Grandma smiled, a faint, wistful thing. "Maybe. Maybe not." She shook her head. "Either way, I'm being ridiculous. What matters is you." She patted his hand. "My boys. My wonderful, talented, brave boys. I hope you all know just how proud of you I am."

Her gaze tracked to the patio where the sun had turned the pool into paradise and music clung to every leaf and laugh. Scott stared for a moment, not quite believing his eyes, but Grandma's fond smile proved he wasn't seeing things. Kayo was laughing, allowing Penelope to twirl her around the tiles to the song drifting from the speakers. Happiness, however fleeting, had always found its way here. Tracy Island was a sanctuary and, even when they were all long gone, it would remain so.

Grandma squeezed his hand. "Change is always scary," she said. "But it's necessary for progress." She craned her neck to glimpse the sky. "Do you know Mars is one of the only places I haven't been?"

Scott tried not to laugh at that hint of anticipation in her voice. "Well, it's time to change that."

Grandma turned and pulled him into a proper hug.

"Come on now, Scooter," she announced brightly. "There's no point in moping around this villa any longer. The future's waiting!"


There were too many memories held within these shores – because it wasn't merely the villa that was home but the island as a whole – the caves that Alan and Gordon had once played pirates in was just as well-loved as the nicknamed 'Den' that had seen so many family move nights and pillow fights. Scott knew this place better than he knew himself. He knew why there was a faint scorch mark hidden behind the fridge (relocated to hide aforementioned mark after the microwave incident), where the stairs creaked up to the Roundhouse, which trails led to which lookout, the exact point on the beach where John had fallen asleep and nearly been washed out to sea, where there was a flipflop stuck on the roof and how it had ended up there. He knew exactly how far away you could walk from the lounge before you could finally no longer hear the piano. He knew which room had the best lighting for Virgil's painting. He knew which storage room Alan had once secretly transformed into a wildlife sanctuary before a tarantula had escaped and gotten him caught.

He knew this place because this place was home.

He also knew that sometimes leaving was necessary, no matter how badly it hurt.

Because it did hurt. It hurt to stand on the patio and hear the breeze in the palm trees a final time, to hear piano song serenade the island with a tender, longing tune that couldn't be mistaken as anything other than a farewell.

But Tracy Island wasn't the only thing he was leaving behind.

He heard John approach before his brother had the chance to say anything. Those crutches were a dead giveaway, especially in a big space like the hangars where even the tiniest of sounds echoed like a thunderclap.

"I wish I'd had the chance to fly her again. Just one last time, as a goodbye."

John tilted his head back to examine One's gleaming hull. "Someone once told me that there's no such thing as goodbye forever, only goodbye for now."

Scott glanced at him. John shrugged.

"You'll come home," he said, without a hint of uncertainty. "Just like I know I'll end up returning to Five someday. You'll come home to One."

"How can you be so sure?"

"Because flying her makes you happy." John reached out and pressed a hand to the Thunderbird, tracing the edges of sleek panels. "And, at the end of the day, whether we save the world or not, there's no point in living without happiness. So, however this ends, you'll be back in the skies, and you won't be alone, because EOS and I will be up there watching over you again."

Scott watched him curiously. "I'd have thought Mars would be perfect for you."

"Eh." John gave another shrug. "Too many people." He chuckled. "Too much gravity."

Scott stepped closer to lean his forehead against his Thunderbird. One hadn't been online in weeks, but he swore he could feel a faint vibration through her hull, a soft purr of reassurance that she would be here waiting for him, no matter how long he took to return.

John's hand landed on his shoulder with a gentle squeeze. "Ready?"

Scott exhaled slowly. He gave One a final pat and turned to face his brother. "Ready."

John gave him a fond smile. "C'mon. We've got a rocket to launch."


It didn't take as long as expected for everyone to migrate towards Three's silo. Scott had no intentions of rushing anyone, but he was very aware that the longer they stayed, the harder it would be to finally drag themselves away. As it transpired, he needn't have worried, as everyone was in place within the hour.

Well. Everyone was on board Thunderbird Three, anyway, even if they weren't all strapped into their correct seats and ready for launch. Scott was the last to board, following Brains up the ladder to the main cockpit and immediately noting the empty seat where a certain brother should have been.

Alan pushed himself away from the controls and squeezed past Virgil's seat – this cockpit really wasn't designed for so many extra chairs – and met Scott by the door.

"Gordon's in the cargo bay."

Scott paused. "Do we know why?"

"Not really." Alan – back in his space suit for the first time in months – fiddled with the edge of his armoured plating, face drawn with concern. He twisted his hands together. "He seemed pretty out of it. I tried calling after him but he either didn't hear or just ignored me. But I know he's still there because EOS confirmed it."

Brains shot Scott a worried look. "We're due to launch in ten m-minutes."

"I know." Scott resisted the urge to knock his head against the metal hatch. "I'll go get him. Alan, strap in and prep for launch. With any luck we'll be back in the next five minutes."

Three's cargo bay was jampacked with crates, a sea of neutrality secured in place in neat stacks so that the thin walkways left in between mimicked a street lined by skyscrapers. It was impossible to see past them. The entire place seemed like a maze. Somehow, it made the rocket feel bigger than usual and yet impossibly small at the same time. Most of their lives were packed into this one space and it was odd to observe. It also made it really damn difficult to locate a certain missing brother.

EOS appeared above Scott's console. "Take a right," she advised. "There's a camera on the bulkhead and I can see him via that."

"Creepy," Scott informed her.

EOS was enough like her creator to be able to identify when Scott was teasing. Her lights turned a faint yellow in amusement.

"I aim to please," she quipped.

Gordon was a splash of vivid colour – bright blue against the pale crates, yellow reflecting cheerful hues off the floor panels beneath him. He sat cross-legged, hands balanced on his knees, eyes closed, as if he were meditating, tilting his head in the direction of Scott's footsteps.

"Fancy meeting you down here," he muttered.

Scott propped himself up against one of the stacks. "Small world, huh?"

Gordon opened one eye, then the other, blinking. He uncrossed his legs and tipped back onto his hands, peering up at his brother with a calculating look.

Scott frowned. "What?"

"Blue's better." Gordon lifted a shoulder in a half shrug. "You look like you again."

The truth was that it did feel good to be back in International Rescue colours, even if the only reason was because the uniforms were space-rated. It was a relief to be able to wear a suit that didn't have Scott grabbing for the nearest desk or wall to ground himself, to glance at his hands and see plain gloves rather than flashes of crimson in the instant it took for his brain to catch up. Still. There was a faint trace of nostalgia in Gordon's voice that rang alarm bells. Gordon didn't do nostalgia.

"Lost in your thoughts again?" Scott queried, trying to keep his voice level. "Everyone's in the cockpit. We're almost go for launch."

Gordon lifted his hands to let himself collapse onto his back. His dark chuckle echoed around the crates and died before it reached the hatch.

Scott repressed a shudder.

"What's so funny?"

"We're not going to Mars."

"Unless someone changed our flight path without informing me, yes, we very much are going to Mars."

"Oh, we're planning to go there alright," Gordon agreed, flapping a hand and getting distracted by the way the light played across his glove. "But… we won't get there. It's not…" He let out a faintly hysterical laugh. "It's too easy, don't you see? Nothing's ever that simple for us. Something's going to go wrong. I can feel it."

"Good to know that squid sense of yours is still working."

The joke fell flat.

"Gordon." Scott stepped away from the crates. "Hey." He crouched down and snapped his fingers in his brother's face. Gordon blinked but didn't tear his gaze away from the ceiling. "Look at me."

Gordon smacked his hand away. "Whatever, Scott. Let's get this over and done with. God knows we'll be back here soon enough." He threw himself to his feet, the action sharp and sudden compared with his previously sluggish movements.

EOS reappeared above Scott's console, pale lilac with worry. Scott dismissed her hologram. Yeah, he didn't need an AI telling him there was cause for concern – he could work that one out easily enough on his own thank-you-very-much.


Launch was very ordinary. It wasn't as if anyone had been expecting a farewell banner or some sort of firework display to mark the occasion, but it was so simple and smooth that it felt almost wrong. Three glided through the Roundhouse and sliced the sky in two. Murky cloud faded into nondescript grey until at last they burst into the upper atmosphere. Alan slowed Three, gently settling into orbit under EOS's directions, keeping clear of the collection of unmonitored satellites and space debris circling the planet.

The cockpit flooded with sunlight, vivid and bright and purer than anything any of them had seen in months. That familiar sense of weightlessness took hold. John lifted one hand and let it float, a multi-million-dollar smile dawning on his face.

"Glad to be back?" Virgil asked, a faintly teasing note in his voice.

John couldn't tear his gaze away from the window. "Yes," he answered after a moment, somewhat breathlessly. "God, yes."

At his side, Penelope shot him an impossibly fond look. She caught his hand mid-air. "Space is a good look on you."

Once upon a time, Scott would have waited for a 'what about me?' quip from Gordon. Nowadays he knew better than to expect it. Gordon remained silent, lifting his feet on the edge of his chair and curling against the bulkhead. He pressed his cheek to the window and closed his eyes in the bright sunlight.

Alan was practically vibrating with glee, but managed to keep it professional, which was both impressive and admirable but not entirely necessary. It was his first time back in Space in months and Scott wouldn't have begrudged him an excited reunion with the stars. As it was, John was showing more of a reaction right now.

EOS appeared above the dash. "Not to be a downer or anything, but… you're about to get a look at the rest of the world." Her voice twisted with something akin to pain. "Just to warn you, it's not pleasant."

Not pleasant was an understatement. A serious understatement. Having said that, Scott wasn't sure how else she could have phrased it. Unpleasant didn't begin to cover the scale of destruction before them, but it sure as hell wasn't a lie. It was just-

The end of all things.

What comes after the end of the world?

Suffering.

And fire too. A lot of fire. The world was burning, aching, scorched and singed and weeping bloody tears along every coastline. Oceans frothed, churning as violently as the clouds. Smoke wound tightly around the planet, gripping it in a barbed chokehold. As the sun vanished behind the curvature, the world plunged into darkness. Where once had been pinpricks of light, glittering connections weaving a hopeful spiderweb across the globe, there were now only embers as infernos continued to ravage the ground below.

"Oh my god," Penelope breathed, the first to break the stunned silence, reflexively gripping John's hand tighter. She turned her cheek away from the window and examined the sleek lines of her IR uniform to give her something to focus on, tangling her fingers in Sherbet's fur to hide the tremors.

Scott couldn't pick out a single landmark. He searched for cities, for familiar coordinates of old flight paths worn into his memory so firmly that he could have flown them blindfolded, but came up empty. Everything he had ever known was gone. Destroyed. Broken.

Virgil's voice came out as a strangled whisper. "Can someone switch seats with me?" He twisted to put his back to the window, a sickly pallor in the dull light as they waited for the sun to come back around. "Please?"

Kayo slipped out of her chair, gliding across the cockpit as though zero-gee were an old friend, and took Virgil's place with a gentle touch to his shoulder. She tilted her chin up ever-so-slightly, calculating, as though she were merely observing a data packet for a new mission, but even she couldn't escape the impact of the brutal reality, swiping surreptitiously at glistening eyes, vividly green against red rims as she battled against emotions.

Alan remained frozen. His hands were resting on the controls, but he made no move to shift Three away, into a route bound space-ward, away from the planet they had once loved and called home. His gaze was fixed on the sights. Even the ocean appeared ruined, murky, grey, no trace of life.

Scott disengaged his harness and was out of his seat in an instant. Zero-gee was weird. He'd never be used to it, he didn't think, not unless he spent an entire lifetime up here, but losing his perspective of up-and-down was a small price to pay if it meant he could reach Alan's side. Because that look? The blank stare with no depth? That never ended well. He'd seen that too many times on too many friends and hell no. So. Earth could wait. Earth would wait. It wasn't as if the situation could get any worse.

Fucking hell. He'd totally just jinxed them, hadn't he?

"Hey." He reached out and Alan shuddered under his hand, a full-body shiver as though he'd plunged into the Atlantic in January. "Alan."

"Y-ye-ah. Um. Y-yes. What?" Alan blinked a couple of times. "Fuck." He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes and exhaled. "Hey, I get a free language pass, right?"

Grandma let out a damp chuckle. "Ain't no swear jars in space, kid."

Scott just knew he was never going to hear the end of that one. Alan would be using it as an excuse to cuss out Gordon over the comms whenever he stepped foot in a rocket from now on. You know, provided that rescues ever became a thing again.

Alan offered a tiny smile. "Hell yeah. Free pass."

"Free pass," Scott agreed, "for now." He gave the kid's shoulder another squeeze and turned to catch John's eye. "Any chance of getting through to Mars now?"

John drummed a hand against his wrist console. "Not exactly." He gestured to the distant debris cruising on a higher orbit. "There's so much shit floating out here now and half of it's still active. It's screwing with pretty much everything now there's no one around to monitor it. I'd be lucky to reach Tracy Island with this level of interference, let alone Mars."

"Alright, so we've got to get further out." Scott pushed himself back to his seat. "Alan, you're up. Take it away."

"Slow and steady, Al," John interjected before Alan could reach for the throttle. "Most of the debris isn't registering on scans and we can't afford to take any hits."

Alan gave a low growl. "No back seat piloting, thank you very much."

Scott shot John a delighted grin. "Never thought I'd get to hear someone tell you that."

"Oi, can the peanut gallery shut up and let me focus on flying for a second?" Alan let the silence settle. "Thank you."

Scott couldn't look at John without laughing. He probably should have felt guiltier about that, given all that they had just witnessed, but he hadn't quite processed any of it yet and so while his brain continued to play catch-up he was giving himself a free pass on the humour front. His instinct was to settle back in his seat as the steady thrum of Three's engines glided through the cockpit, but zero-gee kept him captive, secured in thin air, a strangely disconcerting sensation. Then again, he'd never been a massive fan of spaceflight.

The Earth retreated out of view as Three rotated to face the depths beyond. Space may not have been infinite according to physics, but it sure as hell looked that way. Faced with darkness and backed by fire, it felt as though there were no safe places left to hide. Even the stars were their own threats, distant and deadly.

Alan eased them through the debris field, movements slick and simple as though this were just another video game level. He didn't even need EOS's input – bright holograms projecting potential impact points and prompted orbital vectors and a variety of information that suggested certain doom which Alan continued to ignore. They emerged into the empty vacuum of space beyond the reaches of Earth's orbit in one piece.

Kayo reached over to give him a high-five. "And that's how it's done, folks."

Alan met her high-five with a grin. "That's how it's done," he echoed. "John, over to you."

John's contacts seemed brighter than usual, gleaming in the dim light as though he'd somehow gained superhuman powers and was about to irradiate them all with laser-eyes. He flexed one hand and then the other, summoning EOS's avatar to his wrist without a word.

"Signal boosted," EOS informed him. "But we…" She faltered. "We may have a problem."

"When don't we?" Parker muttered, his first words since launch with the exception of a strangled gasp upon their first look at Earth.

John shot him a vaguely amused look. "Alright. Let's give this a shot. International Rescue hailing the New Martian Colony, does anyone copy?"

A flicker of movement caught Scott's attention. Gordon, still curled into his chair as though zero-gee couldn't quite figure out how to shift him – was shaking his head.

The radio was stuttering with static, choking on the stuff, white noise harsh and brittle and filling the cockpit with unease.

"Maybe we're still getting too much interference from Earth?" Penelope suggested.

Kayo's grip on her seat tightened. "Shouldn't be an issue this far out."

"I can take us closer to Mars?" Alan offered, twisting to peer over the back of his chair. "Or if we loop back around we could try using Five to boost the signal?"

John ignored them all. There was that faint tension coiling in his jaw that promised a headache was on its way. He moved to the front of the cockpit and pressed a hand to Three's main radio. Fine lines across his glove lit up white, almost painfully bright to look directly at. Brains cleared his throat, a hushed word of concern escaping him as he made to get out of his seat. John waved his other hand at him in dismissal without looking up.

Alan was watching him with wide eyes. "Uh, John, is that… like… safe?"

"Sure," John replied distractedly.

Virgil dragged a hand down his face and mouthed something uncomplimentary at the ceiling. Which, you know, fair enough. Scott got his frustration. John was the biggest hypocrite when it came to lecturing them all on knowing their limits and clearly that hadn't changed. Brains, folding back into his seat, kept his gaze fixed on that glowing glove.

Scott leaned across, trying to whisper softly enough that John wouldn't overhear. "Should I be concerned?"

"Yes," Brains answered instantly. "The c-contacts and the suit are different s-systems. They're not supposed to be linked. There are possible n-neurological implications."

"I can still hear you."

"I know," Brains continued dryly. "That was m-my intention."

Scott resisted the urge to punch a wall. "John, for fuck's sake."

"Swear jar," John replied, as if this was funny in any possibly way, the smug sonuvabitch. "Relax, I've got this. Just another minute."

"What are you even doing?" Alan queried, propping his chin on the back of his chair to watch. He looked a mixture of fascinated and horrified which was essentially the same emotions Scott was going through only much more intensely.

"Think of it as going through the back door… forcing them to answer… oh, you sneaky bastards…"

"Swear jar," Scott quipped, because c'mon, he just had to get back at John for that one.

"Scott," John muttered, still mostly focussed on the task at hand but sufficiently capable at multi-tasking to be able to throw an insult his brother's way at the same time. "Has anyone ever told you that you're not funny?"

"I think he's funny," Alan announced loyally.

"Al, you're biased – you don't get an opinion."

"How am I biased?"

John gave him a side-glance. "I'm not even going to bother answering that…" He trailed off with a wince.

Brains quietly covered his face with his hands and refused to watch.

"This is longer than one minute," Kayo pointed out.

John lifted his hand away from the radio and examined the glowing lines fade back to blue. EOS somehow managed to project a sense of disapproval through the colour of her avatar alone. He glared at her.

"Quit that."

"I'm not doing anything," EOS replied in a tone as biting as acid. "Not putting myself at risk..."

"Did it work or not?"

EOS grumbled. "Patching through to your comm now."

"Hey, what happened to the main radio?" Alan protested. "I wanna hear."

John swatted him and returned to his own chair, one hand pressed to his earpiece. Scott pinpointed the exact second something changed. It took a mere five seconds for the entire mood to shift. That brief hopefulness flickered. John closed his eyes and exhaled slowly.

"Well," he summarised neatly, "shit."

"Problem?" Grandma asked gently, because she was the only one who get away with asking the obvious without being shouted at, other than maybe Kayo because she was scary.

"The good news is…" John began, with a cautious look at Virgil – who did look distinctly as though he were on the verge of either bursting into tears or throwing up – neither of which were any fun on Earth let alone in zero-gee. "Actually, I don't know why I said that. There isn't any. Everything's terrible and we're pretty much screwed. The Martian colony won't let us land. They can't be sure we're not infectious so… But hey, they did wish us all a very happy Thanksgiving."

There was an ugly silence.

"I'm actually going to throw myself out an airlock," Kayo announced. "Anyone want to join me?"


Review?

Kat x