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It’s an almost impossible turn of events, when Scott and his family’s arch-nemesis have the same thing at stake.
IR was too late to stop him, despite their best efforts, and now there’s a hydro dam in Malaysia that’s on the brink of failure, and Scott and Kayo are running for the exit, escape their only remaining option.
Hopefully it remains as their only option. Scott’s not sure they’ll make it out anymore. When the catwalk above the turbines had started to groan and creak with the pressures of the failing structure all around them, Scott had turned to Kayo to get her ahead of him, closer to the relative safety of solid ground at the end of the bridge. The metal of the cat walk is buckling, and the man responsible has stumbled, foiled in his pursuit by his foot, snagged in the grille. His eyes are golden, wild and manic, and he’s frothing, screaming at them both.
But she’d already turned, and run back the way they came–back towards their pursuer, back towards the Hood.
Their instincts are different. Scott’s voice gives him away before he realizes what he’s saying, and he shouts “Leave him!” before he can think better of it. International Rescue was founded on the principle that everyone deserves to be saved, regardless of circumstance. Scott’s never known a scenario where that’s not applicable before now. He wonders if any one of his brothers would have turned back, to help the man who’d been hounding their family since the day he’d taken their father from them.
But it’s Kayo. And seeing the pair of them side by side, there are questions about the Hood and Tanusha Kyrano that have long been unanswered, but now’s not the time to ask them.
The catwalk jolts, bucking downward and Scott latches onto the side of it, even as Kayo flings herself forward, to her knees on the ground beside the Hood. Scott can see her shout something to him, as she wrenches at his ankle, but her voice is lost over the roar of the turbines below, whirring faster and faster past the point of overloading.
“Kayo, come on!” he shouts again, and pulls out a cable clip and his grapple pack. He fires one shot forward and it lands with a crunch, embedding into the concrete platform at the end of the catwalk. He clips this to his belt, loads and readies another, to shoot across the gap if the bridge really starts to go. The Hood is still screeching, and Scott’s never encountered the man in person before. He’d never realized that the phantom haunting his family may actually be insane. Kayo’s unsnagged his foot from the catwalk, and Scott beckons to her again, as there’s another lurch. The cable clipped to his belt snaps taught as he drops downward, losing nearly five feet of altitude with a dizzying clench of his stomach. “Kayo!”
This time she turns, leaves the Hood to scramble backwards, away from her, back the way they came. Getting antsy, Scott fires the second shot, but it goes wide, catches on the tumbling catwalk instead of the solidity behind it. Kayo only just manages to get enough purchase on the bridge to catch it in her gloved palms. The left side of it twists, gives way beneath her, before she can swing her legs upward to take more of her weight. She yells something, but the roar of wind and power beneath them has only grown louder, and Scott can’t hear her. She doesn’t hear him as he tells her to hold on, though the strain of the grapple on his hand is painful, almost too much.
The Hood has cleared the bridge entirely, back on the far side. His shoulders are broad, heaving, and those eyes are bright with fury as he stares at Kayo, dangling by her hands over the roaring turbines. His eyes tear away from her and Scott can’t resist their magnetic pull upward, as blue and gold lock across the distance.
The hook end of the grapple embedded in the metal grate isn’t enough. The bridge twists, jerks again, and on Scott’s side of the chasm, detaches almost entirely. He’s hanging by the clip on his belt now, and the jerk of the grapple gun in his hand nearly yanks it from his grasp as he feeds more cable to compensate.
And the look in the eyes of the man across the gap says all too plainly that he knows Scott can’t hold on. That Kayo will fall in mere moments. Scott isn’t sure what passes between them in that instant of connection–but the Hood looks down, at the bridge on his side, still holding. He steps from the safety he’s reached, half sliding, half climbing down the bridge, and undoes the grapple. It jerks in Scott’s hand again–the man is shockingly strong–and he returns to the farside, clipping the hook, secure, onto a bollard rooted in concrete.
The cable snaps taught, and Scott eases just a foot or more of length out of the winch, and then splices the two lengths of cable together, secure. Kayo’s already swinging her way towards him, hand over hand, as Scott watches the Hood vanish back into the facility, tearing itself to pieces around them. The turbines below them are screaming now, things are really falling apart.
When he and Kayo get clear, he’s not sure if he wants to know the answers to the questions he finds himself asking.