howdy, can I interest anyone in some uhhh angsty conversations between bros? Because that's what you're getting :)


The first time he woke up was a false start. He got so far as registering a pounding hangover and the fact that Virgil was still fast asleep, snoring away with an arm slung across Scott's middle and about as far from waking up as a hibernating bear, and promptly deciding to give into the tempting whispers of more sleep. The next time he was consciously aware of anything was shortly after lunch. Someone had tucked a blanket over him. The curtains were closed. Virgil was rather conspicuously missing.

On any other day, Scott would have felt guilty for sleeping half the day away, but right now he didn't really feel anything. Not in a bad way. Just – it was like his emotions hadn't had a chance to wake up yet. He shuffled upright and slumped against the wall as the final remnants of that hangover threatened to make themselves known. Memories crept back cautiously – flashes of muted words and vibrant drink and a story which should never have been a reality.

Someone had left a glass of water for him on the nightstand. A skimmed layer of dust decorated the top – and if that had managed to penetrate the filtration system then they needed to monitor the path of that radioactive ashfall very closely, because clearly the ranch wouldn't be enough to protect them. The hangars were airtight – maybe it would be worth moving a few days' worth of supplies down there. Or-

Thinking was entirely too difficult. Sorta sluggish. Maybe that was the hangover talking. He took another sip of water and grimaced. Okay. So. Regrets. He… he had so many regrets. Including but not limited to last night's drinking session. At least the brain fog was preventing him from fixating on any particular point and spiralling into a nice game of self-blame – although he suspected he'd head down that path later, when he could safely consider himself a functioning human again unlike right now when he was sympathising with the infected at the fences because he didn't feel too far away from their state.

EOS didn't answer when he activated the projector on the desk. Evidently Thunderbird Five was once again out of contact, even with the additional boost. A quick peer between the curtains proved this point – that thick grey film had collected across the clouds. The landscape was tainted faintly yellow as if the Earth itself were sickening. Radiation readings came back a few ticks higher than the previous day, but it wasn't in the amber yet. So long as they didn't go outside, they shouldn't have too many problems.

Last night he hadn't really comprehended the story. He'd heard everything Virgil had said, but he hadn't exactly absorbed that information, let alone processed the implications. Now, with nothing other than his own thoughts for company, he had all the time in the world to consider it.

Scott still had a lot of unanswered questions but mostly he was just frustrated. With himself, to be precise. If he'd driven faster, taken a risk on a highway, not stopped to sleep for as long or as frequently, set off sooner after the dust storm had dissipated… He'd been so close, but Gordon had slipped through his grasp – through all of their grasps, apparently, with the exception of Alan who'd been kept out of the loop the entire time and so probably had good reason to be upset with everyone – yet again and now there was an entire state between them. Maybe even more than one. Not so far on a map but an infinite distance when the dangers that separated them were considered.

He tipped his head back until he hit the wall. The ceiling swirled in front of him.

"Fuck," he hissed.

Okay. So. Gordon was looking for him. Gordon was also looking for some sort of tech that enabled genetic coding or at least he was on the hunt for the research documents along those lines. Where would he head next? The obvious answer, at least in Scott's mind, was a bunker or a military base. Which didn't exactly narrow the options down very much because the bunkers' coordinates were off the grid and the military bases were all either overrun by infected or would be on high alert. Scott was the only one out of the five of them who'd ever had clearance on that level which wasn't particularly helpful given said clearance had been retracted the second that he'd left USAF.

A sharp rap came from the door, short, snappy, not enough caution to be Virgil and therefore declaring the newcomer likely to be John – because Alan was probably still in hiding. Scott nearly dropped the glass of water. Apparently he was more out of it than he'd realised if a simple knock was all it had taken to startle him.

"Go away, John," he announced, a touch more dramatically than he'd intended. "I'm having a crisis."

There was a pause.

"Um…" Alan sounded uncertain. "It's not John. But… I can go away if you're having a crisis… Wait, but that sounds bad. Are you okay? Shit, I'm the last person who should be asking. Do you want me to get Virgil? Define crisis. I'm gonna get Virg. Or John. I don't know. I'm concerned now. Can I come in? I mean, I wasn't here to fix a crisis but I'm great at talking people out of spirals. Which is ironic. Like, I get how ironic that is."

Scott rolled off the bed and nearly faceplanted onto the floor. "Motherfu-uh-fudge. I… one moment." His foot was caught in the blanket. Said blanket put up a fight. He yanked his foot free with an exasperated growl and crashed into the wall. He tore open the door and propped himself against the frame with a breathless smile. "Hey. Hi. Hello."

Alan blinked at him. "Are you okay?"

"I am just peachy."

"Yeesh." Alan cringed. "That bad?"

"I am the epitome of humanity."

"Dude."

Scott repressed the urge to knock his head against the doorframe. "Shall we try this again?"

"Uh huh." Alan nodded frantically. "Yep. Yup. Good plan." He knitted his fingers together, ducking his head as he took a deep breath. "Right. Okay. Hi. Can we talk?"

"That sounds ominous," Scott teased.

Alan let his shoulders slump. "Please?" he asked in a very small voice.

"Sure." Scott stepped aside to let Alan slip through the gap. "Make yourself comfy, kiddo. Watch out for the blanket of death though. It wraps around your ankles and drags you into the depths of Hell unless you're careful."

Alan snorted. "Is it sentient?"

"Yep."

"I'm gonna wear it as the Cloak of Levitation."

"The… What now?"

"Doctor Strange's cloak? Marvel comics?"

"Wow," Scott deadpanned. "You continue to surprise me with how shockingly nerdy you can be."

Alan instinctively started to laugh then cut himself off with a guilty frown. He curled his fingers around the cuffs of his sleeves to keep himself from tapping. "Can we not pretend that nothing happened?"

"It would be an easier option," Scott pointed out, not as a hint but merely as an observation. "If you wanted to take it, no one would blame you."

Alan sank onto the edge of the bed. "I would blame me," he confessed. "I need to apologise. Properly, not that half-hearted crap I pulled last night just because John shouted at me." He held up a hand as Scott went to speak. "No, don't- don't give me an out. Because none of it was okay. And you deserve better. Don't make excuses for me. I was so far outta line."

"You were," Scott agreed, sitting beside him but leaving that semblance of space between them so that Alan didn't feel too crowded. "But you've been able to recognise that and now you're apologising for it, so we can move on and do better. We can't change the past, only learn from it. As long as we try our best, no one can find fault with that."

Alan took a moment to turn the words over. "What if I screw up again?"

"Then you screw up again. You apologise again. You move on. We all make mistakes, Al, all the time. Just ask Virgil – he's probably got a list of all the messes I've gotten myself into over the years."

Alan offered the faint glimmers of a smile before it flickered back out of existence. He studied the blanket, curled in a taut heap across the floorboards. "John and I talked. And… I mean, I already felt guilty. I regretted saying that to you as soon as I said it. But I'm not the best at apologising. And then I'd let it drag on for so long that I didn't know how to fix it or start that conversation and so I just kept feeling worse and worse and then you asked if I was angry at you and... how could I ever be angry at you for looking after me? So I ran away. Because running away is apparently what our family does now."

"I know you said not to interrupt," Scott interjected quietly. "But I just want to correct you there. Gordon's not running away. He's running after something. Someone, too, because he thinks he's finding us rather than us finding him."

"True," Alan conceded with a tired sigh. "God, I don't know. I had this whole speech planned out in my head. I was up half the night thinking of it. But now I don't know what I'm doing or what I'm saying."

"You know," Scott said, trying not to smile. "You could just say that you're sorry. And that would be enough." He leant back on his hands so that he could glimpse Alan's expression. "I get it, you know? You were upset. There was a lot going on – there still is. You lashed out because you were hurting, not because you intentionally wanted to upset me."

"Except I sort of did, in that moment. And I know I was upset and learning about Gordon was a massive bombshell, but that's not an excuse."

"I'm not excusing your actions," Scott amended. "I'm saying that it's understandable."

Alan fell silent.

"I made you cry," he whispered.

"You did," Scott admitted. "But so has Gordon. John too. Even Virgil." He shot his brother a teasing smile. "And don't get me started on Kayo."

Alan gave a damp chuckle. "She's scary." He bit his lip. "I still miss her though." He drew his knees up to his chest. "Did the others really make you cry?"

"Over the years, sure. But that's family for you – we can make each other miserable but we also make each other happy."

Alan let out a shaky sigh. "I really am sorry, you know? I didn't mean what I said. I was just being an asshole."

"Hey, watch it. That's my little brother you're talking about."

"I love you."

Somehow, the words seemed to carry more weight when they were silent.

"I love you too," Scott signed back.

Alan barrelled into his open arms. "I am so, so sorry."

"I know you are. It's okay. We're okay."


Tracking down Virgil didn't take too much effort. The door down to the hangars was propped open by a particularly weighty hardback and a stream of music drifted through the gap. Scott followed it to the source and peered over the railing on the observation deck to the carnage of equipment strewn across the floor. Ordinarily Virgil kept everything orderly – each item had its own precise place and God help anyone who thought otherwise – but now it was difficult to see a patch of clear floor.

"What's he working on?" Alan queried past a mouthful of out-of-date-but-still-sorta-edible cornflakes. He leant over the railing to take a closer look. "Isn't that one of your drones?"

"I have drones?"

"Thunderbird One has drones," Alan clarified, with a final squint for good measure. He shrugged and turned on his heels. "I'm going to search the ranch for more clues on Gordon."

Alan's quick getaway suddenly made sense as John appeared from behind One. Clearly they needed to have another conversation, only this one would hopefully involve a lot less shouting. Yeesh. Scott had been on the wrong side of an angry John before. Add in a protective John and it was no wonder that Alan was hiding from him. A problem, yes, but an understandable one.

It took delicate manoeuvring to pick a path through the mess. Virgil was too engrossed in his task to pay attention to anything else, so Scott slipped by unnoticed and motioned at One's cockpit to John, trying not to laugh when it only took him thirty seconds to grapple up as opposed to John's three minutes.

And-

For the first time in weeks-

Months-

So long that it seemed impossible to even imagine how normal this felt-

And yet-

Here he was.

Standing in Thunderbird One's cockpit.

"You alright?" John asked softly, hanging back to give him a chance to take it all in, to immerse himself in that sense of belonging.

"Yeah," Scott breathed, trailing a hand over the oh-so-familiar controls, the edge of the lockers, the seam at the back of the seat cushions. "I'm alright. It's just a lot." He sank into his usual chair and closed his eyes for a moment. One belonged in the air just as much as he did and it felt like a betrayal to be back at the controls without stretching their wings, but for now this was enough.

John moved to observe Virgil from the window. "He's trying to increase the shielding on the drones, boost the signal too, so it can stand up to the radiation. The idea is that we can use it to identify possible paths Gordon may have taken. Tyre tracks and so on."

"Anything on Kayo and Penelope?"

John paused. "No," he confessed, not even trying to hide the guilt in his voice, as if their disappearance were somehow a personal failure on his part. "I've got nothing. EOS has nothing – or at least she didn't when the connection to Five was last active. I doubt we're even on the same continent." He switched the subject before Scott could dwell on that wonderfully pessimistic statement. "Are we going to talk about last night?"

Scott tipped back in his chair to scrutinise John's expression. "Which part? A lot happened."

"Do you blame yourself?"

"Jeez. Don't hold back, will you?"

John crossed his arms. "No point in wasting words. It's a simple enough question. Alan said he made you cry. What he said hit you hard. So. Do you blame yourself?"

"Oh, come on."

John studied him. "Well?" he questioned, quieter this time. "Do you?"

"I don't like this question."

"Scott."

"John."

"Can you-" John took a deliberately deep breath. "Okay," he continued, more calmly. "I'm going to ask you one last time – do you blame yourself for what happened to me?"

"Yes."

A distant crash echoed across the hangar. Flashes of red-hot metal reflected off the support beams along the ceiling. None of it registered. There was just the question and the unwanted answer and no lies this time because lies required energy and focus. Lies drove people apart, not brought them together, and their family was fractured enough as it was.

John leant heavily against the bulkhead. "I thought we already had this conversation."

"Exactly," Scott shot back. "So why are we having it again?"

John gestured wildly at him. "Because apparently you're incapable of listening. I told you. I thought you would listen to me, for some godforsaken reason, but no, clearly it went in one ear and out the other. You can't take responsibility for someone else's choices."

Scott tilted his head. "Are you… angry?" he diagnosed.

"Angry? No. Frustrated as hell? Yes." John narrowed his eyes. "And you are not allowed to use that as further fuel for self-loathing."

Distant music dimmed. A drone whirred into view and then dipped back down. Evidently Virgil was making progress, which was more than could be said for this conversation. Hopefully Alan was having better luck upstairs.

"We can't keep doing this," John said at last. "Over and over again. It's not sustainable."

"What are we doing?" Scott asked, because frankly he'd come down here to drag some more answers out of John which Virgil may have glossed over but also to discuss Alan, not himself, and somehow neither of these topics had been broached but the one conversation he'd wanted to avoid had entered the spotlight. "I don't know what this is. Or what you want from me."

"You bottle everything up."

"So do you."

"This isn't about me."

"Isn't it?"

"Don't do that."

Scott frowned. "Do what?"

"Turn the conversation around on me. Deflect. It's such crap. You're avoiding the point yet again. We do this on repeat, and we never get anywhere. You push yourself to the limit and then past it and you say you'll talk to me before you reach that point, but you never do, and we always end up here. You say it'll be different, but it never is."

"That's not-"

"Answer me this – if the feeling never goes away, what are you going to do? Forget saving the world for a second, forget all of it, I'm talking about that feeling, the one you've been running from for years. It keeps coming back and each time it hits you worse than before, probably because you refuse to get help and now Dad isn't around to force you into therapy, so what's next?"

That-

Well.

Shit.

Scott studied the scars across his knuckles. "I don't know," he admitted, whisper soft. "I don't- that's not… I can-"

John anticipated his next words before he could voice them.

"Don't say you'll handle it. You never do. And I get it but come on. I don't know how to help you because you won't ask when you need me. You won't even talk to Virgil about it. And you're getting worse. Being on Five helped for a while but you didn't focus on yourself once. You spent the entire time taking care of everyone else and looking for a way to save the world. But how the hell do you expect to heal if you don't give yourself the chance?"

"You're hardly a therapist."

"I'm better than nothing."

"I'm handling it. Okay? It's not- Look, sometimes everything gets a bit much and then… Alan had crappy timing, that's why his words had such an impact, but that's not- I can handle it. I am handling it. I take five and then I get back up. You know that."

John looked distinctly unimpressed. "You're cracking up."

"Thanks," Scott deadpanned. "Very reassuring, John. I really appreciate your advice."

"If you carry on like this, we're going to lose you, and it won't be to the apocalypse, it'll be to yourself."

Scott felt vaguely sick. He was ninety-percent certain that it wasn't due to the final hints of his hangover.

"What am I supposed to do?" he asked finally. "Seriously. What? Talk to you?"

"It would be a start. But not-" John chose his next words carefully. "You need to talk to Virgil."

"Virg has enough on his plate."

"I know, but you can't rely solely on me."

"I thought you just said you were better than no one. Anyway, at least you have a psych qualification."

"That's not the…" John fixed his sights on the controls to avoid looking up. "Because I'm probably not going to make it out of this. And that's not- I'm not giving up. I want to live – which is ironic given you seem hell-bent on dying – but what we want and what we get are very different things and they often don't match. So, if we're still not making any progress here, I'm scared. Because I don't know what that means for you when- if I'm no longer around."

"Don't say that."

"You're good at math. You run the odds and try telling me that they're in my favour. It doesn't matter – well, it does – but if the scales are already tipped against me, then I need to prioritise. I've got approximately three weeks left before the meds are no longer an option and so far I have no plan. So. I can keep searching, but I can't dedicate everything to a hopeless cause. Look to the future, right? If that future doesn't include me, I've still got to plan for it because that's my damn job. I figure out what keeps everyone safe and implement those strategies. So – we've got to find Gordon, you need to confide in someone – be that Virgil, or Kayo or even Gordon – and if I can help with a cure then great. We know radiation has some sort of effect on it, certain mutations provide immunity and specific frequencies drive it away. That's more information than we had a week ago."

"Sometimes," Scott said slowly, "you genuinely scare me. How are you… how do you-?"

John pushed himself away from the wall to pace. Scott twisted in the seat to watch him.

"Do you believe in an afterlife?"

Scott nearly choked on his own inhale. "Um… I haven't really thought about it."

John shot him a look, as if to say liar, but didn't call him out on it.

"Sometimes, when the world was normal, we would get calls too late. You know the ones I mean, when there's nothing we can do, and those callers knew it too. They weren't ringing for a saviour. They were ringing because they didn't want to be alone. So I answered. Always. Even if it meant EOS waking me in the middle of the night. And I would stay with them until the end. Some were calm, some were scared, but all of them… in that last moment, they were always peaceful. It's as if they could see something I couldn't. So, I'm not sure what I believe in, but if… if I get to see Mom, or if it's just lights out, either way I get to feel that peace. So, yes, I am terrified, and I want more time, but… I'm okay."

"I'm not. Okay with that, I mean."

"I know," John replied softly, coming to a stop. "I wouldn't expect you to be. But some things are unavoidable."

"This wasn't supposed to be one of them. I mean, come on, that's one of the rare perks of being the eldest – I'm not supposed to see any of you die."

John flinched. "Scott."

"Right, right, sorry. But…" Scott forced himself to uncurl his fists. "How do you expect me to do this without you?"

"By not doing it alone. You have Virgil. Grandma, too. Kayo is more emotionally intelligent than she lets on, you can confide in her too once we find her. Parker cares about you. And… Gordon literally ran into Hell knowing he's at greater risk than us, just to find you. He's not a little kid anymore. He'd do anything for you – all you need to do is ask. And that's probably going to be the hardest part for you – asking for help. But you've got to do it and if you won't do it for yourself then you've got to do it for me."

Silence seemed suffocating.

"I didn't shout at Alan. I would never do that. I helped him understand exactly why, quite aside from the fact that he was wrong, what he said was cruel."

Scott risked a glance up. John was studying the expanse of the hangar through the window.

"Alan apologised to me."

"Good."

"Do you think…" Scott caught himself. The thought unravelled, seeking a voice despite the faint panic at the thought of confessing. "Do you think if I fix this, if I can figure it out and reverse all of it, save the world… do you think it'll finally be enough?"

John was quiet for a moment. "Enough for what?"

"Enough to forgive myself."

John turned away from the window. "I think," he said at last, "that the only person who can truly answer that is yourself. I also think it depends on exactly what you believe you need to earn forgiveness for."

Scott repressed a dark laugh. "Everything."

John considered that. "Do you honestly believe that?" He offered a tired smile. "C'mon, I think Virgil's done with those drones."

Scott remained frozen in his seat for a moment longer. By the time he followed John back down to the hangar, Alan had joined them, so he fixed a smile on his face and tried not to think about anything other than the present so that the past and the future couldn't haunt him.


The drones worked like a charm. Virgil tried not to look smug as Alan proceeded to nerd-out over the engineering complexities. Data started rolling in slowly and then in a rush. It took longer than usual to dissect each piece as EOS wasn't on hand and John couldn't use his contacts.

John set up a projector in the centre of the table in Brains' lab. The livestream from the drone was beamed directly back onto the blank screen on the wall whilst the rest of the data hovered above the tabletop. Alan batted a collection of thermal signatures over to his own console to take a closer look. John immediately went into Sherlock Holmes mode, on the hunt for patterns, clues, any signs of a new path left by tyres in the past few days.

"They're gathering in these weird clusters." Alan broke the contemplative silence, glancing up to realise that everyone was looking at him. He sent the thermal scans back over to the main projections. "I mean, yeah, the majority of infected travel in packs anyway, but check this out."

Scott stared at the thermal scan and then back to the livestream, but all that the camera relayed was thick bands of clouds. "I thought the infected didn't give off heat signatures."

"Technically," Virgil corrected him, "they do, but very faintly. Nowhere near on that scale."

"So, what?" Alan hopped onto the edge of the table. "The drone's malfunctioning?"

"Possibly, if the shielding can't stand up to the radiation."

Virgil had never been a convincing liar. Clearly this was one thing which hadn't changed since the world had burnt. He separated the scan into individual parts and examined each one with the scrutiny usually dedicated to medical assessments.

Alan slid off the tabletop and sidled closer, peering over Virgil's shoulder. "What have we got?"

"Something impossible," Virgil murmured distractedly. "John, take a look at this."

John caught the hologram, took a second, then looked up sharply. "Is this a malfunction?"

"Not as far as I can tell."

"Hey." Scott knocked on the table to draw their attention. "Mind filling us in?"

Virgil hesitated. John sent the hologram back to the centre of the table and took over explanation duties.

"Infected provide much lower heat signatures than this. On this level – these are humans. Healthy humans. And from the looks of things… quite a lot of them."

"Where did they come from?" Alan wondered aloud, sort of contemplative and disbelieving and yet hopping from foot to foot with that itch to get out there and help, to rescue, as he'd been taught to do almost his entire life. "And where are they going?"

"Presumably wherever Gordon's headed," John concluded. He gathered a series of holograms into a data packet and copied it over to Virgil's console. "Tyre tracks. The remains of several infected, killed by gunshots to the head. It forms a trail, heading North."

For a moment, no one said anything. Scott wasn't sure if they needed a few minutes to process or if they were all simply shellshocked. It was a pretty big revelation – they'd assumed that the only survivors remaining on the planet had been skulking in bunkers ever since the final Doomsday. And yet here was footage proving that a group of fifteen had somehow kept themselves alive on the surface, despite the dangers – not just the infected but everyday risks too. It reminded him of something the Hood had mentioned, about no bunkers broadcasting on open radio channels for fear of attracting unwanted visitors – at the time Scott had brushed it off, but now he reconsidered – had the Hood known all along that there were other survival groups on Earth?

"It makes sense," Virgil said at last, and Scott nearly jumped at the sudden broken silence. "Only those who could afford tickets made it into the bunkers. What happened to the ordinary people who also have immunity? Because there have to be others."

"So…" Alan began hesitantly, piecing the information together like a jigsaw. "There are probably survival groups around the world. We just discovered one, heading in roughly the same direction as Gordon." He looked to Virgil for confirmation. "Right? Like that's… that's what we're saying here?" He lifted his hands as if in surrender. "I just want to be sure that we're all on the same page."

"Yes," John answered before the kid could go off on a further tangent. "That's exactly what we're saying."

"Oh." Alan nodded. "Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Just checking." He bit on the ragged edge of his thumbnail. Scott knocked his hand back down before he could make it bleed again and he blinked, as if only just realising what he was doing. He tipped back on his hands, just within reach of the projector, shattering a hologram into thousands of tiny light shards. "What now? What's our plan?"

Virgil switched off the projector. Without that faint whine, the lab seemed cold and empty. It didn't seem right to be in here without Brains, or at the very least MAX, without the bubbling of some sort of experiment and the glow of too many holographic IR designs.

"Scott?" Alan murmured, more of a prompt than a question. "What do we do?"

"That," Scott replied slowly, glancing to John only to see his own concerns reflected back at him, "is a very good question."


It was always easier taking action than it was sitting around waiting for something, anything, to change. Getting the facts, using them, formulating a strategy with room for a certain margin of error because luck was never on their side – and if it was then you could guarantee the universe was hiding yet another curveball just around the corner. Sitting around the ranch had set them all on edge. Of course there was that degree of relief, undeniable and real, a sort of exhausted elation at being together again, but it was cut down to shreds by the obvious gaping hole in the family.

It was bad enough knowing Kayo and Penelope were out there amid the living dead, but at least they had each other. Gordon was utterly alone, something he'd never coped well with, and he was at several distinct disadvantages on top of that. International Rescue had always been a success due to teamwork, but saving the world alone? That was a recipe for disaster and Scott couldn't stop thinking about it, couldn't stop replaying that final conversation they'd shared in that tiny bedroom safe and sound with no idea that their lives were about to get even more screwed over. Except – Scott reminded himself – Gordon had known. Not exactly, not like precognition or anything along those lines, but he'd had some semblance that everything had been about to go to shit and he'd tried to warn Scott, even gone as far as mentioning his concerns to John, but everyone had brushed him aside and now they were here and he'd taken matters into his own hands.

"I should have listened," Scott muttered, now, elbow-deep in soap suds as the kitchen sink near overflowed because he kept getting caught between his memories and his present reality.

Virgil knocked their shoulders together just firmly enough to draw him out of his thoughts. "Gordon doesn't see the future. It wasn't like he point blank told you not to go on that satellite."

"He was concerned. He knew it would take me back to Earth. That I'd get stuck here."

"I'm ninety-percent certain he didn't phrase it like that."

Virgil was partially distracted. At the kitchen table, Alan was running the maths on Two's fuel reserves. It wasn't looking good. They needed to focus on solutions for the future, not warnings from the past, but here Scott was trying to scrape off whatever-the-hell was baked onto this oven tray and the washing-up gloves had holes in them, so his hands were wet and he wanted to scrub them under boiling water because it felt like blood, slippery across his palms and fingers and the goddam oven tray kept sliding away from him…

He inhaled sharply.

"Why are you still thinking about this?" Virgil asked, only half-listening because Alan was spitting curses under his breath and John was missing again but the bathroom door was locked so he was probably suffering side-effects again and so really, all things considered, Scott needed to just let this go already. "When have any of us ever listened to his squid sense? There's no reason why you should have taken him seriously."

And that – it grated. Because it was a ridiculous comment. Virgil clearly meant nothing malicious by it but it just-

"Why not?" Scott shot back, a touch snappier than he'd intended. Virgil eyed him over the data packet he was scrolling through, tainted blue by the glow. "Why don't we listen to his squid sense? It's just another phrase for instincts. You listen to my instincts all the time. Why not Gordon's?"

"Because," Virgil began, caught himself, and winced. "I was about to say because it's Gordon, but now I realise how awful that sounds."

He leant against the sideboard, observing the radiation-choked clouds rolling in along the horizon in a writhing mass of charcoal grey, and searched for words.

"Because Gordon's spent his entire life creating this persona. People like him. He brings everyone together. If there's tension, he fixes it. He's incredibly good at switching roles, to be whoever is needed in the moment. The issue is that as a family, we need him to be the joker, especially given our jobs, but he's been playing that character for so long that it's sometimes difficult to forget that's all it is – another act. I'm not saying it's right. But it is what it is. We learn from history and do better for the future. We'll find him and we'll listen. But this? Whatever you're doing here? This isn't helping anyone. Gordon's gone and what ifs aren't gonna bring him back, we are."

"At this rate we might not," Alan cut in, trying to disguise the fact that he'd been eavesdropping for the entire conversation. He pointed to the red error message displayed above the projector. "I've run the math. Check it - no, seriously, please check it - but I keep coming to the same answer."

"We don't have enough fuel," Scott concluded.

Alan trailed off. "Exactly." He glowered at the projections as if he could change the numbers simply by offering a heated enough gaze. They remained an unblinking red.

Virgil set aside his own projections and leant over Alan's shoulder. "Okay." He gripped the back of the chair hard enough for the wood to give a protesting creak. Alan twisted to shoot him a concerned look. "Okay," he repeated, quieter, tangling a hand in his hair. "That's… okay."

"It really isn't," Alan pointed out. "Okay, I mean - it's not okay. Do we have fuel here?"

"We did," Scott recalled, peeling off the washing-up gloves and trying not to grimace as they clung to his hands like a second skin. "But we were due a top-up. We had a date set for about a week into October. Except-"

"Zombies?" Alan suggested.

Virgil gave a faintly hysterical laugh. "Zombies."

Scarlet warning symbols flashed along the projectors. Scott silenced the proximity alarm before it could begin wailing again. It was the third time it had gone off in the past hour – the creatures were slowly but surely breaking through the defences. Retreating to the hangars was always a possibility but it was hardly a long-term solution. They needed to get the hell outta here.

Unfortunately, he could only see one path forward, and it wasn't one he particularly liked.

"Run the numbers again, but this time include One's tank."

Alan frowned. "What, as in taking everything from One and putting it in Two?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying."

Virgil took a step back to stand at his side. "That would mean leaving One here."

"Locked in a hangar," Scott pointed out. "Nothing's breaking though those doors any time soon. Look, I love my girl, but we need practicality not speed."

"Never thought I'd hear you say that."

Scott gritted his teeth. "Yeah, well… me neither, but here we are."

"We still come up short." Alan twisted in his chair to face them. "I mean, it's better, but it's still not… We need more fuel." He drew his feet onto the edge of his seat, tugging absently at a threadbare sock, still wearing Gordon's hoodie. "I don't know… is there…?" He flailed a hand. "I've got nothing."

Scott examined the numbers. The satisfaction of a solution nestled just within reach. "We've got enough fuel to make it to the nearest reserve."

"Which is?" Virgil prompted.

"I still have USAF bases memorised. There's one within range. Six-minute flight from here."

"Six minutes?" Virgil sounded as affronted as he looked, because an insult to Thunderbird Two was an insult to him personally.

"Six minutes," Scott confirmed, "because we're already pushing it on the fuel front. You'll be limping onto that runway and you know it. If you push to supersonic, we'll run dry before we can get there and I don't fancy crashing a Thunderbird in the middle of the walking dead or a radiation storm, do you?" He clapped a hand to Virgil's shoulder. "Six minutes, Virg. And then we'll need John to practise his favourite hobby to get us to those fuel reserves because my security clearance would have been torn up the second I quit active service."

Alan perked up, intrigued. "I thought John's favourite hobby was stargazing?"

"Right. It is." Scott tried not to laugh at the kid's expression as he added, teasingly, "but our brother's always had a thing for breaking the law."