Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Five months.

It had been five consecutive months since he’d last set foot on earth. Alan having gotten out of monitoring duty for two turns in a row now. Not that John minded all that much. He’d been built for monitoring duty after all, with a complete knowledge bank of languages in his head, more acute and sensitive hearing for those quiet calls laced in static – a feature he sometimes found wholly unnecessary and more trouble than it was worth, so he occasionally thought about asking Brains to dial it back – and built to withstand the vacuum of space.

Though one of the reasons he was even getting to go back now was because Brains hadn’t been able to do a full system check on him like he had his brothers due to the aforementioned extended stay in space. And it seemed that Jeff, father, had listened to the man’s concerns and so had finally put his foot down on baby brother getting to spend another month on earth. John thought he could be fully responsible for his own system checks, but he understood that it gave Brains peace of mind to do it himself, and by extension, their father. Even Virgil, the engineer among them and, for all intents and purposes, their field medic, also agreed to the need for these system checks.

But John hated having to be completely shut down for these checks and hated the way rebooting felt afterwards. Scott, Gordon, and Alan hated them too. Especially Scott, as big brother hated being immobile for any length of time. Virgil was the only one who didn’t mind being shut down for a while and tended to be slow to reboot. The middle Tracy had come to love sleep and had learned to mimic it too well.

But even though he wasn’t looking forward to it, John was sure he could get Brains to do the check immediately, and then he’d have an entire month on Earth to look forward to. Maybe he’d even get to go on a rescue this time.

Speaking of rescues, John glanced over at the radio where the constant background noise of voices emanated, but so far, none had broken through with cries for help. He hoped that none would, especially when he looked back at the clock and noted that there wasn’t much longer to go. With any luck, all he’d have to do was sit and wait for Thunderbird Three to arrive, especially since he’d already checked everything and made sure the station was ready for Alan to take over.

Yes, not long at all.

He passed the time by looking out the window at the stars beyond, as he usually did, but John was immediately across the room and at the main console as soon as “Thunderbird Three to Thunderbird Five, come in” crackled over the radio.

“Thunderbird Five here, go ahead,” he replied to his older brother, a smile clear in his voice. He was good at expressing himself like that, had to be.  

“We’re ready to dock if you’re ready to head home, spaceman.”

“You’re all good to dock Thunderbird Three, and make sure Alan gets over here immediately, would ya?” He smirked when he heard the laugh Scott tried to hide with an unnecessary cough (they didn’t even have lungs) and grumbling from their youngest.

“F.A.B. John. See you in a minute.” With that, the transmission ended.

John made his way back to his bedroom to grab the bag he’d packed hours ago, and by the time the docking tube opened for Alan, John was waiting nearby.

“Well, someone’s eager to leave,” the younger commented a bit sullenly, and John barely restrained an eye roll.  

“Like you don’t count down the time and tell me every second I owe you.”

“I don’t do that!”

“Uh, huh, sure, kid,” he said in disbelief but couldn’t keep the grin off his face. “Well, see you in a month!” He then turned towards the access hatch and the boarding tube beyond.  

He heard a displeased huff behind him before Alan eventually called out, “Bye, John!”

He glanced over his shoulder and gave one last wave before stepping through the hatch and finally entered the waiting spacecraft. He set his bag down quickly before making his way to the cockpit, where he found Scott waiting in the copilot’s seat.

Scott beamed upon seeing him and stood up to pull him into a hug, which John returned tightly. Because wow, he hadn’t seen his brothers in person in five months.

When they pulled away, Scott returned to his previous seat, leaving the pilot’s chair empty for John, who quickly began prepping the rocket for the return journey to Earth.

“You ready to get home?” Scott asked when there was a pause in the system checks.

“You bet!” John responded, accompanied by the rumble of engines and firing of boosters. The docking ring disengaged with a clunk.

“Hmmm. You almost seem excited for a systems check.”

“Well, if it gets me down to earth, then maybe I could be,” he retorted as he took Three out in an arc. Swinging her back around towards Earth, before finally engaging her rockets fully.

Even without looking at Scott, John could tell his brother had started to frown. “Five months is a long time to be up in space alone.”

The space monitor shrugged. “I was built for it, Scott.”

“Yeah, well, when Brains and Dad decided you and Alan would each take Five for half the year, I don’t think they meant for you to do it all in one go.” 

“Likely not,” he responded diplomatically. “But like I said, I’m built for it.”

“Yeah…” Scott agreed but didn’t necessarily sound happy about it.

“So, what’s been going on back at home?” John asked, changing the subject. “Anything new you guys haven’t told me about yet?” which luckily worked to draw Scott into a new topic of conversation.

A while later, Thunderbird Three touched down in her silo, and post-flight checks were completed. The two eldest then changed out of their uniforms before taking the couch up to the lounge, where everyone already seemed to be waiting.

They’d barely even made it past the edge of the floor before Gordon was there with a shouted greeting of “Hi John!” He then pulled the second eldest into a hug before the couch had even locked into place.

“Let him breathe, Gordon, geez,” Virgil admonished with fond amusement, and Gordon rolled his eyes at him.

“We all know he doesn’t have to,” he retorted, but let go of the astronaut and stepped back enough to let Virgil pull John to his feet. Virgil then also gave their older brother a hug, though it wasn’t as crushing as the aquanaut’s, which was good for John, considering how much stronger the middle brother was built to be.

“Good to have you home, son,” Jeff added his two cents from where he was sitting behind the desk, watching them.

John glanced at the older man with a smile. “Glad to be back.”

“Brains is waiting for you in the lab. Said he expects you to be sensible enough to get your check done right away, unlike the rest of this lot.”

This earned protests from the other three androids in the room, and John nodded with a slight smile. “Good, I was hoping to do so.”

“Man, he has been in space too long if he’s giving up so willingly,” Gordon muttered, though in a volume clearly meant to be overheard.

John just rolled his eyes. “Alright, I’ll be going down now, cya.”

It didn’t take long to get down to Brains’ lab, though he did take a detour to his room on the way, depositing his bag on the bed to unpack later. When he eventually walked through the door, he found Brains at one of the various computers, muttering to himself. But he glanced over as soon as the android walked in.

“Oh, J-john. Good, you’re home.” 

“Yeah, I just got back with Scott, and Dad said you were waiting down here for me.”

“I was. Thought you would want to get this done r-right away.”

“You know me well,” he said with a shrug. The retort of ‘well, I created you’ went unsaid, but John imagined it was there anyway.

Without prompting, he went to the hospital-like bed in the middle of the room and situated himself on it.

There was a moment of just staring up at the ceiling before Brains came to stand beside it. “Alright, th-this shouldn’t take too long.”

With that, Brains pressed a spot hidden behind the android’s left ear, shutting him down.

An indeterminate amount of time later, John became aware of coming back online. Everything felt slow to reboot as usual, though he still caught the slight shift of fabric against plastic as someone adjusted in their chair.  

Tracking the sound to his right, he found Gordon there. The redhead appearing bored until he noticed John looking at him.

“Oh, good! You’re up.”

“What’re you doing here?” John asked, and the younger shrugged.

“Just waiting to drag you out to the pool with everyone else,” Gordon explained and stood up, waiting for John to sit up as well. “Brains says your systems are all good, by the way.”

“Great. Where is he, though?” John asked, noticing the lack of engineer in the room as he swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood in order to follow Gordon out of the room.

“Messing with something on the Firefly, I think. He was waiting with you, but I offered to do it instead when I came to check how much longer you’d be.”

“Right. Well, let’s go then.”

Yet as they passed by the windowed hallways outside of the lab, John caught sight of his reflection and paused. He then tried to sort out his bangs and hair on the right side of his head, where a panel opened that gave access to the cable ports used during their system checks.

Gordon gave an amused snort. “Alright, I get it, you’re the pretty one of the family, now would you quit messing around so we can get outside already?”

Blue eyes narrowed suspiciously at the younger. “You’re not going to shove me into the pool, are you?”

“Who me?” The redhead gasped, feigning innocence, “I would never do that. Not to you, Johnny.”

“Right. I’ll try to remember that when I’m at the bottom of the deep end.”

“You wound me,” Gordon sighed, placing a hand over where a human’s heart would be.

John rolled his eyes but smiled fondly at the younger. “Come on, fish. I’ll accept my inevitable dip in the pool if you promise to get Virgil and Scott too.”

Hazel eyes lit up at that, and a grin spread across the aquanaut’s face. “Deal.”

Barely five minutes later, two brunettes were shouting angrily due to an unplanned dip in the pool, and John smiled from where he was treading water. Watching as their brothers tried to swim after Gordon to exact some kind of revenge.

Yes, it was good to be home.

Chapter Text

A few quiet days had passed on Tracy Island without need for the Thunderbirds. Though, of course, the peace never lasted for too long.

The family of five were all lounging around the room and winding down for the day as the sun began to slip past the horizon. Jeff sat behind his desk working on Tracy Industry paperwork, while Scott and Gordon played chess, and John sat nearby reading a book. The piano provided soothing background music as Virgil tapped away at the keys, quickly advancing through the music book he’d been given only days before.   

Yet blinking lights and a beeping sound from Alan’s portrait stilled everyone in their activities as they all turned to look at it.  

Jeff pressed a button, and the empty ashtray on his desk tilted back, revealing the speaker hidden underneath. “Go ahead, Alan,” he prompted the youngest as Alan’s portrait turned into live footage of him from Thunderbird Five.

“There’s been a bad earthquake in Lancaster, California, father. Search and rescue crews are requesting International Rescue’s help getting everyone out of the rubble.”

“I see. Tell them we’re on our way, Alan, and get some more information on the situation.”

“F.A.B,” he acknowledged and disappeared from view.  

“It’s going to be all hands-on deck for this one, boys,” Jeff continued, glancing at the assembled crowd, “Scott, go ahead and take Thunderbird One, Alan will fill you in on the way.”

“F.A.B, father,” Scott also acknowledged as he abandoned the chess game to walk towards the lamps on the far wall.

“Virgil, follow behind in Thunderbird Two and take Gordon and John with you.”

A slight smile lifted the corners of John’s mouth as he set his book down and stood up, echoing Virgil’s and Gordon’s “F.A.B.” with his own. He then followed Gordon over to the lift that would take them down to Thunderbird Two to join Virgil in the cockpit.

On the way down, Gordon nudged him in the side with a lopsided grin. “Do you ever feel a bit left out that we don’t have a crazy way to get to our own vehicles? No swinging lamps or pictures.” 

John grinned back. “I don’t know, I think taking the couch through the floor of the lounge for Thunderbird Three might be enough for me. Besides, is dropping the pod with Four still inside not enough?”

“Depends on how high up we are,” Gordon responded right as they reached the cockpit. Virgil glanced back at them, wondering the context of the last statement, but ultimately decided it was best not to know. Instead, he turned his attention back to the controls.

“Once you two sit down, we’ll be ready to launch.”

They took it as the pointed admonishment it was meant to be and quickly took their seats. Gordon beside Virgil, and John behind them. Once Virgil heard the click of their safety restraints, he started to maneuver Thunderbird Two out of the hangar and towards the runway. 

It wasn’t long before they were stationed on the ramp, and with one last confirmation from Jeff, they took off with a roar of the engines.

It took a little more than three hours for them to arrive in Lancaster, where Virgil set his behemoth down on the ground next to the sleek figure of Thunderbird One. Scott, of course, had beaten them there by hours and already had Mobile Control up and running by the time they stepped foot on the ground.

“Alright,” he said as soon as they’d joined him, “as I’m sure Alan told you, there’s been a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that’s heavily damaged the city center and buried an unknown number of people under the rubble. Crews have already carried out rapid search and rescue efforts and have moved onto full search and rescue, which is why they called us. So, each of us is going to take a quadrant of the city and coordinate with search and rescue as we go.”

He paused then, allowing them to offer disagreements, if necessary, but when none were voiced, he continued. “Alright, I’ve already divided up the city between us. Virgil, you’re getting the section that was hit the hardest because with your strength, you’ll have an easier time with the rubble.”

“Sounds good, Scott,” Virgil said.

“Good. Now I want regular check-ins, and for everyone to meet back here when they’re done.” With that final order, they all walked off in different directions to begin working in their assigned areas.

John turned southwest to head for the part of the city Scott had assigned to him. He took in the surrounding buildings as he went, which now stood cracked and torn, their windows either shattered in their frames or completely missing. Some buildings had outright collapsed, burying who knows how many people beneath them.

The road had also fractured and split in some places; the surface ruptured from the shaking, and he knew it’d only make it more difficult for search and rescue to get in and out to help people.

He also knew from experience on Thunderbird Five that earthquake rescues required a lot of communication with the satellite. Its ability to pick up life signs helping them determine where to look or know if they need to bother with a building at all. Though for now, he was sure that he could pick any building without coordinating with Five and still come across someone. While it’d been some time since the quake, and emergency services had been working the whole time, it’ll have been an uphill battle.

So, he paused for a moment and tried to use his oversensitive hearing to pick up on the sound of people trapped or search and rescue efforts. It took a moment, but he caught what he assumed to be the sound of emergency crews, so he started heading for the building they seemed to be working in. Scott had said to coordinate with them after all.

The crew he found was led by a Fire Chief Alejandro Torres, who’d taken one look at him and gone “It’s about time you International Rescue boys got here,” in a gruff voice. And John hadn’t taken it personally; it’d been a rough night after all.

“Yes, sir, just tell me where you need me,” he said, and it’d earned him a sort of half smile.

 He was soon directed toward a hotel across the street. One that the chief informed him that his crew were working through, and when he called Alan, the satellite confirmed the massive number of signatures coming from within. So, John got to work.

The job was a lot of shifting rubble around so that people were no longer pinned or had an easier escape route, and if John was lifting rubble just a little too heavy for the average person, then everyone was a little too shaken up and distracted to notice. He could also blame it on adrenaline later if he had to.

Though at one point he noticed one of the firemen watching him, and hoped it wasn’t too obvious that he was faking how heavy a particular chunk of concrete was. It technically was heavy, even for him, but he knew a normal human wouldn’t be able to lift it at all.

“How do you guys do it?” the man finally asked once John had managed to move the concrete out of their way.

“Do what?” he ventured, somewhat hesitantly.

“Do this without equipment and helmets?”

“Oh. I’m tougher than I look,” he said dismissively with a shrug, surveying the building around him. It wasn’t like he could outright tell the guy they were androids after all.

“Guess so,” the man agreed after a moment, and they continued on their way.

Luckily, no one mentioned anything again. Probably too tired to notice as the hours dragged on, and the sun eventually rose. The weak winter sunlight revealing the true extent of the damage and just how much work they still had to do.

John remained with the fire crew as they made their way through the southwest zone. Some were understandably beginning to flag after working through the night, but none were willing to call it quits.

At one point, they passed by a shattered elementary school and the twisted metal of what used to be a playground, and John mused to himself that they were lucky the earthquake struck in the early evening after school had already been let out for the day.  

What wasn’t so lucky was the aftershock that ripped its way through the city soon after. They were at least out on the street, so no buildings could collapse on them, but people were sent sprawling across the fractured pavement. John himself managed to stay on his feet, if just barely.

Afterwards, there was a split second of eerie silence before shouting, screaming, and the roaring of collapsed buildings started with a vengeance. It was loud, causing John to wince as he once again wished his hearing wasn’t so sensitive, but the beeping of his watch cut through the noise and grabbed his attention. When he lifted it to face level, he wasn’t surprised to find big brother looking back at him.

“John, are you alright?” was asked in a terse tone, one that John knew Scott used to hide his concern while on a rescue.

“All good here, Scott. Are you?” 

“Fine,” Scott answered, “how is your part of the city coming along?”

“Better before that aftershock.”

“Right… just do what you can.”

“F.A.B.” he acknowledged as the call cut out.

John glanced around at the surrounding city and sighed. Progress had seemingly regressed to zero.

They quickly outlasted the sun. Long shadows stretched their way across the ground before falling away to night, and even the appearance of his beloved stars wasn’t as comforting as it usually was. Instead, it left John feeling like he was back where they’d started, as it went on fourteen hours since they’d arrived on the scene.

John continued picking his way down the street behind the fire crew, but paused when there was a shout of “sir!”

Wherever it’d come from, it’d been far away. Too far away for him to have reasonably heard it, so he didn’t turn in that direction quite yet, but he came to a stop at least.   

“Sir!” was shouted again. Louder and closer and he looked in the direction it’d originated from, especially when it was followed by a shout of “International Rescue!”

There. A man was pelting down the street towards him, covered in grime and dust like so many victims of the quake were. The man came to a crashing halt and barely managed through panting breaths, “Oh thank God, I need your help!”

“What’s the problem?” John prompted as the man continued to gasp for air.

“My friend, he’s still buried under the rubble. I just barely managed to get out to look for help. I- I think he’s hurt bad. Said he couldn’t feel his legs.”

“Alright, I’ll take care of it. Where is he?”

“I’ll show you!” the man answered quickly and started backtracking the way he came. Without hesitation, John quickly followed, leaving the fire crew behind.  

“What’s your name?” He asked on the way, hoping to ease the man’s panic a little.

“Dan,” the man answered, “my friend is Bill. We work together. Got caught up in the office. I don’t know how long we’ve been out for, let alone how long it took for me to get myself out of the rubble.”

John nodded at the information, his mind already going through potential scenarios. “Did you happen to see what was wrong with Bill? Any information would be helpful.”

“I think there was a beam across his back? I don’t know, I didn’t really look,” Dan answered, doubt and panic slipping into his voice.

“That’s alright,” John reassured him.  

It wasn’t long before an office building loomed before them. One that Dan was obviously leading him toward, and John’s brows furrowed. He hadn’t been in that building today, but he was fairly certain that Chief Torres had indicated his men had already gone through this block before he and his brothers had even arrived on the scene. Though he supposed it was entirely possible the two men could have been missed, especially if they were both unconscious and buried under rubble.

He was tempted to call Alan up in Five to check for life signs, but the closer they got, the more insistent Dan became. He led them into the lobby of the damaged building, where piles of rubble from the damaged ceiling and walls littered the floor, and John supposed he could see how the stretched-thin emergency services could have possibly missed someone.

Though something wasn’t sitting quite right as he picked his way over the debris, following Dan further into the building. But up ahead, he could hear someone yelling for help, so he pushed the feeling of trepidation aside. He had a job to do. Someone needed rescuing.

Sure enough, when he climbed over a particularly large pile of rubble, he found Dan crouching beside another man, who by all appearances had been pinned down by large chunks of what must have been the ceiling. A beam sticking out of the pile.

There was a nasty gash down the side of the man’s face, and rivulets of blood cut their way through the dust and grime before dripping to the floor. Adding to the sticky puddle left where his head had previously been resting.

“It’s going to be okay, Bill,” he heard Dan say from where he crouched near the trapped man, “I found International Rescue.”

“Hi there, Bill,” John greeted softly as he came to join them. He crouched in front of Bill as well, and hardly paid Dan any attention as the man stood up and backed away a few steps. Instead, he offered a reassuring smile to the trapped man. “Don’t you worry, I’ll get you out of there in no time.”

“Thank you,” the man breathed, “I knew International Rescue would pull through. We just had to pick the right disaster.”

“What?” John questioned with a frown, not sure what that particular statement meant, but Bill didn’t offer an explanation.

Instead, there was a brief high-pitched whine before something was jammed into the back of his neck at the base of his skull. John tensed, and his mouth fell open in a silent cry as electricity caused his systems to jolt. Warnings popped into his vision.

When what must have been a taser was removed, he collapsed to the ground, vision darkening as immediate system shut down was threatened. He was barely even aware of something slamming down into the side of his head hard.

John fully shut down.

Chapter Text

After an extremely long day of digging people out of the rubble, Scott was finally back at Mobile Control. Their part of the rescue seemingly winding down as enough ground had been covered that they could leave it to the local search and rescue teams from there.

Gordon was the first of his little brothers to reappear. The aquanaut coming over to lean against the side of Mobile Control with his arms crossed as he reported, “Finished with my section.”

Scott nodded. “So did I. Let me check in with Virgil and John to see how it’s coming along for them.” Gordon gave him a thumbs up, and Scott pressed a few buttons before leaning in toward the microphone. “Mobile Control to Virgil.”

There was a brief moment of dead air before a click could be heard, indicating that the call had connected. “Virgil here, Mobile Control. What’s up, Scott?”

“I was just wondering how things are going for you.”

“Almost done,” Virgil informed him, “I have one more family to hand off to the paramedics, and I’ll have finished this section.”

“Great. Gordon and I are done, and with things winding down, I think it may be about time for us to head back to base.”

“F.A.B. I’ll head for Mobile Control shortly. Virgil out.”

With the call disconnected, Scott pressed a few more buttons to switch frequencies before speaking into the microphone again. “Mobile Control to John.” He waited a couple of seconds, but unlike with Virgil, no click ever came. Instead, only silence answered him. “Scott to John, come in,” he tried again, his worry growing the longer the comms remained silent.

 He shared a look with Gordon when they didn’t receive an answer for the second time.

“Scott to John, come in please,” he repeated. It hadn’t quite been a shout but had certainly been more stern. Practically, demanding his wayward brother respond. “Why doesn’t he answer?” he muttered when they were once again met with silence. Not that he expected Gordon to have an answer.  

“You don’t think he’s damaged, do you?” Gordon ventured somewhat hesitantly, coming around to stand beside Scott’s seat in front of Mobile Control.

Scott shook his head. “I hope not. With any luck, he’ll just have broken his watch somehow.

Gordon nodded in agreement and leaned around Scott to tap away at some of the controls. “Well, his locator is still working, so it can’t have been too badly damaged.”

Scott’s mouth flattened into a thin line, but he didn’t argue the point. Instead, he configured his own watch to track the signal Mobile Control was picking up.

With that done, he stood up. “I’m going to go find John, and he’s going to get a lecture if he’s just ignoring us.” The last part was muttered under his breath, but Gordon caught it anyway and snickered at the idea of the second eldest being in trouble with Scott. But the smile quickly dropped when Scott continued, “Stay here with Mobile Control.”

“No way! What if he’s damaged or in trouble? You’re going to need help!”

Scott sighed, knowing that Gordon wasn’t going to back down, and that he didn’t have time to argue with the aquanaut. It’d been worth a shot, though. “Fine. Let me call Virgil.”

So, he quickly called Virgil back, informing him of the situation and where they were going before locking down the controls of Mobile Control. Then he set off in the direction John’s location was pinging. Gordon quickly fell into step beside him.

As they walked, the redhead’s frown grew deeper as he kept glancing over at Scott’s watch. “His location hasn’t moved from that spot since we looked it up,” he pointed out after a while, and Scott grimaced. The longer John seemed to stay in one place, the more likely it was that Gordon was right to assume the astronaut had been damaged.

The idea had Scott quickening his pace, and Gordon easily matched his stride, having the same worry for their second eldest. It still took them a while to reach the building where John was supposedly located, though, as they had to walk pretty far into the damaged city to get there. But they were glad to find the building relatively intact, if not for the shattered windows and chunks of concrete missing from the siding.

They entered cautiously, noting that the ceiling had partly collapsed in on itself, and the two IR operatives gave each other a grim look. Both fearing that John was trapped under one of the many piles of rubble that used to be the ceiling.

“John!” Scott yelled, and the two of them waited, but there was no answer. “John, answer me!” He shouted again, desperation manifesting in his voice as frustration.

There was still no reply.

Scott and Gordon began making their way through the building, investigating the piles of rubble that covered the ground floor. If they didn’t find John here, they were going to have to look on the higher floors. They were worried about the structural integrity of the building, though, so they needed to find John quickly and get out.

Yet every shout for him was met with silence, and the longer this went on, the more worried Scott became, so the more snappish he came across.

“Anything?” he demanded from Gordon after a while of searching.

The younger sighed. “No, Scott, I haven’t found any trace of him.”

There was a grunt of frustration, and then, “We might need to check the upper floors.”

Gordon was about to agree when a glint of gold caught his eye. He scrambled over a couple of pieces of busted concrete to reach it and found a watch. But not just any watch, it was a modified Rolex, identical to his own.

“Scott, I found something!” He shouted, and the words were barely out of his mouth before Scott was shouting, “Hold on! I’m on my way.” Followed by the sound of the eldest hurriedly making his way over the debris field.

Ignoring that, Gordon focused on the surrounding area, looking for any further hint of John’s whereabouts.

Scott came stumbling over one last piece of concrete and rebar before coming to a stop near Gordon.

“What is it? Did you find John?” He asked, looking around wildly like the blond would suddenly materialize. Gordon didn’t understand how he sounded out of breath despite them not needing to breathe.

“No, not John. But I did find his watch.” He handed it to the eldest, who frowned at it hard, and turned it over in his hands.

The watch looked fully intact. There was no shattered surface or cracks through it to indicate John had been wearing it when buried under rubble. It didn’t even look like it’d been torn off his wrist. No. It was in perfect condition and appeared to have merely been unclasped at some point and left behind.

“If his watch is here, then where’s John?” Scott asked out loud as he scanned the immediate area, just as Gordon had been doing when he’d arrived. “Where exactly did you find it?”

“Just right there,” Gordon answered, pointing at a spot on the ground slightly overshadowed by a thick chunk of concrete. “It was just lying there.”

It was silent for a moment before Scott tucked the watch into his pocket and stepped toward the pile of rubble it’d been found with. “Well, it may be a long shot, but help me dig through here. John might’ve managed to get his watch off to signal his location.”

He didn’t see the skeptical look Gordon aimed at his back, but the aquanaut didn’t say anything as he helped Scott carefully move rubble aside. Yet the more rubble they moved, the more abundantly clear it became that John wasn’t under there. Much to Scott’s disappointment. Not that he wanted his brother damaged and buried by rubble, but at least it would’ve meant they’d found him.

When moving the rubble didn’t magically reveal John, Scott turned away to the next nearest pile. “Keep searching,” was all he said, and Gordon nodded mutely. Following his lead.

Eventually, Virgil joined them. The first words out of his mouth being, “Did you find John?”

He looked hopeful, and it killed Scott to have to shake his head and reply, “No, just his watch.”

“Oh, have you told dad?” he asked, and Scott sighed. Because no, he hadn’t, nor had the thought even crossed his mind. But he knew he had to. Jeff was their commander after all, and it was probably well past their check-in time.

“Hold on, I’ll do it.” He lifted his watch toward his face, adjusting the controls to contact Tracy Island. “Thunderbird One to base, come in.”

It didn’t take long for Jeff to answer, though he was frowning as he did so. “Base receiving you Thunderbird One. I was starting to wonder when you’d call, Scott. It’s been a while.”

“John’s gone missing,” he answered bluntly, and Jeff paled.

“What? What happened?”

“We don’t know. We tried to contact him, and when he never answered, we followed his location to this building. We’ve discovered his watch, but so far, there’s no sign of him.”

Jeff remained silent for a moment before shaking his head. “You’ve got to find him, boys. You’ve got to!”

“We’re trying, father. We’ve been looking for him.”

“Right. I know you are,” the older man let out a weary sigh before continuing, “Good luck, and keep in contact. Base out.”

The transmission cut, and Scott looked at his present brothers grimly. “Well, you heard him, we have to find John.”

But it was easier said than done. They spent hours combing through that building, risking that no aftershocks would destabilize it further and send it collapsing onto their heads. They even checked the upper floors, hoping that they’d find John up there, having been separated from his watch somehow. But with every rubble pile they checked and floor they climbed, the chances of finding him seemed to get lower and lower.

It was starting to near midnight when Jeff called again. Either the third or fourth time since they’d first informed him, but Scott hadn’t been counting.

“Come home, boys,” he said wearily, and Scott immediately protested.

“No! We can’t, not without John! You said we had to find him!”

“I know, but if you haven’t found him yet in that building, then you’re not going to. It’s been five hours, Scott.”

Scott clenched his teeth. He wasn’t willing to give up, and he couldn’t go home. Not without John. He couldn’t have failed his younger brother like that.

“I’m sure you guys are exhausted,” Jeff continued.

“We can’t get exhausted. We’re androids, remember?” he snapped. He hated pulling that card though, and only did so in dire circumstances.  

It was Virgil, the engineer among them, who answered, “We can still run through charge, Scott, and we expend more on rescues. Besides, I bet your fuel reserves are bordering on low.” He took the following silence as answer enough and placed a hand on the eldest’s shoulder. “We’re not going to be able to help John if we run ourselves into the ground.”

“Let’s go home,” Gordon added softly. And looking at him, Scott could see that the younger looked miserable, and Scott knew he couldn’t keep pushing them like this.

“Fine, we’ll go.” Though he felt like he was choking as he said it.

“F.A.B. boys, see you back at base,” Jeff added, reminding them that he was still on call, but Scott’s watch returned to its normal face, indicating that the older man had once again disconnected. Without another word, Scott turned on his heel and began leading his brothers out of the building and back toward their ‘birds.

It was a long, defeated walk.

As the large green and silver crafts came into view, Scott began to wonder if they’d actually find John there. Maybe their brother had merely lost his watch and returned to the Thunderbirds no worse for wear, then waited for them to return. Logically though, he knew that didn’t make any sense because even without his watch, John would have known to use Mobile Control or the radios on board their vehicles to get in touch with them. So, no, he couldn’t have been there, but Scott couldn’t help but be disappointed when they didn’t find him anyway.

Scott then watched Gordon and Virgil board Thunderbird Two, and it didn’t escape his notice that it was taking an unusually long time for them to take off. As if they too were giving John extra time to reappear and come home with them. Eventually, though, the behemoth was airborne, and her pilot swung her around towards the direction of home.

Scott then mechanically went about packing up Mobile Control before heading to the cockpit of his own ‘bird. It was then, with a crushing feeling of failure, that he took off from Lancaster and headed home for Tracy Island. Feeling as if he was abandoning John and leaving him behind.

Chapter Text

John came back online with a slight scowl, annoyed that he’d once again been rebooted. Hadn’t his systems been checked already? It was why he’d come down from Five after all.

But he quickly noted that he was in a seated position instead of lying flat like he’d usually be, and when he glanced around the barren room he found himself in, he realized that he wasn’t on the island.

That’s right. There’d been a rescue. An earthquake, and he’d been sent out with Scott, Gordon, and Virgil to deal with it.

Thinking back on it, the last thing he remembered was trying to help someone trapped before a jolt of electricity had started to send his systems into shutdown, and something had forcibly collided with his head. Quite unnecessarily too, as they really could’ve just picked either or. Honestly, he would have preferred they’d just hit him over the head and been done with it, because annoying as it was, it worked on them as well. His brothers had proven it often enough on rescues or just while messing around on Tracy Island. The worst time had been when Scott was shot down over the Saraha desert and suffered enough head trauma in the crash that he’d shut down and been unable to answer their calls (never mind the fact that the radio had been damaged as well).

That had been a difficult afternoon, in which John had received a frantic call from two archaeologists saying they’d found a member of International Rescue but couldn’t wake him up and weren’t even sure he was breathing. And logically, John had known why Scott wouldn’t wake up and wasn’t breathing, but it’d still been one of the most stressful calls of his life nevertheless. Eventually, Virgil and Brains arrived at Thunderbird One and dragged the pilot into the med bay of Two and rebooted him. After that, it had been decided that something needed to be done to allow them to reboot themselves when necessary. So, the “alarm clock” had been implemented – as Gordon had jokingly named it. A small device Brains had added to each of them that monitored total shutdown time, and if it went on too long, initiated a reboot.

John didn’t know how long it’d been since the building, but evidently, it’d been long enough for his “alarm clock” to go off. Great.

Pushing that thought aside, John took stock of the situation he was in. The room was relatively small, seemingly made of concrete and completely bare except for a singular door set into the far wall, which he assumed was locked.  Harsh fluorescent lights shone overhead, with no windows for natural lighting.

The only thing in the room was him and the chair he was seated on. Unfortunately, his arms were held to the armrests by thick metal cuffs and handcuffs wrapped around his ankles, not allowing him a wide range of motion.

He jerked his right arm in the cuff slightly but found that it didn’t budge, and the pressure sensors in his wrist pinged at him for pushing too hard.

Damn.

All of them, by virtue of being androids, were stronger than your average human, Virgil especially, who’d been built as the heavy lifter to go along with his ‘bird, but they weren’t “break metal cuffs strong.” At least not at this angle and without leverage. If they’d tied him up with zip ties or rope, then he would have been fine, but this? Unfortunately, not.

John frowned, once again annoyed that these people, whoever they were, had inadvertently managed to outmaneuver him. Because someone had certainly kidnapped him, and it was likely those men he’d been intending to help.

He was also rather annoyed with himself for falling into a trap. Shouldn’t he have been smarter than that? But if he could, John imagined that Jeff would probably reassure him that he’d just been trying to do his job, and it wasn’t his fault humans had taken advantage of that. While the thought made him feel slightly better, it didn’t answer why he was here or where exactly here was.

Straining his hearing, he didn’t pick up on anything outside of the room. Nothing helpful at least, and nothing that could clue him in as to what was going on.

John once again studied the cuffs on his wrists and wondered if his watch was still there, but quickly ruled that possibility out as he was fairly sure he couldn’t feel it trapped against his arm. They must have taken it off then. With any luck, they’d have left it behind, and his brothers would find it, alerting them to the situation.

Though without the watch’s locator, John wasn’t sure how exactly his brothers were going to find him. He knew they’d try, but it was likely he’d have to get himself out of there. How exactly he’d do that was another question, though.

He tugged on the left cuff this time, contemplating whether he could escape by breaking his thumb. It wasn’t like it’d really hurt to do so, and he’d be able to get a new one back on the island if necessary. And if it allowed him to get his hand out of the cuff, then he could free his other arm and break the handcuffs around his legs. Then he could see what the situation with the door was.

Yet right as he was about to try dislocating the joints in his hand, he heard footsteps in the hallway. John instantly went still and closed his eyes, letting his head hang limply. Hoping that if whoever walked in thought he was still unconscious, then they might say or do something he could take advantage of.

The door opened with a creak of the hinges that seemed overly loud to him, and two sets of footsteps entered the room. He could tell that one stayed by the door, which was shut with a resounding clang, while the other approached him.

The person stopped close by and just seemed to stand there for a moment, and then, out of nowhere, a hand connected with his face.

He startled, and his head snapped up to look at the man in front of him, who gave him a smirk. “Good, you’re awake,” he said conversationally as if he hadn’t just tried to slap someone awake.

John was disappointed but not surprised to see that he was one of the men from the rescue sight. Specifically, the man who’d introduced himself as “Dan” and asked for help saving his friend. The one who’d seemingly knocked John unconscious as well. However, he’d certainly cleaned up between now and the fake rescue. He was no longer covered in dirt or grime, and his clothes were now a nondescript black instead of the business casual he’d been wearing earlier.

John briefly glanced toward the second man by the door, recognizing “Bill,” who, much like Dan, had also cleaned up since the rescue and changed his clothes. There was also no blood on his face, nor sign of the gash that’d seemingly been there when trapped under the rubble. Apparently, it’d all been faked to sell the scenario, and John wondered how long it’d taken them to set it up to make it all look believable.

“Why am I here?” he asked, breaking the silence. His voice was steady and neutral, not giving away any of the emotions he was feeling. The man in front of him (Dan, if that was even his real name, which it likely wasn’t) smiled.

“Straight to the point. Good. I hate wasting time. You see, we have a client who wants some information on International Rescue, and he doesn’t care what we have to do to get it.” He paused then to study John’s reaction, but the blond’s face remained impassive. He smiled just a bit wider. “I personally don’t have anything against you guys, but a paycheck’s a paycheck, you’ll understand. And this is a mighty big one.” There was still no reaction. “So, if you cooperate with us and give us what we want to know, then we can be out of here quickly, and nothing messy has to happen. But if you resist, well, like I said, the boss hired us because he doesn’t care how we get the info, and I’ll get it by any means necessary.” He pulled a knife from his belt at the last statement, and if John wasn’t trying to keep his reactions to a minimum, he would have scoffed and rolled his eyes.

“I won’t tell you anything,” John replied cooly, determined that those would be the last words they’d get out of him.

The man shrugged. “That’s too bad, could’ve saved yourself a lot of pain.”

When the knife dug into John’s arm, he let out a gasp. It was more so a gasp of surprise that the man had actually gone through with it so quickly rather than one of pain. Though he hoped it could be mistaken as such, since that’d be the normal reaction. Not that he really felt pain from the cut.

He and his brothers didn’t feel pain, not really, considering they didn’t actually have nerves and all. It was more so just an uncomfortable feeling from something being damaged. They figured that if enough damage happened, then it could evolve into pain. But they’d never tested that hypothesis for obvious reasons.

Red liquid welled out of the cut though, because Brains had designed them to be as authentically human as possible. It was why their chests simulated the movement of breathing, even though they didn’t have to (it’d been decided that it’d be more comforting to those being rescued if their rescuer looked to be breathing).  

Despite the red welling up to simulate blood, the cut was unfortunately deep enough to expose wires and metal components, and there was no way he could attempt to hide it like he usually would, not with the way his arms were trapped. John could tell the moment the men noticed something was off as their brows furrowed before looking at him in surprise.

“What is this?”

John contemplated not answering and keeping up the silence he’d resolved himself to, but unfortunately, an attempt at damage control was needed. “It’s a prosthetic,” he lied readily, and was met with an incredulous look.

“A prosthetic? No prosthetic would be built like this, with wires, and realistic skin and blood.”

“You don’t think International Rescue has access to advanced prosthetics?” he answered flippantly with a raised brow.

“Well, if that’s true, then we’ll want information on that as well. Could probably get some more money for it,” the man mused before continuing, “Now are you going to answer our questions?”

He stubbornly kept his mouth shut, even though he could tell what was coming next when the man moved to his other side. Probably assuming that he’d finally start causing some pain. The knife was driven into that arm too.

John didn’t even bother making a sound at that. Instead, his face remained blank as the man watched the red liquid well up out of that cut as well. But in place of muscles and sinew, there was only more wire and synthetic material.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me you’ve got two prosthetics?” The man taunted.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I tried,” John retorted.

“No,” the man agreed, “but I think there is something we can do to really test what’s going on here.” He leaned forward then, and the knife dug into John’s side. He flinched at that and tried to twist his body away from the knife. The second man then stepped forward and, with a strong grip on his shoulders, held John in place while his buddy continued digging the knife in. “They couldn’t have replaced your side,” the man sneered.

He then twisted the knife, opening the cut further, and John had to grit his teeth to hold back a sound as fingers dug into the cut.

It still wasn’t pain, but it definitely wasn’t comfortable. System warnings started pinging in his head, and what felt like pinpricks of electricity arced through his side. This certainly had to be up there for the worst he’d ever felt.

Then there was a tug, and wires came loose.

For a moment, his vision flickered, CPU having a hard time processing the sudden warnings that fired through his system as wires were ripped out.

When he could fully focus again, he found the man sitting back on his heels with a smirk on his face as he studied his hand. It was covered in red and clutched in his fist were severed wires, torn at their edges. Ones that came from John.

The man made eye contact then, and his smirk grew larger at the wide-eyed look on John’s face.

“Well, this changes things.”

Chapter Text

“How did this happen?” Jeff questioned sternly, glancing at each of them in turn. Even Alan, who’d called in from Thunderbird Five, the video of him replacing the portrait that usually hung on the wall.

Jeff wasn’t really expecting an answer, but Scott tried to give one anyway, repeating what he’d said in his initial explanation so many hours ago. “We don’t know, father. He disappeared at the danger zone, and all we found was his watch.” The watch that Scott had been clutching since they’d arrived home and he’d rediscovered it in his pocket.

“So, we suspect someone’s taken him,” Jeff replied warily, and all of them nodded.

“It’s the most likely scenario, because it wouldn’t be like John to just throw his watch down and disappear,” Gordon voiced what everyone had already been thinking.

“Do you think they took him for ransom?” Alan piped up, glancing around at his brothers for their reaction.

Virgil shrugged, picking up the train of thought. “Maybe. None of us have real identities, though, so they could only try to ransom him back to International Rescue.”

“It’s possible,” Jeff agreed before turning to the youngest, “but there hasn’t been anything over the radio?”

“No, father,” Alan answered with a frown.

“Alright, keep monitoring just in case. I want to know immediately if you hear anything about it.” Jeff then refocused his attention on the boys in the room. “While John could have been taken for ransom purposes, it’s also likely that he got taken by someone who wants information on International Rescue.”

“John won’t tell them anything!” Scott stated, and the sentiment was echoed by his three younger brothers, who all nodded vigorously.

“I know that, and I’m not accusing him of anything,” Jeff reassured, “I’m just worried about what condition he’ll be in when we find him.”

“You think he’ll be interrogated?” Virgil questioned.

“Or worse,” Scott responded darkly. The room fell silent at that.

“Well,” Jeff finally continued, “we can’t really be worried about that until we find him. Now, how are we going to do it?”

“I-I think I might have a solution for that, Mr. T-tracy,” Brains said. Up until then, he’d been silently contemplating the unfinished game of chess left out on the side table, but now he’d turned his attention to Jeff.  

“You do?”

“Yes. You- you see. Every Thunderbird gives off its own unique signature, and so d-do each of you,” he said, glancing at the three androids present in the room. “I m-m-may be able to track John’s signature and locate him that way.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? Do it, Brains,” Jeff commanded, and the young genius nodded before standing up.

“Though I feel I must warn you that this will t-take some time, and I’ll need Thunderbird Five’s help.” Getting an acknowledging nod from Jeff, he turned to the video feed of Alan. “I-I’m going to head to my lab. I’ll call you from there and tell you how to configure the controls for the search.”

“F.A.B. I’ll be standing by,” Alan said, with a newfound air of determination now that he had a task to do. “Thunderbird Five out.” The video transmission of Alan promptly cut out, and Brains left the lounge.

Now only Jeff and the three boys remained.

The only human among them let out a heavy sigh before looking between each of them. “Well boys, there isn’t a lot we can do until Brains’ program manages to locate John. Why don’t you all get some rest? It’s been a long day.”

There was a moment of hesitation, but eventually Virgil was the first to move. He got up from the couch he’d been sitting on and headed toward the hallway where their bedrooms were located. He muttered a “good night, dad,” as he passed by the desk, but whether he was going to rest or try to distract himself with an art project was anyone’s guess.

Scott resolved to check on him later. If anything, to ensure that Virgil didn’t actually end up in the hangars working on his ‘bird.

Gordon was the next to stand, giving a muttered “I’m going for a swim,” before heading off in the direction of the pool. It was certainly the opposite of what Jeff had suggested, but it was how he relaxed and worked through things, so no one was going to take that away from him.

Then, it was just Scott and Jeff.

Jeff ran his hand down his face tiredly before eyeing the eldest. “I wasn’t kidding about getting some rest, son,” he said, and for once, Scott didn’t feel a swell of pride at being referred to as such. He was much too distracted for that.

“I will, but someone’s going to have to drag the fish out of the pool eventually,” he also stood then, but hesitated a moment. “We’re going to find him,” he said to reassure both Jeff and himself.

“I know,” Jeff agreed, “I just worry what exactly we’ll find when we do.” Scott repressed a shudder at the thought as Jeff continued, “Go sort out your brothers, Scott. Then I expect you to actually rest.”

“Sure thing, but don’t forget, you need rest yourself.”

“I intend to get some; I’m just going to check in with Brains and Alan first.” With that, he stood up from the desk as well and walked around to stand next to Scott, hand held out. It took Scott a moment to understand, but he finally relinquished the watch, hoping it’d help Brains somehow. Jeff briefly patted him on the shoulder and gave one last tight smile before leaving the room.

Then, it was just Scott.

The eldest android stood there for a moment before turning to look at the portraits that lined the wall. Or more specifically, at the one on the far left where John gazed out with a small smile lifting the corners of his mouth. Scott stared at it intently, like if he stared at it hard enough the eyes would start flashing with a call from John, who’d be no worse for wear and explain that he’d just gotten left behind somehow. That it'd just been a big misunderstanding. But unfortunately, nothing happened.

So, Scott left the villa and made his way to the edge of the pool, where he stood for a while, watching Gordon swim lap after lap. Yet as the moon rose ever higher, he eventually called out for the younger to stop, though it took a couple more lengths for Gordon to listen.

Eventually, he swam over and hauled himself out of the pool, near where Scott was standing.

They stared at each other for a long moment, hazel eyes meeting blue. The only sounds were the far-off crashing of waves and the steady drip of water droplets onto concrete.

“It’s going to be okay, right, Scott?” Gordon finally asked, and he sounded so young when he said it that it would have broken Scott’s heart if he’d had one.

Scott pulled the younger into a hug, not caring that it’d leave his clothes wet. All he cared about was reassuring his brother. “It’s going to be fine, Gordon,” he said and hoped he wasn’t lying through his teeth.

After a moment, Scott pulled away from the hug, but left an arm wrapped around the shorter android’s shoulders. “Come on, let’s get you inside.”

Gordon didn’t offer any protest at that, so Scott essentially escorted him back to his room and left him there with a whispered “Good night.”

On the way back to his own room, Scott stopped by Virgil’s. When he glanced in, it was to find his middle brother had actually listened about getting some rest, as he was lying in bed with his eyes closed. A chord plugged into the base of his skull.

Their “sleep” was somewhat similar to that of humans, as they shut off the majority of their systems while recharging for the night. It wasn’t necessary to do so, but it was easier and less boring than just sitting there otherwise. So, they’d power off and let the machine ping them back to wakefulness when they were fully charged. And it was somewhat nice to power off for a while to let their CPUs have some quiet to sort out the daily information, much like a human brain would.

It also made them feel just a bit more human.

Luckily, though, they didn’t require as much rest as humans and could go for longer between charges than would be possible for a human to go without sleep. So, Scott never allowed himself to rest for too long. Neither did most of his brothers, except Virgil, who seemed to like it and claimed that he dreamed sometimes. Even though everyone else was doubtful about that. They were all aware that androids didn’t dream.

But seeing that his brother was peacefully resting, Scott quietly backed out of the room and went to his own. He changed out of his dampened clothes from the hug with Gordon and put on more comfy ones. He didn’t stay in his room, though. Instead, he made his way back through the dimly lit halls and darkened lounge to go back out to the balcony. He took a seat out there, looking up at the moon and John’s beloved stars. His mind understandably wandering towards thoughts about the missing astronaut.

Scott loved all of his brothers, obviously, and was close with each of them. But John had been his first brother, the first one he’d ever seen come online. And for a time, before Virgil was completed, it’d just been the two of them, and Scott had finally had someone to relate to. An android just like him.

He remembered how disorienting everything had been after he’d first come online, and for the longest time, there had only been him. He was the first one after all, and since they’d never successfully managed to online an android before him, they wanted to ensure everything was working before they attempted on another.

Eventually though, they’d shown him John and explained that he’d be the next one completed. Scott had been fascinated immediately and spent a lot of time in Brains’ lab after that, watching him complete the blond space monitor, and offering assistance when he could.  

He’d also insisted he be there when John came online, even though Jeff and Brains tried to warn him away. Tried to tell him it may be too disorienting for John to have him there.

But that was exactly why he’d insisted he be there. It was confusing coming online for the first time, and he thought it might help to have another android there. Someone who understood what he was going through, even if John had no idea that he knew.

Brains and Jeff had finally relented, so when the time came, Scott was present in the room, standing right beside the bed.

Scott stood beside the bed, shoulders squared and defiant, waiting for one or both of the humans to suggest he back off. Except Brains had been too distracted by his equipment and programs to say anything, and while Scott knew Jeff was staring at him from where the older human stood near the door, he didn’t say anything about it either.

So, Scott had watched and waited, trying to hide how impatient he really was. He wanted Brains to go faster, but he also wanted the engineer to be careful. He didn’t want anything to go wrong with his first little brother. There had been others before them apparently, ones who’d never worked properly, and Scott didn’t want John to become one of them.

Finally, after what felt like forever, Brains announced that he was beginning the start-up sequence, hands flying across the keyboard. For a long moment, it felt like nothing was happening, and if Scott had needed to breathe, he would have been holding his breath in anticipation. 

Then out of the corner of his eye, he caught the minuscule twitch of fingers. His head snapped around to look at the hands, which gave another twitch before suddenly balling into fists as the whole body seemed to tense up at once. Blue eyes then flew open, darting around frantically and never focusing on any one thing.

Scott leaned forward so that he took up the other’s entire field of vision, and finally, blue eyes focused. Though it seemed to take a moment longer for the pupils to settle on one size.

“Hey,” he greeted softly and hoped it was reassuring, “You’re alright.”

John’s mouth fell open, but it seemed to take a moment to figure out how sound worked. “Who?” he eventually asked, though the way he asked was a bit odd. The word was weirdly drawn out, and the tone fluctuated as vocal chords worked for the first time.

“Your name is John, and I’m Scott. Your older brother,” he answered with the title he’d decided to give himself, because Scott wasn’t really sure who John’s question was referring to, but it seemed right to explain both.

“Brother?” John questioned. His voice settling into soft, clear tones, and Scott could tell it was a voice meant for radio.

“Yeah,” he said with a smile, “it means I’m going to look out for you and take care of you.”

John just blinked up at him, but that was okay. Scott knew he’d understand someday. He’d just come online after all.

“Why don’t we get him sitting up,” Jeff suggested, starting to walk over, and John’s eyes widened, attention snapping toward the other person in the room he hadn’t realized was there.

“That’s Jeff,” Scott explained, “he’s one of our creators.”

John’s brows furrowed at that, but he didn’t question it further, just stared at Jeff as the man stopped next to Scott with a smile.

“Hello John,” he greeted.

“Hello,” he responded hesitantly, and Jeff’s smile grew wider, eyes crinkling at the corners. He then gestured at the still prone android and looked at Scott, who understood his meaning. Luckily, John allowed Scott to haul him into a seated position, though he remained limp for a moment before his spine locked into place, though it seemed to be overcompensating as he was sitting ramrod straight. Scott was sure he’d figure it out eventually.

The younger android glanced around the room curiously, but there was a wince on his face. “It’s so loud.”

Scott’s eyebrows shot up at that. It was no louder in the lab than it usually was; in fact, he’d say it was a bit quieter since there were no projects actively being worked on. He then thought back to his own first moments of life, but he didn’t remember it being particularly loud or noticing the ambient volume of the room at all.

He glanced towards Brains for reassurance as the genius came to join them by the bed.  

“I-it’s alright, Scott. I created John with more acute hearing since he’ll primarily be m-monitoring Thunderbird Five. He’ll get used to it.”

True to his words, John was already looking a bit more relaxed and no longer wincing. Instead, he was looking at Brains curiously.

“Our other creator, Brains,” Scott supplied, and felt a swell of pride when John was the first to offer a “Hello” to the inventor.

The engineer also looked pleased as he returned the greeting and added, “I’m glad to see you functional.”

“Me too,” Scott added, and John turned to look at him. His mouth pulled into his first smile, and Scott beamed back happily.

Scott was pulled from the memory by a particularly loud crashing of waves on the beach below.

Glancing up, he noticed just how high the moon had gotten and how late it’d become. It was probably about time he listened to Jeff and went to get some rest, or else he really wouldn’t be any help to John.

So, with a sigh and one last glance up at the stars, Scott made his way back into the house.

Chapter Text

So this was what pain felt like, John realized as electricity crashed through his systems. He’d thought he’d figured it out when the man had ripped wires out of him, but this was so much worse somehow.

He’d locked his jaw a while ago to prevent himself from making any noise, because he refused to give them the satisfaction. For extra insurance, he’d turned his vocal cords off too, which had only seemed to annoy the men.

The cattle prod was stabbed into his side again, and his body jerked, but still no sound escaped him.

He’d expected it to hurt thanks to his brief exposure to electricity when they’d initially abducted him. It’d also been because of that initial abduction that they’d even turned towards using electricity on him, as so far it was the only thing they’d proved really affected him. Nothing else seeming to work so far. Though they’d been awfully careful not to let his systems crash because of it. They wouldn’t be able to get information otherwise.

They’d already been at it for a while now too.

A good while of what he now knew to be the previous night had been spent trying to get him to talk. It’d mostly involved knives, leaving him with gashes all over his body and uniform torn to shreds and quickly soaked in red. Fuel lines had been severed and wires cut, and he’d had to shut his own diagnostics down just so they’d stop screaming at him. John already knew he was damaged, so it wasn’t all that helpful.

The men had eventually left, though, and Dan (he’d given up and just started thinking of them as the names they’d initially introduced themselves with) had promised to come back with a new way to make him talk. John had glared at him, silently challenging the man, but was promptly laughed at and received a patronizing pat on the cheek before they’d left.

And so he’d been left there, leaking fuel and fluids and wondering if it was possible for him to bleed out. He supposed yes, but he wasn’t sure if it’d be truly fatal or not, and he didn’t really want to test it.  

So as soon as he was alone, John had tried to go through with his original plan of dislocating a thumb to free at least one of his hands to see if he could get himself out of there. But those hopes were quickly dashed when he realized that when the man cut into his forearms he must have damaged the wires and cables responsible for hand movement, leaving him unable to get the fingers on either hand to cooperate. His left hand barely twitched, while his entire right arm was unresponsive.

With an annoyed scowl, he quickly tried to sort through his plethora of damage warnings until he found the ones for his arms, and sure enough, essential cables had been severed. So, with his right arm nothing but dead weight, John focused on the left. Trying to force it to move against the cuff, hoping that somehow something would give. But the joints wouldn't cooperate, and all he did was lose more fluid and get more warning messages about damage to his wrist joint.

He was eventually forced to give it up.

So, he sat there, trying to think of another way out of there. Tried to think of anything more he could do to save himself. Though a small part of him was distracted, wondering how these men could do this. Wondering how these humans could treat him this way, treat other humans this way, because they’d been fully willing to do this whether he was an android or not. But all he and his brothers had ever done was help people. Hadn’t that been enough?

Hours had passed, and the only sound in the otherwise quiet room had been (to him) the overly loud dripping of fluid on concrete.

Eventually, footsteps in the hallway had alerted him to the men’s return before they ever reached the door, and when they came in, John made sure he looked bored.

Though he hadn’t exactly been ready for them to brandish what he realized was a cattle prod, and he had been even less ready for it to be jammed into his side the way that it was.

A brief cry of pain had escaped him before suddenly cutting off as he’d quickly managed to shut his own vocal cords off.

Yet even after the prod was pulled away, it still felt like electricity was burning through his systems. He’d looked horrified at his side, seeing the burn mark left against his synthetic flesh.

“Now, let’s see how long you hold out against this,” the man had said with a smirk.

John didn’t know how long this had gone on for as it was hard to keep track of time, especially with his internal systems too scrambled to do it. He also lost track of how often the prod was used on him, unable to keep count after three.

The man continued to smirk down at him and did it again. This time, the cattle prod was jabbed into his collarbone.

“aggHH!” A cry escaped him as he lost control of the lock on his jaw and vocal cords, systems sorting out thanks to the close proximity of the electric current.

“Oh, finally,” Bill muttered, and Dan just laughed.

“Are you finally ready to talk?”

“No,” he got out through clenched teeth, and John could hear the static that now laced his voice, but he didn’t know if they could.

His hair was grabbed roughly and used to pull his head back to the point that he had to arch his back in the chair. He looked up at the man, who stared down cooly. “If you’d just tell us what we want to know about International Rescue, then this can all be over.”

“I won’t tell you anything,” he repeated.

“We’ll see.”

This time, the prod was placed at the base of his throat. A scream tore out of him with no hope of preventing it, and he was sure they must be able to hear the static in his voice now.

He was distantly aware of Bill walking closer, and just past the buzzing in his ears he could make out the man’s warning, “If you break his voice, we won’t get anything out of him.”

But Dan ignored him, keeping his focus on their prisoner instead. “Who’s in charge of International Rescue?”

John’s body felt like it was burning.

“No,” he managed through clenched teeth.

The prod was jabbed into the same spot.

Systems were damaged. He could feel circuitry overloading. Could feel components frying as electricity arced through them.

“Who funds it?”

“Go to hell,” his voice crackled.

The man laughed, “Oh, now he’s got attitude.”

The prod was jammed into his cheek.

It was the loudest scream he let out, his voice giving out at the end of it. His body jerked, head thrashing to the side despite the hold on his hair that the man still had.

His vision greyed out, and it hurt, oh god it hurt. It was burning, and the warning of systems shutting down.

For a moment, John was certain that he must have actually short-circuited to the point of shutting down because he found himself coming to with his head hanging limply. No longer in the man’s grip.

He could hear Bill’s usual complaining as his systems stuttered back online. “See, I warned ya, didn’t I? If you break him, then we’re definitely not getting anything.”

“Oh, shut up,” Dan snapped, “Besides, I think I may have found something more interesting.”

Dan stepped closer, and John couldn’t help but flinch. Horror growing as the man reached for the right side of his head.

The panel was open.

John tried to turn his head away, but Dan roughly grabbed his chin and kept his head in place as he pried the panel open all the way. Exposing ports on the side of his head that were only ever used by Brains during their system checks.

Dan stayed silent for a long moment, inspecting it before saying, “I think we’re going to need a laptop and some cables.”

The words were like what he imagined being doused in ice water felt like, fear coursing through him, and he felt more vulnerable than he ever had before. He tried to come across unaffected though, forcing some bravado into his voice as he taunted, “You don’t strike me as an expert hacker. You won’t be able to get anything.” The remaining static left his voice as he spoke, which was something to be relieved about at least.

The man shrugged. “We’ll see. No harm in trying after all. Well, for us at least. But I guess if we end up breaking you, then we can always try again with a different member of International Rescue.”

John’s eyes widened for just a second before narrowing into a glare. “Don’t you dare touch them,” his voice was low and dangerous, and he figured it may have actually been intimidating if he wasn’t tied down and covered in burns and his own internal fluids.  

The man grinned, body language casual like they were just having a conversation between friends and not like he’d just threatened John’s brothers. “You’re not really in a position to be making demands, but if you tell us what we want to know, then I won’t have to go after them. Nor will we have to try extracting it from your brain ourselves, or whatever it is you’ve got in there.”

“I won’t,” he said without hesitation. He wouldn’t give up any information on International Rescue, and he’d just have to have faith that his brothers would get him out of there before he was so badly damaged they felt compelled to go after one of them.

“Fine, suit yourself,” Dan said. Then they left, supposedly to go find a laptop and some cables.

John watched them go before he dropped his head, letting it hang limp as he no longer had the strength to hold it up. Not with all the damage they’d caused and the remnants of electricity still stinging through his circuits.

“Come on, fellas, where are you?” he muttered to himself in the silence, but of course, there was no response.

Chapter Text

Scott didn’t manage to get much rest that night. Sure, he’d plugged in to recharge, but hadn’t actually switched his systems off for it. Instead, he’d lain there, going over the events of the rescue in his head, trying to figure out where exactly it’d all gone wrong or what he’d missed. He also thought a lot about where John could be and what was happening to him. Also, about how they could find him.

He finally gave up when the clock ticked over to six am, deciding he’d rested enough. So, he left his room for the lounge and wasn’t surprised to find Jeff already sitting behind his desk with a full mug of coffee placed before him. Scott wondered how long the man had already been there, especially since he’d been so adamant about them all getting some rest. Hypocrite honestly.

Jeff looked up as Scott entered the room, giving the eldest a slight nod of greeting before saying, “Brains and Alan are still working on locating John’s signal. They haven’t got anything yet.”

Scott nodded silently, glad that Jeff knew to answer his question before he’d even had to say anything. “Do they know how much longer it’s going to take?” he asked instead.

“No, apparently the signal you all give off isn’t very strong.” Seeing the frown forming on the eldest’s face, Jeff elaborated, “Brains is sure that given enough time, Thunderbird Five can pick it up. It just took a while to program the computers to scan for the right frequency, and as powerful as they are, they’re scanning for something pretty weak. Brains started the scan in Lancaster, though, and will widen the search from there, but depending on how far they took your brother, it could take some time to find him.”

“Right, well, let’s hope they didn’t go far. I don’t want John left with them any longer than he needs to be.”

“Neither do I,” Jeff agreed, “I called Lady Penelope earlier. She’s started an investigation of her own and is helping to get all our agents on the case.”  

“You really think she can help?”

“Well, if John was taken for information on International Rescue like we suspect, then our agents may be able to uncover who did this or detect if any of our secrets got out.”

“John wouldn’t let anything get out,” Scott defended his brother, and Jeff’s brows furrowed, temper rising slightly.

“While I believe that Scott, it’s still a possibility. One that we can’t ignore, and the longer John is held captive, the more likely it becomes. So, we need to find him as quickly as possible and be on the lookout to do damage control.”

His voice had taken on a stern edge, and he could tell that Scott hadn’t appreciated it. The eldest android, despite obviously not being related to Jeff beyond sharing his looks, had somehow developed a similar temperament, and Jeff could tell that it too was starting to rise. Though he was still slightly taken aback when Scott snapped, “Do you want him back as a member of this family? Or are you just concerned about a piece of International Rescue equipment falling into the wrong hands and compromising our secrecy?”

For a moment, Jeff sat there stunned. He had, of course, known that Scott was protective of his brothers, but this outright anger directed at him had not been expected. “Of course I want John back because he’s a member of this family! You know you’re all like sons to me,” he said firmly, and Scott held his gaze for a moment before glancing away, suddenly looking guilty. Jeff sighed and continued in a softer tone, “I want John back because he is John, but you must understand that we need to be cautious right now about our secrets getting out.”

“Yeah… Sorry.” He tacked on at the end, feeling bad for directing his anger at Jeff but hating to admit it.

Jeff smiled slightly. “That’s alright. Now, there’s not much we can do but wait. Do you want to help organize the agents in the field?”

Scott thought about it for a moment but ultimately shook his head. It would just be a lot of sitting around waiting for the agents to report in with any information they may have learned. He needed to be doing something more active than that.

“No, I think I’ll go do maintenance on One,” he responded and stood up from where he’d sat down in one of the chairs opposite the desk.

Jeff nodded his head in understanding. “Alright, I’ll call you if there are any developments. Don’t go bothering Brains though.”

“Obviously,” he huffed and turned on his heels to leave the room. Practically stalking out.

He’d done maintenance on One for hours without anyone contacting him, and eventually it felt like Scott had gone through his ‘bird from top to bottom. Checking every subroutine and every last bolt.

Eventually, there’d just been no more work to do on One, so he’d wandered over to Three’s silo instead. However, there was even less for him to do there since he didn’t know the spaceship quite as well as his own, but he’d helped copilot her enough that he at least managed to get another few hours of work in.

After that, though, he was unsure of what to do. He debated going over to Thunderbird Two or Four, but he was technically even less familiar with them than Three and wasn’t sure Virgil or Gordon would appreciate him touching their ‘birds. So, it was probably best not to. 

He’d just about made up his mind to go check over their commercial jets when he heard footsteps approaching. When Scott turned to look, he found Virgil walking across the hangar and perked up immediately. But Virgil knew what he was hoping for, so just shook his head mutely. Effectively communicating that no, he didn’t have any news either. Scott’s shoulders fell.

Virgil then held up the heavy toolbox he was carrying around effortlessly. “Want to help me?” he asked simply, and Scott nodded, following his middle brother over to his ‘bird.

Working with Virgil, Scott was able to lose track of time again, especially when they moved on to some of the pod vehicles. Specifically, the Mole, which had taken some damage in its last rescue helping to save some miners in a collapsed mine shaft.

By the time a call came through on Scott’s watch, the two of them were filthy, being absolutely covered in oil and grease. Yet at the first beep from his watch, Scott dropped everything, literally. The wrench he’d previously been holding fell out of his hand and onto Virgil, who let out an indignant “hey!” that Scott ignored. Though his younger brother was quick to pull himself out from under the vehicle when he heard the eldest ask, “What is it? Has Brains found something?”

“We think so,” Jeff responded, “but we’ll discuss once you and Virgil join us in the lounge.”  

“Alright, we’ll be right there,” Scott answered before the call disconnected and he turned back to Virgil. “Well, you heard him, let’s go.”

The two hurried up to the lounge and found themselves to be the last two there. They quickly took a seat on an open settee, uncaring of how dirty they were.

“Alright, now that we’re all here. Brains go ahead,” Jeff said, drawing everyone’s attention to the engineer, who pushed his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

“W-well, Alan and I are r-relatively certain we managed to find John’s signature. It’s located about one hundred and fifty m-miles from the rescue site.”

“Hey, that’s great, Brains,” Virgil praised, and Scott nodded before asking, “So, when do we leave?”

“Hold on there, Scott,” Jeff said, “we can’t go in right away.”

“What? But you were the one saying how we needed to rescue him as soon as possible!”

“I know. But we can’t go rushing in without a plan. We need more information, and we’re a rescue organization, not the law.”

“But-” Scott started, but cut himself off when Virgil placed a hand on his shoulder. “Okay,” he restarted, “what do we need?”

“First,” Jeff began, “Brains, how certain are you that you’ve managed to locate John?”

“90%,” he answered, “the signal is w-weak like I’d expected, but it's unique and the only place that matches.”

“Alright, that’s good enough for me.”

“I did some digging father,” Alan broke in, “and the area his signal is coming from is an old Army complex that was abandoned after the 2040 global conflict. The area around it is pretty remote.”  

“Well, that’ll make it easier to get our ‘birds there without drawing too much attention to ourselves,” Gordon said, trying to be optimistic.

Jeff nodded his head. “Yeah, but it’ll make it harder to get the police there.”

“The police?” Scott asked, immediately followed by Virgil.

“What do we need the police for?”

“As I just said, we’re not the law. If we want these people arrested, we’re going to have to bring in the police.” Jeff paused then and looked around at the boys. No one looked particularly pleased, but he received some nods and no further disagreement. So, he continued, “you boys can go in with the police to help arrest whoever is there, but your main priority will be finding your brother. Alan, do we have any idea how many people are there?”

The blond glanced down at the monitors in front of him before answering, “I’ve been running scans for life signs, and I’ve only come up with two besides John’s signal.”

“Only two?” Jeff asked, and Alan nodded.

“Yes, sir. Only two.”

“Well, keep monitoring Alan, just in case more show up later, but we might be in luck and only dealing with a small operation here.”

“That’ll certainly make it easier to arrest them,” Scott said.

“Between us and some police officers, we can easily outnumber them,” Gordon added.

“Plus, Parker and Lady Penelope.”

They turned back to Jeff with furrowed brows.

“You’re going to have Lady Penelope and Parker go too?” Virgil asked.

“Yeah, she’s been working on this case and can be our point of contact with the police. Especially afterwards, since you boys are to come straight home, she’ll represent us if need be.”  

“Makes sense,” Gordon said with a shrug.

“She can also do some reconnaissance before we get there. As I don’t want us going in blind.”

“Why have her do that? We can do it and waste less time,” Scott interjected.

“Scott, Lady Penelope is a very skilled special agent. While you were built to strategize rescue attempts, this is unknown territory for us, and something we’re not really prepared for. If we want to get John out safely, we won’t go rushing in.”

“Besides, if you went, we all know you’d just storm the place without doing any sort of reconnaissance,” Alan added and got a glare from the eldest.

“Alan, don’t start,” Jeff warned, and the youngest rolled his eyes. “Anyway, Alan, keep monitoring that building, and inform us if anyone comes or goes. I don’t want to be surprised. Brains,” the engineer jumped slightly at suddenly being addressed, “I want you to keep working on that signal, see if you can pinpoint where exactly in the complex John is.”

“Yes, father,” Alan acknowledged as Brains said, “R-right away, Mr. Tracy.” He then left to return to his lab while Alan disconnected the call.

“I’ll call Penny and explain what’s going on. Then contact the police in the nearest city,” Jeff continued.

“What about us father?” Scott asked.

“I want you boys ready to take off in Thunderbirds One and Two when the time comes, but it won’t be for a few hours yet. We need to give Penny time.”

“Well, then when are we going?”

“I want you boys in California before dawn. So, you’ve got about five hours at most.”

Scott frowned at the amount of time they were going to have to wait, but didn’t offer any further protests. Merely saying “F.A.B.” along with Virgil and Gordon.

Virgil got up then, saying how he was going to check the equipment in Thunderbird Two’s med bay just in case, and Scott went to follow. Anxious to know they could do something to help John when they finally found him, because he had a sinking suspicion that they weren’t getting him back undamaged.

They left Gordon with Jeff, who’d just made contact with Lady Penelope. The Duchess was clearly in sleepwear, but looked alert as Jeff began explaining the plan.

Scott hoped they’d hurry up; he wanted John back yesterday. 

Chapter Text

There were ports on the right side of their heads. Intended to be used with specialty cables designed by Brains, but he’d also made it so other cables could work in a pinch, just in case there was an emergency situation. Except now Brains’ caution was biting them in the ass, because there were foreign cables plugged in, and it set John’s whole body on edge. It also didn’t help that these ports had only ever been used while Brains was doing system checks on them, which meant he’d never been powered on when they were in use, adding to the foreign feeling. John also found the men to be subpar coders at best, so their attempts at hacking made his CPU itch, and it was taking them forever, especially against the encryptions that Brains had built into them.

Not that he wanted them to actually manage to get in, of course. In fact, he was actively fighting back with what limited control he had over his own firewalls and encryption. Mostly, he just wished they would stop, but they’d decided that since he wouldn’t tell them anything, the only way to get what they wanted was to find it in his processor. Well, good luck with that, he thought sarcastically.

But one feature he’d quickly discovered was that he could tell when they’d located certain files and datasets. Could feel it when they tried to break the encryptions on them to get to the data within. Luckily, the more important files were heavily encrypted and buried deep within his programming, so hadn’t been located yet. Not that this stopped them from mucking about with the more easily accessible data, like his knowledge on the stars, which, while being important to him, in the grand scheme of his processor, wasn’t a vital function nor classified information.

So, those were the first files they managed to gain access to, but their triumph quickly gave way to a disbelieving cry of “What the fuck is all this?” from Dan, where he sat working on the laptop. “How can there be gigabytes of data on, God, the stars?”

Bill snorted. “International Rescue built an android and turned it into a glorified telescope.”

The comment got a laugh out of Dan, and John just grit his teeth. He wanted to say something, either to defend himself or International Rescue, but he kept his mouth shut. Not wanting to give them the satisfaction or willing to let anything slip.

They continued scanning the files, despite their disbelief at the amount of information on the stars in there, maybe hoping there’d be something on Thunderbird Three since it was a space-bound vehicle. But when that proved fruitless, they moved on to a different file. John held back a sigh of relief, not wanting to admit that he’d been a little concerned they’d delete the data or mess with it somehow out of spite. It felt silly compared to everything else.

Especially when the next file they managed to get past the encryptions for was his language databank.

The itching, crawling feeling intensified as they rooted through the language programs and settings.  

John winced as his settings were changed, and a new primary language was set. He hadn’t known they could do that.

Bill, who’d been watching the android, caught his slight shift in expression. “Hold on, I think you’re doing something,” he informed Dan, who squinted at the screen.

“But what? This just looks like language stuff. Ah, whatever, you ready to tell us anything yet?” he directed the last part at John, asking for what felt like the thousandth time.

John had yet to respond to the question when asked, but well, it seemed safe enough to say something now. “Je ne te dirai rien.” The words come out in French, and sure, he could have responded in English if he’d really wanted to, but they’d switched his primary language. He was just answering as they’d changed his program to do.   

“Great. You broke it,” Bill pointed out, and John glared at him for being called ‘it’ again.

“Yeah, give me a second,” Dan muttered, but it was obvious he didn’t quite know how he’d switched the languages in the first place. There was a moment of furious typing before, “Did that do anything?”

“Ayolah, coba lagi,” he muttered, and tried to hide a grin of satisfaction when Dan obviously became more frustrated.

“Now?”

“Bare sett standarden til engelsk,” he deadpanned, fighting back a smirk. This was the most he’d been in control of the situation, and he could tell it was pissing them off.   

“Let me see it,” Bill snapped and leaned over, taking a moment to look over the screen before inputting a few commands.

John could tell they’d succeed in resetting him back to English, but that wasn’t all he’d done. His eyes widened as he realized that he suddenly had no knowledge of Norsk.

Bill caught the look and smirked.

“Thought that might work, but now you need to remember to play nice, or we’ll start deleting things,” he threatened.

The laptop was then handed back to Dan, who moved on from the language section. And after a while longer of digging, unfortunately came across memory files. “Now this looks more important,” he muttered, and John stared resolutely at the door, not giving them any reaction.

The encryptions around memory files were strong, and he waited for them to move onto other files like they had in the past when something's encryption had proved too difficult, but they didn’t. This was what they’d been looking for after all.

The sensation of trying to break the encryption around his memory files was worse than the others. Like getting jolted by electricity again. Or like someone had taken a hammer to his skull. It went on for what felt like forever.

Eventually, it was with a flash of panic that he realized it was working, that they were getting through the encryptions. He tried to push the panic away, trying to tell himself that they couldn’t have found anything too vital to International Rescue just yet. Surely something like that would have taken even longer.

The sensation of itching and buzzing in his head only grew worse until it reached a fever pitch, and what felt like one last concussive blow before his vision greyed out.

He blinked back to awareness in Brains’ lab. His processor blocking out the sudden burning as it slipped into the memory.

The time had finally come for them to activate the third member of International Rescue, the one to be known as Virgil.

This time around, neither Jeff nor Brains had tried to talk Scott out of being there, so by proxy, hadn’t said anything about John being there either.

Yet the closer they came to activating Virgil, the more nervous John became. He kept trying to shove the emotions down, but he didn’t know how to shake the insecurity that had inexplicably taken over (he’d even debated going to Brains about his apparently malfunctioning emotions chip – but had decided against it).

It’d just been him and Scott for so long. They got along well, and he found himself worried how the introduction of a third would change that. Plus, what if he and Virgil didn’t even get along? What if Virgil didn’t like him?

Seeming to sense his thoughts, Scott threw an arm around his shoulders and muttered lowly so only John could hear, “Relax Johnny, you’ll always be my first little brother, and nothing is going to change that.”

He nodded slightly in response and did his best to relax his shoulders, which were still under Scott’s arm.

He then took a moment to study the features of the pilot before them.

Virgil had, apparently, been based on the features of Jeff’s eldest son, Neil. Though it was more of an approximation really, a guess as to what he’d look like if he’d had the chance to grow into a twenty-something-year-old instead of being lost in an avalanche at only 12.

In that way, he and John were somewhat alike. John had been informed that his own features had been partly based on Jeff’s late wife, Lucille, though it was another approximation since he’d obviously been built as a man. At least Scott’s features had been based on younger photos of Jeff, so unlike them, he didn’t have to carry the weight of a dead loved one’s presence.

It was all decisions John didn’t really understand, nor was he sure he ever could. After ten months, he often felt that he didn’t understand his own emotions, let alone those of a human’s long-term grief.

John was shaken out of these thoughts by Brains’ announcement that they were ready to bring Virgil online. So, he watched with interest, leaning forward slightly in anticipation along with Scott, who dropped his arm back to his side.

It was interesting to see the difference between their first startup sequences.

Scott’s, he’d been told, almost hadn’t worked since he’d been the first one, and they still hadn’t fully refined the process. John knew his own had been calmer by comparison, but he remembered his gaze frantically scanning the room, full body tense as he tried to make sense of what was going on around him.

Yet Virgil’s was proving to be even calmer than that, and certainly more relaxed. Brown eyes slid open to stare up at the ceiling, blinking slowly a couple of times as the pupils regulated themselves.

Then his head turned in their direction, gaze landing on them. But John knew that look was fully focused on Scott, and for a moment, insecurity reared its ugly head, though he was quick to push it down as he watched.

Scott was smiling widely. “Hey there, Virgil. You with us?”  

There was a long pause as the newest android seemed to think it over before asking, “I’m Virgil?” Though his voice came out a bit rough at first, it quickly settled into something gentle and slightly melodic.  

“You are,” Scott confirmed before adding, “and I’m Scott. This is John. We’re your big brothers.”

Finally, brown eyes landed on him, and John offered a smile, hoping it came across as reassuring. He’d never had to be a big brother before, and he suddenly found himself nervous about that instead.

“Brothers,” Virgil repeated, before smiling back at Scott, and then at John. And the future space monitor vowed that he was going to try and be as good as an older brother as Scott was.

Suddenly, it felt like there was another concussive blow to the head, and his vision skipped like a bad VHS recording. Between one blink to the next, John found himself now standing on the opposite side of the bed, with Scott and Virgil across from him as they all looked down at their soon-to-be fourth member. Gordon.

Gordon came online with more energy than all of them combined. Brains had barely announced that he was booting up before Gordon was suddenly sitting bolt upright.

He glanced around at each of them, his face twitching strangely before he managed to pull his mouth into a semblance of a smile that quickly grew more genuine. “H-Hi,” he greeted, voice also taking a second to settle into place after an initial screech an octave too high.   

“Hey there, Gordon,” Scott greeted easily (after pushing down the initial shock), a bright smile on his own face. “I’m Scott, and this is Virgil and John,” he continued, indicating each of them in turn, “We’re your big bro-”

The memory cut out.

It took a moment for John to reorient himself in the room. He wondered how much time had passed, or if the flashbacks had been instantaneous. He also wondered what exactly had happened. Wondered if the laptop had shown them as a playback or just lines of code.  

He shook his head slightly with the urge to clear it. Not that it helped, and it just made the cables swing.

“Stop that,” was snapped at him, and Bill stalked over to not so gently jam the cables back into the ports, completely unnecessarily.

“Well?” he prompted when he rejoined Dan.

“We definitely managed to get into some memory files. Though as far as I can tell, these ones are just about the other International Rescue operatives.”

“Anything useful?”

“Not particularly, but I’ll keep going. The files are stored in these sorta data trees, so I’m guessing their related memories. Makes it a bit easier to move from one to the other once you break through the encryption. I’ll try a different set.”

Another agonizing wait followed, with Dan typing away on the computer while Bill alternated between watching him work and staring at John, who seemingly wasn’t doing anything. However, the android was trying to keep up his own firewalls and keep them out of any more memories. But with their earlier success in getting past the encryptions and the fact that he was slowly running out of energy, it was a losing battle.

Eventually, there was a noise of triumph, and John knew they’d succeeded in accessing another memory when his vision grayed out again.

It’d been his first full day online, and while it’d been good, it’d also been overwhelming. John had so much knowledge in his head, but not the experience to go with it, nor did he know how to apply it.

One of the first topics of discussion had been International Rescue and his place in it, though nothing had been said that he didn’t already know thanks to his programming. He knew about Thunderbird Five and how he was created to live amongst the stars. His only problem was that he’d never actually seen them, so he’d been told to wait.

That night, his first night, he’d sat on a lounger by the pool, waiting as the sun (the Earth’s closest star, made of 92% hydrogen and 8% helium with a core that burned 27 million degrees Fahrenheit – all facts he knew, but didn’t understand) dipped below the horizon and the sky grew darker. He watched as little pinpricks of light began to appear, and just like he knew his role in International Rescue, he knew that these were the stars.

“Oh, wow! They’re beautiful,” he muttered in awe, and was completely taken aback when a voice responded, “They are, aren’t they?”

His head whipped around to where the voice had come from, and he found Jeff standing nearby. John couldn’t believe he hadn’t heard him approach, but, well, he’d been rather distracted.

Jeff smiled at him. “Sorry, John, didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s alright, guess I was just more distracted than I thought.”

“I bet. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to see them for the first time again,” Jeff said, and John just shrugged, not having the words to describe it either. “Do you mind if I join you?” the older man asked, and John hesitated. He’d yet to be around Jeff without the presence of Scott or Brains, so he was a bit unsure, but he figured he’d have to get started somewhere. So, he nodded and gestured to one of the nearby loungers.

Getting the message, Jeff sat down and made himself comfortable before saying, “I’ve been to space before.”

“You have?”

“Yes,” he chuckled slightly at the eagerness in the android’s voice, “it was a long time ago now, back before….. Well, anyway, I worked with NASA.”

“National Aeronautics and Space Administration,” John added, because apparently, he knew that too, and he also knew… “Oh, Jeff Tracy, the first man on Mars,” his eyes widened slightly as he turned to look at the older man, “You’re that Jeff Tracy?”

“I am,” Jeff responded, clearly amused.                                                            

“I – I have a million questions now.”

“That’s alright. We’ve got time,” Jeff said with a smile, and John nodded before his gaze slid back to the stars.

“What’s it like up there?”

“It’s…” the man paused, taking a moment to think, “it’s exhilarating and the most breathtaking place you’ve ever seen. It’s also dangerous and lonely. But you’ll have an easier time up there, since you were built to be there.”

“I can’t wait to experience it for myself,” John said. The ‘and get to learn for myself’ went unsaid.

But maybe Jeff understood anyway because he settled back on the lounger like he was preparing to stay awhile. “Say, did Brains program you with knowledge of the constellations?”

The android paused, swiftly sorting through his processor for knowledge on the constellations, but only coming up blank. “No,” he finally answered, wondering what Jeff was talking about and hoping he’d explain.  

Luckily, the man didn’t disappoint, “Well, the constellations are-”

The memory skipped, and suddenly, he was walking through the villa with a newly built Alan following behind him.

It was growing dark, and John couldn’t wait to show the younger astronaut the stars for the very first time.

He was excited to have someone else to share them with since Virgil, Scott, and Gordon didn’t get it, and didn’t even like being in space all that much. It’d been decided that Scott could potentially take over monitoring duty on Thunderbird Five, if necessary, but Virgil had been adamant that he wouldn’t go up there, and Gordon hadn’t really committed one way or the other. But now John had someone built for the stars, just like him.

John led them out to the pool area and the loungers he’d already set into perfect position (and no one else had been allowed to touch them for the past couple of days to ensure this). He took a seat on one and gestured toward the other for Alan, who also took a seat before glancing around.

“What are we doing out here?”

“You’ll see,” John answered. He then settled back more comfortably against the lounger before pointing upward, “Just keep your eyes up there.”

“Okayyyy,” Alan said skeptically and leaned back just as John had, though he was a bit fidgety, and the older blond could already tell that Alan, just like Scott, was going to have trouble sitting still for long. He suspected it was from being programmed with the need to go fast, something John hadn’t been created with, but he’d come to enjoy it the few times he’d been on a rocket or Thunderbird One. (He couldn’t wait to try out Thunderbird Three, but she and Five were still under construction, and he’d been told they were going to wait until after Alan came online to be completed.)

He'd timed their excursion well, though, and they only had to wait a couple of minutes before the sun dipped below the horizon, and with it gone, the first stars became visible.  

John was happy to see them as always, but for this, he turned to watch Alan’s reaction.

The younger android’s eyes widened as he sat up further in his chair. “Are those the stars?” he asked, mouth hanging open slightly in awe.

“They are,” John confirmed.

“I knew what stars were, but I didn’t know they looked so… wow,” Alan said, not able to find the words, and John chuckled softly.

“Yeah, that’s about how I felt looking at them for the first time.”

“And you’ve already been up there too, huh?”

“I have, though don’t worry. Now that you’re online, Brains will get Thunderbird Three and Five going, and you’ll get up there soon.”

“Well, I hope he’s quick then, because I can’t wait to get up there.”

John laughed again. “How about in the meantime, I tell you about them instead?”

Alan turned to glance at him, blue eyes wide and full of wonder as he nodded his head vigorously. “Yes, please.”

“Alright, I’m assuming you don’t know the constellations?”

There was a pause, and then Alan shook his head like John expected. He hadn’t assumed Brains would program Alan with that knowledge either, and honestly, he’d been kind of hoping he wouldn’t. John wanted to share this with Alan, like Jeff had shared it with him on his first night online.

“No, what’s a constellation?” Alan prompted, and John smiled.

Again, the memory cut out. But it didn’t switch to another one, nor did it come to an abrupt halt like they had previously. Instead, the memory sort of stuttered to a stop, like it wanted to keep going but couldn’t.

Worryingly, a corruption warning popped up, and through the buzzing in his head that was evolving into burning, he distantly wondered if they were going to break all his memories before they managed to get any information.

It still felt like something was hammering away at his skull, and he noticed it was only growing worse with every memory they broke into.

John barely paid the men any attention as they continued to discuss something around the laptop (it was hard to focus past the burning buzzing), until he heard them mention “Jeff Tracy.” He tensed, feeling like every hydraulic and joint had locked into place.

“Jeff Tracy?” Bill seemed to be clarifying, “like the astronaut that now owns Tracy Industries?”

“Guess so, he’s mentioned in here. Not sure how involved he is though, could just be bankrolling them or designing the crafts. It’ll take more digging to tell. Unless you want to add anything?” Dan asked John pointedly at the end.

He received nothing in response.

“Thought not. Though it seems we might finally be getting somewhere. I bet if I get into the more heavily encrypted stuff, then we’ll find what we’re looking for.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not going to sit here and watch you do it,” Bill said, “It’s been hours, and I’m going to go get a coffee.”

There was a slight grunt from Dan and more typing of the keys. “Yeah, I get you; we can try leaving a program running that’ll work on breaking through the encryption on its own for a while. We’ve got time after all.” He then stood up, leading the way out of the room, though as he passed by the bound android, he gave a condescending pat on the shoulder. “We’ll be back later.” 

John just glared at them on the way out.

Finally, he was left alone, but he could feel the program trying to break through the encryptions around his memories. It set his teeth on edge, and it seemed to sting like electricity, though this was a prolonged sensation.

He tried shaking his head, hoping to dislodge the chords, but they stayed in place. Leaving him at the mercy of the program, and the most he could do was try to keep his own firewalls up. Determined that they wouldn’t get anything more out of him, because their finding out Jeff may be involved was already way too much.

It was draining to do so, however, and he could feel himself slipping closer and closer to shut down. He tried to prevent it by turning off all nonimportant functions, but it could only buy him so much time, especially with a lack of charge and the amount of fuel he’d lost in the however many hours it’d been since he’d gotten there. Never mind the strain of the rescue on his reserves beforehand.

Unfortunately, it appeared that shutdown was unavoidable, and he just hoped they didn’t actually manage to hack into his more important memory files while he was unconscious.

As he slipped closer to shut down, time grew more and more blurry, and everything became more distant.

Though for a moment he could have sworn he heard something outside of the room. Something that sounded like a crash resonated through the building, and he was maybe able to pick up yelling before, in a further effort to conserve energy, his hearing shut down to normal parameters before shutting off almost entirely. For the first time in his conscious life, things were almost silent.

 For a moment, he distantly wondered what was going on as his processor slipped further away.

Chapter Text

A silver craft roared across the sky, and through its viewport, Scott could see a complex off in the distance much sooner than any human would be able to. His hands tightened around the controls, knowing that somewhere in there, he’d finally find his brother. It may have only been thirty-six hours since John disappeared, but it’d felt like forever. His little brothers had never completely disappeared off his radar like this before, and he hated it. Whoever had done this to them was going to pay.

He adjusted course slightly, arching the plane so he was no longer on direct approach, but off to the side instead. He wasn't certain if they had equipment that would alert them to the ship coming in, and didn’t want to risk tipping their hand just yet.

He continued flying over the craggy, arid landscape, looking for somewhere to land, and had to settle for a spot a couple of miles north of the compound. The low mountains would provide cover for Thunderbird One and Two, when his brothers eventually joined him.  

He took a moment to call the island and inform their father of his arrival before switching frequencies. When his call was answered, Lady Penelope looked out at him from his watch face.

“Lady Penelope, I’ve arrived at the complex and landed Thunderbird One a couple of miles north,” he informed her, and she gave him a slight smile.

“Very good, Scott. I’m waiting with the police at FAB One. Will you be joining us now, or waiting for Thunderbird Two?”

“I’ll wait; they’re only a couple of minutes behind me.”

“F.A.B. I’ll see you in a moment,” Penelope said before cutting the call.

Scott was then immediately out of his chair and exiting his ‘bird. The dry winter scrub grass crunching under his boots as he began to pace. Impatiently waiting for Thunderbird Two's arrival. 

Luckily, only twelve minutes passed before he could pick up the sounds of an approaching aircraft, though it felt like twelve minutes too long. Like those were twelve minutes they couldn’t afford to waste because who knew what was happening to John in the meantime.

By the time Thunderbird Two landed nearby, his pacing had already worn the grass flat underfoot. Gordon and Virgil were quick to join him, though, and neither of them commented when he barely offered a greeting before ordering them to follow him to Penelope’s location. They were also desperate to get started.

It took them another twenty minutes or so to hike across the mountains to where Penny was waiting. As usual, she was accompanied by Parker, but some members of the local law enforcement they'd contacted were also milling around. Everyone’s attention was immediately drawn to their arrival, and Penny was quick to walk over.

“I’m glad to see you’ve made it,” she greeted softly. Virgil and Gordon returned the greeting, but Scott only nodded in acknowledgement. His attention drawn toward the police captain who’d followed Penny over.

“Captain Bosh,” the man greeted without preamble, “we’re sorry to hear of your missing colleague. We all owe a lot to International Rescue, so we’ll do everything in our power to help you get your man back.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Scott said as he shook the offered hand. “I’m assuming our agents filled you in?”

“Yes. Satellite data indicates there are only two guys inside, plus your missing man. Schematics also show that there are three entrance points, including a garage. My men will split up between these and sweep the building.”

“Right. My team and I will split up amongst the groups as well.”

The captain nodded in acceptance. “We’ll head in now, if you’re ready.”

“More than ready,” Scott confirmed, anger simmering in his voice.

“Right then. Men-” and the captain turned back to the officers, ordering them to split into their squads and head for their entry points.

So, Scott followed suit and turned back to his brothers, indicating which squad they’d each be going with. They nodded at him, both with determined looks on their faces. Gordon turned away immediately to join his squad, but Virgil hesitated for a second, looking at the eldest.

“Let’s get John back,” Virgil said quietly, and briefly clapped Scott on the shoulder before walking away.

Scott watched as the two squads left with his brothers before he went to follow the captain, and he wasn’t surprised when Lady Penelope and Parker joined him. They were going for the main entrance after all.

They skirted around the complex, sticking to the cover of the mountains for as long as possible. Unfortunately, the area was mostly flat and without a single tree to conceal them. If not for the cover of darkness, they would be completely exposed.

“We scouted around earlier and found no sign of traps,” Lady Penelope whispered near his ear, from where she’d leaned in close, “and Alan and Brains have found no signs from their scans either.”

Scott’s mouth twisted into a scowl, wondering how stupid these guys could be, or if they’d just been that confident they wouldn’t be found. He then glanced at the captain and inclined his head toward the building, and the policeman nodded in response.

They all knew that once they made a break for the complex, there’d be no hiding anymore.

So, with one final confirmation with the other teams over the radio, they took off running, ready for some kind of attack, but luckily, none came.

They soon reached the locked main entrance, which surprisingly lacked anything more than an old and rusted padlock.  With stealth already out the window, one of the policemen stepped forward with a battering ram, swinging it into the door with a bang. This was repeated a few more times before the door opened with a crash to finally allow them entry. A couple of policemen hung back to ensure no one escaped that way while the rest ran in, guns at the ready, even Scott.

For this, he'd swapped out the barrel of his pistol, so now, instead of the knockout darts or smoke pellets they were usually equipped with, it would shoot actual bullets. A move that certainly hadn't been supported by Jeff or Brains, and he wondered if his brothers had even noticed. He hoped not. If something had to happen, he wanted it to be his burden alone.

The group of officers quickly swept through the hallway, clearing rooms as they went. Rooms that were all barren and empty, with no sign of recent use, and the longer this went on, the more agitated Scott became. But unfortunately, the complex was huge, and with only three people currently inhabiting it, it was making it difficult to locate them, especially since they must know they were there by now.

It'd also been unfortunate that Brains hadn’t been able to locate John’s signature with any more accuracy. He’d been able to pinpoint his signature to the building, but couldn’t narrow it down further to figure out which part of it he was in. So, Scott was just going to have to find him the old-fashioned way, and he soon found himself straying from the group. He was faster than the average human after all, and could cover more ground more easily.

Lady Penelope noticed, though, and called after him, telling him to wait. But he didn’t. Instead, he forged recklessly ahead, desperate to find his missing brother. Even if he found himself alone with no idea where any of the supposed bad guys were.

Though Scott figured he had found them when he rounded a corner and a shot went whizzing by his head, barely missing his ear. He dove back around the corner and stood with his back to the wall, pistol now in hand.

He inched to the side and dared to peek around the corner, trying to see where the shot had come from.

There, just down the hallway, he could see a bulky man in black tactical gear peeking around the corner.

“Come out with your hands up!” Scott shouted. “We’ve got this place surrounded, and you’ll be arrested for the abduction of an operative of International Rescue.”

He wasn’t expecting the man to laugh, but he did. A cruel sound. “You really think it’d be that easy?”

“No, but I thought I’d better give you the option!” he retorted, and there was a smile on his face. Sharp and dangerous. “Now, where is my man?”

“Around, though, tell me, are you an android too? Or just your friend?” The man asked, and if Scott could run cold, he was sure he would have. This guy knew their secret.

When he didn’t answer, the man laughed again. “Come on, don’t be shy. If I shoot you, will you spark and pretend to bleed too?”

“What did you do?!” He snarled, rounding the corner fully and taking his best shot. It hit the corner, shards of concrete flying off the wall, but the man ducked away unharmed. Then he heard the sound of footsteps retreating down the hall.

Not willing to let the man escape from him that easily, Scott took off after him, trying his best to follow the sound of echoing footsteps. For once, he wished he had John’s hearing. It seemed like it'd be a pain most of the time, but he could really use it now. The man also had the advantage of being familiar with the compound, so knew exactly where he was going. Quickly losing the android in the maze of corridors.

Or at least, Scott thought the guy had given him the slip before a door was suddenly flung open in his face. Causing him to run into it full force and topple over. His gun was then kicked away from him, and Scott looked up as the man pointed a pistol at his face.

He did the only thing he could think of and swept the legs. The man went down hard, and Scott threw himself on him, trying to wrestle the gun away from him. While he was technically stronger than the average human, this man wasn’t average, making it not as easy as it should’ve been.

Both human and android had their hands wrapped around the gun, but the man also had a finger around the trigger. And with the way the gun was pointed, Scott knew that if it went off, it’d be right in his face.

He didn’t think he’d survive a shot to the processor like that, and the man grinned, seeming to know it too. “Let’s see how tough you androids really are,” he taunted, and a shot rang out.

Scott blinked, and it took him a moment to realize there wasn't a gaping hole tearing through his processor. Instead, the man fell backwards limply, a neat red hole through his forehead.

Scott flung the pistol to the side like it’d burned him, and scrambled away from the body. He then turned to where the shot had come from and stared in wide-eyed shock at the younger android standing there.

Gordon stared at him with a grim expression, hands tight around the pistol in his hand. The barrels swapped out.

“Gordon?” He questioned and pulled himself up, approaching his little brother cautiously. Reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder.

The ginger remained frozen for another moment before holstering his pistol in a sort of uncoordinated move. Though when hazel eyes looked up to meet blue, there wasn’t a shred of regret or shock there, just anger and determination.

“I couldn’t let him do it, Scott,” he said, “I couldn’t let him take two brothers away from me.”

“It’s alright, Gordon,” he tried to soothe, “I’m alright now, and John is around here somewhere. We’ll find him, and we’ll get him home. You’ll see.”

He got a stiff nod as Gordon’s attention briefly went to the man before looking back at Scott. “He knew we were androids?”

“It seems so.”

“That doesn’t sound good for John.”

“No, it doesn’t,” he agreed, and didn’t voice the treacherous thought that maybe it was for the best that this guy had died then.

After a moment, Gordon shrugged Scott’s hand off his shoulder. “Let’s keep looking,” he muttered, and Scott just nodded. Following the younger android further down the hall.

“Do we know what’s happened to the other guy?” Scott ventured after a moment, wondering if both men knew their secret and figured they must.

“No,” Gordon answered, “I hadn’t run across anyone before you.”

“And why aren’t you with your squad?” Scott asked and got a flat look in return. 

“Why aren’t you?” was countered, and Scott too didn’t answer.

Instead, he raised his watch and called Lady Penelope, who answered on her makeup compact. “Scott, thank god, where have you been?”  

“We ran across a hostile,” he answered simply, “we left the body a couple of hallways back.”

“Body?” she questioned, eyes narrowing.  

“There was a fight over a pistol,” was all Scott explained. Not willing to let it be known what exactly Gordon had done. “They know about us,” he added quietly, hoping she’d get it without more explanation, as he didn’t want anyone overhearing.   

Her blue eyes widened, and she nodded in understanding. “We’ve found the main office,” she added, seemingly out of nowhere, “our apparent second hostile is barricaded inside, we’ll see what we can do.”

He wasn’t entirely sure what she meant by that, but he trusted her. “Alright, be careful. Any sign of John?”

“Not yet, I’m afraid.”

“Okay. Over and out.” The transmission ended, and he glanced at Gordon, who’d paused to listen to the interaction. “Well, you heard her; both hostiles are accounted for. Now we just need to find John.”

“Right. Split up?” Gordon asked, and Scott hesitated. Not entirely willing to lose sight of his little brother again, especially not after what happened, but he knew it’d be faster.

“Fine, but I want constant communication out of you. Call immediately if you find him.”

“Oh, relax, will ya?” Gordon huffed and turned toward one of the branching hallways.

Scott watched him leave before continuing his own search, fueled by the knowledge that they’d have to find John soon, but also afraid to know what they’d done to him. For these men to have found out what they are, he knew he wouldn’t find his brother in one piece.

Chapter Text

In the end, Scott was the one to find John.

He’d kicked in another door in the long hallway, and when he saw the familiar uniform and mop of blond hair, a feeling of relief shot through him. Though it quickly disappeared, as he made his way across the room and saw just how damaged his brother was.

Scott thought he’d prepared himself for the state he’d find John in, but he hadn’t expected there to be so much red everywhere. The usually pristine uniform was stained burgundy, and cuts were littered throughout, leaving it tattered. Yet as he got closer, he could tell that some of those rips and tears were actually burned through, but with what, he didn’t want to think about at the moment. Not with the way John hadn’t looked up or reacted to his presence. Hadn’t moved an inch since the door was kicked in by his older brother.

John was seated slumped forward in a chair, head hanging limply. The only thing keeping him in place was the metal cuffs around each wrist that trapped him to the arms of the chair. Though the worst part was how the side of his head had been ripped open, wires connecting him to a laptop placed off to the side.

It terrified Scott, but he didn’t want to unplug the wires or touch the computer without contacting Virgil and Brains. Afraid of causing further damage to his brother.

So, leaving it be for now, he went to kneel in front of John, and from that angle, he could see that blue eyes were open, though half-lidded and seemingly staring at nothing.

“John?” he prompted, cupping his younger brother’s face in both hands. He then lifted John’s head slightly to look at him and winced at the burn marring his left cheek. “John. It’s me.”

There was a long moment of nothing before the blond blinked, eyes focusing on his elder brother’s face.

“’cott?” he questioned, not fully forming the word. Then his eyes widened, and a look of panic crossed his face. Immediately sending alarm bells through the pilot’s head. “I didn’ tell ‘em anythin’,” he said, and Scott forced a reassuring smile.

“I know you didn’t, spaceman. No one can get anything from you.”

He hoped to calm John down, but the other still looked panicked. “I didn’ tell ‘em anythin’,” he repeated.

Scott’s brows furrowed. “I know, John, it’s okay.”

But again, the reassurances didn’t work. Instead, John appeared to be looking straight through him as he kept repeating “I didn’ tell ‘em anythin’.”

Scott pulled his hands away from John’s face, whose head once again slumped forward, though he was still repeating that phrase over and over. The pilot activated his watch.

“Thunderbird One to Two. Virgil, come in!” He practically barked into the comm, and Virgil was quick to pick up.

“Thunderbird Two here. What is it, Scott?”

“I have John, but you need to get here fast. He’s badly damaged.”

“F.A.B.” Virgil replied, and Scott could tell from the image on his watch that Virgil had broken into a sprint. “Turn your locator on and I’ll get there in a second.”

Scott grunted in acknowledgement and gave a terse “Hurry,” before ending the call and turning his location on.

John was still repeating himself.

It felt like it took forever for Virgil to arrive, but it was realistically only a couple of minutes. He practically crashed through the doorway as he quickly came to join them, seeming to take in everything as Scott had.

“He keeps repeating himself,” Scott informed their engineer, drawing attention to the issue he was currently most worried about. “He won’t stop, and I can’t get him to respond to anything else.”

Virgil nodded, listening to the repeatedly muttered phrase that had devolved into “didn’ tell ‘em.”

“He’s stuck in a processor loop. We’re…,” he paused, glancing at the cables and computer his immediate older brother’s CPU was hooked up to, “we’re going to have to check him over back on the island, and we’re going to need Brains to do it. The best I can do for now is shut him down.”

Scott’s mouth pulled into a thin line at that, but he gave a sharp nod of permission. So, Virgil stepped closer to John, who still hadn’t acknowledged he was there.

“It’s okay, John,” he muttered, “you can rest now.” His fingers quickly found the hidden spot just behind his brother’s left ear and pressed down. John’s voice automatically cut off, and his eyes slipped closed. He slumped further in the chair as he shut down, like a puppet with its strings cut.

Virgil looked at his blond brother for a moment before glancing at Scott, who also looked away to make eye contact with Virgil. And Scott imagined that Virgil’s grim expression mirrored his own.  

“Let’s get him out of here,” Virgil muttered, and Scott nodded before standing.

“Agreed. I’m worried about that though,” he said, gesturing to the cables and computer.

Virgil bit his lip as he nodded in agreement, moving closer to the computer. He began looking over the screen, and Scott joined him, practically hovering over his shoulder.

It was obvious to both of them that these men had been trying to hack into John’s processor, and it sent protective anger and horror through them both. To make matters worse, neither could tell the extent of the damage. Scott had never been one for computers or machines, and while Virgil was their engineer, he hadn’t taken much interest in the computer side of things. Computers and hacking had always been John’s area of expertise, but they obviously couldn’t ask him.

“I’m going to call Brains,” Virgil announced, and Scott merely nodded.

A moment later, an image of Brains could be seen on Virgil’s watch face. “Oh, Virgil. D-d-did you find John?”

“We did Brains, but he’s badly damaged, I’m afraid. I’ve had to shut him off to get him out of a processor loop.”

“Oh d-dear.”

“Yeah. Well, unfortunately, that’s not even the worst of it,” Virgil said, then held his arm out so that the video feed showed the computer. “These guys were trying to hack into John’s processor. He’s still hooked up to it with cables, and neither Scott or I wanted to touch it without talking to you first.”

“I-I see. That was a g-good idea. Can you get me a c-closer look at the co-computer?”

“Sure thing.” Virgil moved closer, arm still twisted around to get Brains a better view.

“Is it hooked up to anything?”

“Besides John? No,” Scott added. 

“Hmm. Are there any p-programs actively ru-running?”

Virgil took a moment to look at the screen, clicking through the open windows and programs. He then let out a noise of frustration. “It looks like they left a program running to break the encryption around his memory files. Doesn’t seem to be having much luck though.”

“Alright, enter a stop command for the program. Once it’s stopped, it sh-should be safe to unplug the cables. As long as no other p-programs are running.”

“Okay, give me a second,” Virgil said as he typed in and ran the stop command. It took a moment to work, but as far as he could tell, the program terminated. He then took another moment to click through the remaining windows and didn’t find any more evidence of actively running programs. Virgil frowned though, knowing that John would have been able to tell them with complete certainty. “I got the program to stop, and I’ve taken another look. Doesn’t look like anything else is running,” he informed Brains, and by proxy, Scott. 

“I-in that case, it should be s-safe to unplug the cables now. I want you t-to bring the computer back with you though, so that I-I can try to get a better idea of what they’ve done to John and if they managed to get anything.”

“F.A.B. Brains. We’ll call again later with an update on John’s condition so you can prep your equipment in the lab. Virgil out.” With that, his watch face returned to a normal analogue clock, and Virgil turned back to the eldest. “Alright, you heard him, let’s get those cables out.”

“Yeah,” Scott muttered and returned to John’s side, whose head was still hanging limply. Scott gently grasped his brother’s chin with one hand to hold his head in place and brace it while he removed the cables with the other.  

He tensed, worried that their removal would trigger something like an explosion or electric shock. Imagined blue eyes suddenly flying open and John screaming in pain as the cables came unplugged. But it ended up being much more anticlimactic than that. John never regained consciousness and didn’t so much as twitch when the three cables were unplugged from his head. Their removal not seeming to trigger any left behind traps either.

With that out of the way, Virgil ripped apart the handcuffs around John’s ankles before, with a bit more effort, ripping the cuffs off John’s wrists.

Without those to keep him in place, the astronaut started to slump forward, but Virgil readjusted him in the chair to keep him there. He then glanced up at Scott. “We can call Gordon and have him bring one of the stretchers from Thunderbird Two. Then we can get him out of here.”

Scott didn’t answer and merely studied his brother for a moment. Then, without warning, he hauled John out of the chair and into his arms, one supporting John’s bent knees while the other went around his back. The space monitor’s head resting against Scott’s chest.

Virgil rolled his eyes. “Or you could just do that I suppose. Come on.” He grabbed the laptop and cables as Brains had requested before following Scott out of the room.

They walked through the empty facility, taking a few wrong turns and doubling back a few times, before finally exiting through an exterior door and stepping into the slowly brightening dawn.

The police were still around but were now accompanied by an ambulance. The paramedics loading covered gurneys into the back while Gordon supervised. But the redhead’s attention turned to the door as soon as it opened, and when he caught sight of his brothers, he came running over. Scott was relieved to see him. 

“Oh my God, you found him!” Gordon shouted as he fell into step beside them, which was soon followed by a mutter of “Oh, Johnny, what’ve they done to you?” as he took in the appearance of his older brother.

“The police have the situation handled?” Scott asked abruptly, drawing Gordon’s attention.

“Yeah, both bodies have been recovered.”

“What happened to the other guy?” he questioned, and Gordon gave him a carefully neutral look.

“Lady Penelope says there was a firefight after they got into the control room. No one’s sure who shot him.”

Scott merely grunted in response. He didn’t feel bad about it, nor did he care to speculate, and he imagined Gordon didn’t either.

Virgil gave the two of them a look, knowing that there was something he’d missed, but at the moment it wasn’t his biggest concern.

“So, we’re good to get out of here?” Virgil asked instead, and Gordon directed a lopsided grin at his immediate older brother. But it wasn’t as cheerful as usual.

“I mean, it’s not like they can stop us, right? Though we should probably go quickly before they start wanting a statement from John, or think about taking him to the hospital. We need to hide all of… that.” He gestured vaguely at John, and they understood his meaning. Right now, there was no hiding that John was an android, and that would invite questions they weren’t willing to answer.

“Right,” Scott said and picked up the pace, which was easily matched by Gordon and Virgil.

When they eventually reached Thunderbird Two, Scott immediately went to the small infirmary and gently deposited John on one of the beds there.

Virgil set the computer off to the side before stepping in to better assess John’s condition. He hesitated for a moment before plugging a small monitoring device into the ports already exposed on John’s head.

“Extremely low on charge. Dangerously low on fuel, but he’s got so many torn fuel lines I wouldn’t dare give him any more because it wouldn’t even stay in,” Virgil muttered to himself, shaking his head in frustration.

“Can he make it back to the island without it?” Gordon questioned, and Virgil hesitated for a moment, thinking it over.  

“I think so. I don’t have the time and equipment here to start repairing all the damaged fuel and hydraulic lines myself, but considering he’s completely shut down right now, his body won’t require much. It should be able to hold until we get him back to Brains’ lab.” He then grabbed a charging cable and leaned across to turn the portable generator on. “Scott, lift his head, will ya?” he asked, and Scott did just that. Gently lifting John’s head off the bed so that Virgil could fit the cable into the small socket at the base of his skull.

With that complete and John’s head laying back on the bed, Virgil nodded to himself. “That should help keep him stabilized, but we need to get him back to the island as soon as possible. Gordon, can you stay here and monitor him?”

“F.A.B.” he answered, but then hesitated a moment. “You disabled the ‘alarm clock’ though, right? Because I don’t know what to do if he onlines during the flight home.”  

“Right, yeah, hold on,” he did something on his monitoring device before announcing, “done,” causing Gordon to visibly relax. With that taken care of, Virgil’s attention turned to his eldest brother. “Okay, Scott, it’s time to get back to your ‘bird.”

Scott really didn’t want to leave his brothers, but he knew he had to get Thunderbird One home somehow, and he didn’t want to hold them up from returning John to the island.

“F.A.B.” he said as well before turning smartly on his heels and exiting Thunderbird Two. He made his way across the dusty ground to his own sleek, silver craft and entered through the hatch near the pilot’s seat. Though he didn’t dare take off until Thunderbird Two did.  

Yet before he fully left the area, he took a second to hover in view of the police cars, watching the now tiny figures of Lady Penelope and the police below. Then, with a shake of his head, he turned his ‘bird towards home, knowing that it was out of their hands now.

It didn’t take him long to catch up with Thunderbird Two, but he didn’t overtake her. Instead, he matched speed, intending to escort his brothers home.

Speaking of home, he flicked a switch, activating the radio. “Thunderbird One to base, come in.”

Jeff was quick to answer, sounding weary and impatient. “Base receiving you, Thunderbird One. Scott, what’s the situation?”

“We managed to locate John and get him out of there, father, but he’s in a bad way. He’s heavily damaged and, well, they certainly figured out he’s an android.”

“Blast!” Jeff shouted into the microphone, and Scott’s mouth flattened into a thin line. “What’s the damage?”

“I didn’t get a real good look, but a lot of cuts for sure. They also had him hooked up to a computer, and he was stuck in a processor loop when I got to him. We had to shut him down.”  

“Computer? But what were- ” Jeff cut himself off, and Scott imagined the man was shaking his head. “And the guys who took him?”

“Dead,” Scott answered simply, not wanting to discuss how exactly that came about.

“I see. Guess that solves one of our problems,” Jeff said gruffly, and the line fell silent for a moment before he continued in a softer tone, “You boys did good today, son. I’m sure Brains will be able to fix John right up.”

Those words had Scott relaxing somewhat, mouth pulling into a small smile. “Thanks dad, we’ll be home soon. Go ahead and inform Alan of what’s going on, will ya?”

“I will, and Scott?”

“Yes sir?”

“Don’t shadow your brothers all the way home. You know it annoys Virgil when you do that.”

Scott chuckled softly. “F.A.B. Thunderbird One out.”

The radio fell silent, and Scott glanced over at Thunderbird Two where she was steadily making her way home. After a moment of hesitation, he put on a burst of speed. Trusting his brothers to make it home in one piece if he took his attention off of them.

The silver craft shot forward, heading for home.

Chapter Text

By the time Thunderbird Two had landed and lumbered her way into the hangars, Scott had already been waiting impatiently for thirty minutes. Jeff waited beside him while Brains was bustling about his lab, preparing his equipment to deal with the damaged android.

The craft had barely even come to a stop before Scott was running for the access hatch, not sparing Jeff any attention when he followed, but quickly fell behind. All of them, in general, were faster than humans (though none of them were faster than Alan).

By the time he entered Two's med bay, Virgil was already back there as well, leaning over the still shut-down John. Gordon was nowhere to be seen, and when Scott spared it a thought, he figured the aquanaut must be doing post-flight checks, freeing up Virgil to be here.

“How is he?” he asked, and Virgil sighed warily.

“His condition hasn’t changed. Now help me move him onto a gurney.” And seeming to sense that Scott had opened his mouth with the intention to protest, he added, “No, you’re not going to carry him to Brains’ lab.”

“It’d be faster.”

“Scott,” Virgil said curtly, and the elder backed down, thinking it wouldn’t be wise to cross the medic right now.

Instead, he went to grab one of the gurneys stowed in Two, while Virgil continued fussing over John. When he brought it back, he and Virgil maneuvered their prone brother onto it.

Jeff reached them then, breathing hard from his run across the hangars, but he immediately came over to the gurney. For a moment, he looked shocked at John’s condition before his face settled into a stormy expression. He reached forward, intending to neaten blond bangs, but quickly gave up the action as futile. The red liquid that’d dried there had left them a clumpy mess that wouldn’t easily be fixed and returned to the immaculate style that John kept up.

“Let’s get him to the lab, boys,” Jeff said simply, and required no further agreement from them.

They carefully maneuvered the gurney out of Thunderbird Two and across the hangars. Eventually, reaching the comparatively narrow hallway that would take them to Brains’ lab. Scott walked at the front, with one hand on the gurney like he was helping to move it along, even though he knew Virgil was fully capable of doing it himself from where he pushed from behind. Jeff walked alongside the gurney on the opposite side of Scott, constantly looking down to check on the android lying there.

When they reached Brains’ lab, Jeff opened the door for them, and Scott helped maneuver the gurney through the room, navigating past all the equipment scattered throughout. They stopped beside the central bed where Brains did all his work on them.

Virgil locked the wheels in place, ensuring the gurney wouldn’t move as he and Scott once again transferred John. And as Virgil worked on maneuvering the gurney back out of the room with Jeff’s help, Brains finally came running over.

He stopped by the bed and seemed to take in the sheer amount of damage that had been done to John in the thirty-six hours he’d been missing. Brains stood there for a moment, not doing anything, almost as if he too didn’t quite know where to start.

He eventually seemed to settle on a course of action, as he turned away for a moment to retrieve a pair of scissors. “L-lets see the damage, shall we?” he said grimly and started to cut away the already tattered uniform.

Scott helped where he could, pulling pieces of cloth away after Brains cut it, and collecting it into a heap to throw away later.

With the uniform out of the way, it was possible to see every injury that John had been inflicted. Every burn. Every gash. Every stab wound. But that was just on the surface, and Scott knew there would be internal damage too. Never mind whatever damage they’d caused with the computer trying to hack into John’s CPU like that.

Scott wasn’t entirely sure what Brains’ plan of action was, but he watched as Brains started pressing around near John’s elbow. After a moment, he seemed to find what he was looking for and let out a soft cry of “ah ha!” Then, when he pressed down, an invisible seam loosened, separating John’s arm at the elbow joint so that Brains could fully remove the damaged forearm from the rest of his body. He did the same to his other forearm before laying both damaged limbs off to the side on a worktable he’d wheeled over.

He then moved on to inspect John’s legs, potentially to separate them just as he had the arms.

Instead of watching that, Scott found his gaze drawn to the storage compartments on the far side of the lab. Specifically, the one labeled with a lavender five, which housed all of the spare limbs and body parts that Brains had created for John. It was a bit morbid, Scott thought, having these containers with spare pieces of themselves, and for a moment his gaze switched to the container labeled with a blue one, where his own extras were stored. They were nice to have on hand after a bad rescue, though, especially since having extra parts meant they didn’t have to wait long for repairs.

Not everything was easily replaceable though: having extra limbs had been useful after the hydrofoil accident had resulted in the replacement of Gordon’s legs, but the real issue had been with his spine. That had been harder to fix, and for a while, Brains hadn’t been confident he could fully integrate new vertebrates into the system, especially not pieces so delicate. Gordon had been out of action for a while because of it, and sometimes still had issues with his back strut even now. Not that he’d ever let that stop him. 

When Scott finally looked back over, it was to find Brains had also gone ahead and separated John’s left leg at the knee, due to a long gash down his calf. The still intact right leg remained where it was.  

He wished he could hold John’s hand, but considering neither were attached at the moment, he had to content himself with placing a hand on John’s shoulder instead. He was careful not to touch any of the damaged areas, though, and there were a lot with all the cuts that littered the astronaut’s frame, along with what Scott suspected to be electrical burns. He winces in sympathy at that. The cuts would have just been uncomfortable and an annoyance, but he imagined electricity arching through their systems was much more unpleasant.

And for once, he thought that their being androids may have been a bit of a hindrance because at least human bodies could repair themselves. Cuts could close and blood could clot. But for them, there was no self-healing. They were damaged until Brains or Virgil repaired them. So, between the leaking fluid and electrical shocks to the system, Scott figured it made sense why John was in such a bad way, and why he got caught in a processor loop, especially with those guys trying to hack into it.

His train of thought was interrupted by Brains calling his name in a tone that suggested he’d already tried to get his attention multiple times. Scott’s head snapped up to look at the inventor, who he suddenly realized was still the only other person in the room besides him and John. Where had Jeff and Virgil gone?

“Huh?” he questioned eloquently.

“I – I – I think you sh-should wait outside.” Brains said, and Scott’s hand tightened on his brother’s shoulder.

“No. I need to stay with him.”

Brains frowned in sympathy. “Scott. Th-the damage is ex-extensive. We’re g-g-going to have to replace much of his body. It m-may be-be unpleasant for you.”

Scott suddenly got his meaning. Because, unlike with a real human body, which could be left to heal the cuts and burns on its own, they were going to actually have to replace the damaged synthetic skin and internal components. Which meant stripping the other down to his inner workings.

“I can handle it!” Scott snapped, not liking his ability to handle situations questioned, and besides, he’d been there while the others were built, he knew what it’d looked like. But a small voice of doubt reminded him that it would be different seeing his brothers brought back to that state, instead of watching them get built up from it. Also, Brains had always been kind of particular about not letting them into the lab until the body was already mostly complete. Already mostly covered in synthetic flesh and resembling a completed person.

Still, he wasn’t going to back down now. He needed to stay with John.

Virgil appeared at that point, carrying the computer they’d taken from the complex for Brains to look through and figure out the extent of the damage to John’s processor. He placed the computer down on the first available space he found before coming to join them around the bed. He took in the work Brains had started and how his immediate older brother was now missing three limbs.

“I’m not leaving,” Scott protested then, just to make it clear. And Virgil seemed to understand the situation instantly without explanation.

He placed a gentle hand on his eldest brother’s shoulder. “Scott, please,” was all he said, but it was all he needed to.

“I-” Scott started, but cut himself off as he searched those brown eyes and saw how resigned Virgil was.

His shoulders slumped, and he looked away. Gaze instead falling back on John’s lax face, and the cuts and burns it held.

He squeezed the younger android’s shoulder one last time before stepping back. “Okay,” he said, and left the room.

He barely caught Virgil’s quiet “thank you” on the way out.

Chapter Text

As Scott found himself in the still-empty hallway, he briefly wondered where Gordon and Jeff had gone, but he didn’t have it in him to go looking for them. Instead, he stood there for a moment before he inevitably began pacing, annoyed with Virgil and Brains for kicking him out like that, and finding it unfair that Virgil could stay in the lab when he couldn't. 

He quickly pushed that thought aside, however. Fairness had nothing to do with it. Virgil had been programmed as a medic for humans and with the engineering knowledge to fix them if necessary. It was only practical for him to stay. Still, though, it didn't make him any less annoyed, which only fueled his pacing.  

Scott had just made it to the end of the hall and did an about-face to head back in the other direction when Gordon rounded the corner. Walking in from the direction of the hangar.

“Where have you been?” he snapped without really meaning to, and the younger gave him an annoyed look.

“Doing post-flight checks on Thunderbird Two, because someone had to, and it wasn’t going to be Virgil right now.”

“Right,” he said in a softer tone, then added a more subdued, “Sorry.”

Gordon gave him a sort of smile. Clearly knowing that dealing with a worried sick Scott also meant dealing with a snappy one.

“They kicked you out, huh?”

“Yes,” he practically growled.

“Probably would’ve just been in the way if they hadn’t,” Gordon added with a shrug as he leaned against the wall opposite the door. He crossed his arms over his chest, then crossed one foot over the other.

And he kept up the relaxed pose even when Scott whirled to glare at him for the comment. “I would not!”

“Scott, you absolutely would have been. Virgil and Brains need room to work since they’re probably going to have to take a lot of him apart.”

“And that’s exactly why I need to be in there!”

Gordon gave him a long, searching look, and Scott didn’t like it. Not used to the prankster of the family being so serious. “Why? He wouldn’t even know you’re there.”

“What?” he sputtered.

“John’s completely shut down right now. He wouldn’t know that you’re in there.”

“I know that! But we can still be there for him, whether he knows we’re there or not!”

“Exactly. We’re being there for him by waiting out here and letting Brains and Virgil work in peace without having to dodge around smother hen.”

Scott grumbled angrily at the nickname, and a small smile finally lifted the corners of Gordon’s mouth. “He’s safe in there with them, and they’ll get him fixed up in no time. You’ll see.”

“I guess so.”

Gordon hummed noncommittedly before sliding down the wall until he was sitting on the floor. He then patted the space next to him. “Come on and sit down, you’re making me tired just watching you.”

“We can’t get tired,” Scott grumbled, but went to sit beside the younger anyway.

“We always say that, but I don’t think it’s true,” Gordon muttered in response, and Scott turned to the other in concern. Brows furrowed as he studied the redhead.

“Are you alright? Do you need to recharge?”

“No. My energy levels are fine. I just feel…. drained, I guess.  I think that’s how a human would describe it.”

“Well, it has been a difficult couple of days,” Scott ventured, and Gordon snorted.

“That’s an understatement.” He then pulled his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “Nothing like this has ever happened before,” he started, and Scott watched him silently, “the worst we’ve had so far was my hydrofoil crash, but that wasn’t even related to International Rescue, and Brains eventually replaced my legs and fixed my back strut, and it’s been fine. But this… they took him for International Rescue’s secrets.”

“I know. It’s a lot different than our usual nemeses, who just want to photograph our crafts and equipment.”

He got a slight nod as Gordon continued staring at the floor. “Yeah… I just, God, Scott, they were trying to hack into his CPU! Brains can replace our limbs and bodies all he wants, but he can’t replace that. That’s what makes us… us.” He then suddenly turned his head to look at the eldest. “You don’t think they did irreparable damage, do you?”

“I don’t know,” Scott admitted, because he didn’t want to lie or offer false platitudes. “I don’t know computers like John and Brains do, so I couldn’t tell what programs were on that computer. We’re just going to have to let Brains figure it out, and I’m sure that’ll be his top priority.”

“Yeah, probably,” Gordon agreed, wrapping his arms just a bit tighter around his knees.

It was silent for a moment between them before Scott began his next question hesitantly, “Are you alright after…” he didn’t mean to trail off, but Gordon knew what he was getting at.

“After I killed someone?”

“Yes.”

“I meant what I said back there. I couldn’t let him take two brothers away from me, and he was so close, Scott. I saw him with that gun in your face, about to pull the trigger, and I didn’t even think. I just had to save you. And now after seeing what he’s done to John…” he shook his head angrily before side-eyeing his brother. “I do feel absolutely awful about it, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I’m just worried about you.”

“Well, don’t, this isn’t a sci-fi movie and I’m not about to go all ‘Hal 9000’ on humanity,” he joked, and Scott knew the younger needed to do so because joking helped him cope. So, he let him joke and waited him out, and sure enough, Gordon continued after a moment. “I really do feel absolutely awful about it, and I’m scared that I did it without even thinking about it. I think I would have actually been sick if I could.”

“I think that’s the normal reaction,” Scott ventured after a moment. “You can talk to me or one of the other guys about it. Or probably Brains or dad if you really wanted to. Hell, even Penny or Parker.”

Gordon looked at him with wide eyes at that. “You don’t think they’re going to do anything about it? Like… like shut me down?”

“No! First, I doubt they would, and second, none of us would ever let that happen. We’d all run away from the island before we let you be shut down or reprogrammed or whatever. Whether you went all Hal 9000 on us or not,” Scott said, and was happy when his brother smiled a little at the joke. “Besides, humans kill each other all the time, and Jeff was in the Air Force before he was an astronaut. He may be able to relate or at least help you talk it out.”

“Alright,” Gordon said slowly, “I’ll consider.”

“Good, and remember, you can always talk to me about it too,” he said, placing a hand on his brother’s shoulder, and when Gordon seemed to lean into the touch, he wrapped it around Gordon’s shoulders instead. The younger android leaned into his side.

“I will,” was muttered, and Scott tightened his hold.

It fell silent between them as they continued to watch the door, and that was how Jeff eventually found them. Seated on the floor with Gordon leaning against Scott’s side, his knees still pulled up to his chest, and his eldest brother’s arm secure around his shoulders.

Jeff smiled a little at the sight. “Any news, boys?” he asked, causing their attention to snap to him.

“No. Haven’t heard anything since Brains kicked me out,” Scott explained, and Jeff nodded.

“Explains why you’re not in there then.”

Scott didn’t follow up on that comment and instead asked, “Where were you?”

“Updating Alan on the situation again.”

Jeff noticed the way Scott tensed at that, a frown marring his features. “Oh, right,” he muttered, seemingly to himself, and Jeff wouldn’t be surprised if the younger astronaut had completely slipped his mind since returning to the island. But then he looked up at Jeff with an intense look. “Let me go get him.”

“What?”

“Let me bring Alan home. He shouldn’t have to be stuck on Thunderbird Five alone right now.”

“You know we can’t do that, Scott. Someone needs to man the satellite.”

“Dad, we shouldn’t just leave him there, and Five will be fine on automatic for a couple of days.”

“We’re not going to leave it on autopilot!”

“Why? Why we’d even build it with one if we can never use it? We should all be together; besides, you really think we’d be able to go out on a call right now anyway?” When Jeff didn’t have an immediate answer, Scott knew he must be getting through. “And if someone has to go back, then I will,” he added, and he meant it too. It would kill him not to be with his brothers right now, especially with the lengthy repairs to John, but he’d do it so Alan could be home instead. The youngest had already been left up there alone for the past couple of days. He needed his brothers too.

“Scott, you can’t,” Gordon protested, and he smiled at the younger.

“It’ll be fine, Gordo.”

Jeff shook his head. “No, it's fine, Scott. You’re right. We should all be here right now. Go get Alan and leave Thunderbird Five on automatic. We’ll stand down for a while.”

“Thank you,” Scott said and pushed himself into a standing position, literally, as he used Gordon as leverage, who made an indignant noise as he was pushed to the side by the elder. Though he quickly scrambled to his feet as well.

“I can go with you.”

Scott studied him for a moment before shaking his head, remembering what Gordon had said about feeling drained. “That’s alright, Gordon. I’ve flown Three alone before, and I’ll have Alan on the way back. You can stay here.”

“You sure?” he asked skeptically but just a bit relieved, and Scott knew he was making the right call.

“Yeah, I’m sure, squid.” He then turned to Jeff, “I’ll leave now and inform Alan to put it on auto on my way up.”

“Alright, fly safe,” he said, and Scott nodded in acknowledgment before walking toward the hangar.

It was time to sort out another little brother.

Thunderbird Three docked with a slight clunk from the docking tube, and Scott was out of his seat as soon as it was safe to do so. The access hatch cycled open after a moment, and he made his way through quickly.

Alan was waiting for him on the other side, just as he’d expected.

“Scott!” the blond shouted as soon as he saw the eldest, “How’s John? Dad said he was getting repaired.”

“Yeah. It’s going to take a while. They really did a number on him,” he answered, “I’m afraid I don’t really have any more information.”

“Oh,” Alan said, disappointed.

Scott changed the subject. “Is Five on auto?”

“Yeah. She’s all ready to go. Any calls that come through will be transferred to the island. Just in case.”

“Good work, let’s get going then.”

Alan nodded in agreement and followed Scott back through the boarding tube and back to his ‘bird.

He took the pilot’s seat without saying anything, and Scott let him, taking the copilot seat instead, and knew he was in for some “Alan Tracy crazy” levels of flying. While the younger had been built to handle the rocket better than any of them, and had taken to piloting it easily, he was probably aiming to have them back in record time, even if that meant it wouldn’t be the smoothest flight or reentry they’d ever experienced. Not that Scott could begrudge him that.

Alan had been alone up there for the past couple of days, unable to lean on his brothers like they’d leaned on each other. He also hadn’t been able to go with them when they found John, and it wasn’t like keeping him informed over the radio had really been a top priority either. Scott understood why the youngest was desperate to get home, especially since this was John. Alan may have liked to assert his independence and felt the need to prove himself as something more than the youngest in the family (more than just the last one built), but sometimes he seemed to hang off the older astronaut’s every word and obviously looked up to him. Alan and Scott may have ended up the most similar, but he and John shared a love of space. They also shared their ‘birds, and Scott didn’t think anyone could do that but them.  

This was also the first time Alan had experienced any of his brothers being seriously damaged. He hadn’t been online for Gordon’s hydrofoil crash (which had actually delayed his own completion by a few months), and since International Rescue had started, the worst they’d been through was Virgil getting damaged when the Sentinel shot down Thunderbird Two, and when Scott had been similarly shot down and crashed in the Sahara. But in both cases, Brains had quickly and easily repaired them, so in the end, none of them had needed to be that worried about it.

So, all things considered, it made sense why Scott was getting badly shaken around in his seat as he experienced one of the worst burns in his entire (admittedly not that long) life. Alan just wanted to get home.

“How are you doing, Alan?” he asked eventually, and the younger glanced at him before looking to the instruments in front of him again.

“I don’t know why you’re asking. I’ve just been on Five.”

“Well, that’s exactly why I’m asking. You’ve been up on Five alone while all this was going on.”

It was silent for another moment as Alan bit at his lip before blowing out a harsh breath. “I’m angry and I’m worried,” he finally admitted and glanced over at his brother. And though the younger wouldn’t admit to it, Scott could also see that he was scared. “How badly did they damage him? Dad wouldn’t really explain.”

“I told you I don’t really have any information on the repairs.”

“Yeah, but you saw the damage. How badly damaged is he?”

“Oh,” Scott took a moment and let out a sigh of his own, “to be honest, Alan, it was bad. He’s covered in stab wounds and burns, and they tried to hack into his CPU. Brains thinks they’re going to have to replace most of his body.”

“Oh.” He watched Alan’s expression crumple before his younger brother looked away to hide it. “Dad didn’t mention any of that, just said he was damaged, and that it’d take a while to fix.”

“Dad didn’t really get a good look either,” Scott explained.

Alan rolled his eyes. “Or he’s trying to shield me from it just because I’m the youngest. But I’m only a year younger than Gordon!”

“No one is trying to baby you, Alan.”

“Well, it sure feels like it. Feels like I get left out of the loop a lot, and being on Five doesn’t help.”

“Oh? And how do you think John feels being left up there most of the time?”

Alan opened his mouth to respond before closing it with an audible click, clearly not having anything to say to that. Instead, he glared at the console.

Scott ran a hand over his face. “I think we could all get a little better about communicating with Five. Me included.”

“I guess so,” Alan grumbled. “And maybe… maybe I’ll be better about taking my turn…”

Scott smiled at the younger and patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sure John would appreciate it.”

He didn’t get a response to that right away, but after a moment, his little brother mumbled, “Hey, Scott?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for coming to get me.”

He smiled wider. “No problem.”

It fell silent again for the couple of minutes it took to reenter the Earth's atmosphere before Scott commented, “Okay, now don’t crash land on the island,” as they continued to rocket towards it. He got a glare from the youngest for that.

“Yeah, Scott, I know,” Alan grumbled as he started decelerating. It was rougher than usual, and Scott wondered if that had been partly on purpose.

Their landing in the silo was smooth, however, and Alan hesitated, looking over the controls for a second before pulling out the flight logs. These were then promptly pulled out of his hands by his older brother, who Alan turned to in confusion.

“I’ve got postflight checks. You can go.”

Alan grinned at him. “Thanks, Scott!”

He then took off for the couch that would return him to the lounge, and Scott watched him go for a moment before turning back to the controls.

He completed the checks quickly, but thoroughly, and left the rocket as well. He was tempted to head for Brains’ lab immediately, but ultimately decided he needed out of his uniform first, so he went to do just that.

By the time he returned to the hallway outside Brains’ lab, he found Gordon still there (also now out of uniform) with Alan beside him. The two youngest were talking quietly, and Gordon had an arm slung around the taller blonde’s shoulders. However, they turned to watch him as he joined them.

“Any news?” he asked, and Gordon shook his head.

“No, still haven’t heard from them since you left.”

He sighed, then eyed the youngest. “Alright, Alan, why don’t you change out of your uniform. It’s going to be a long wait.”

Alan opened his mouth to protest, but ultimately shut it and nodded instead. He then walked off. Scott watched him go before sliding down the wall to have a seat, and was joined by Gordon on the floor. The two of them sitting much like they had earlier.

Eventually, Alan rejoined them and took a seat on Scott’s other side before leaning into him, also seeking comfort from his eldest brother. So, Scott wrapped his arm around him as well.

With two little brothers now by his side, Scott settled in for the long wait.

Chapter Text

It’d been days since they’d brought John home, and repairs were still ongoing.

Scott had been aware that it’d take a while, considering that they couldn’t just repair the damage as much as possible and leave the body to heal itself like a human. He had also been aware that every frayed wire, severed fuel line, and fried electrical component needed to be replaced. Knowing these things, however, did not make him any less impatient. Brains had backups and extra components waiting for each of them for a reason, so how could it possibly be taking so long?

He looked up from where he was leaning against the wall when the door opened, and Virgil walked out. The middle brother was not at all surprised to find the elder there, especially since they still weren’t letting him into the lab.

“You’re still here,” Virgil commented anyway and got a shrug and a grunt in return. “You know, standing there isn’t going to make us work any faster.”

“I know,” Scott responded a bit curtly, “but how long is this going to take? Don’t you guys have backups?”

“Look, it takes time to reattach everything, and some things had to be built from scratch. Never mind that entire systems needed to be overhauled thanks to the electricity they’d apparently used on him,” Virgil said, and Scott winced.

“Yeah, I thought those looked like electrical burns,” he paused, before his eyes narrowed, “Hey, wait, what’re you doing out here?”

“Brains is working on his CPU, and it’s a bit outside of my expertise. Well, the programming side of things, so I’m leaving him to it. Besides, someone had to drag you away from here.”

“I don’t need to be dragged away!”

“Fine, then you can keep standing there, and I won’t be answering your questions. I’m going to the studio, and you can join me if you want.” The middle Tracy then started walking away, and for a moment, Scott stood there glancing between him and the door. He didn’t want to leave, but he knew he’d get more information if he went with Virgil. So, mind made up, he looked toward the door one last time before turning to chase his brother down the hall.

When he caught up, the younger gave him a small smile. “Knew that’d work.”

“Uh-huh,” he grumbled, not being able to think of anything more clever.

It was a long walk through the villa to the room that’d charitably been dubbed a studio. Really, it was just an extra office space that Jeff had let Virgil take over and fill with art supplies when the android had shown an aptitude towards art. Brains had also encouraged it, but Scott was pretty sure it was partly for the scientific wonder of artificial life taking on creativity like that. Scott and John certainly hadn’t shown signs of it, well, not as obviously as Virgil had.  

Random canvases lay scattered around the room. Some contained finished paintings, while others remained completely blank. The majority, however, were half-finished works resting on easels placed throughout the room, and it was towards one of these that Virgil walked. It looked to be a partially finished painting of a sunset over the ocean, the first couple of stars emerging in the growing twilight.

Scott perched himself on one of the many nearby stools. Idly spinning slightly from side to side with his foot braced against the lowest rung of the chair.

He watched as Virgil prepared his paints and brushes before beginning to work on the canvas. The silence lasting only a few moments before Virgil broke it. “Brains said John’s repairs should be finished tomorrow, and then he’ll reboot him.”

“Oh good,” Scott sighed, shoulders dropping slightly. “He got all the physical repairs done then?”

“Yeah, we finished everything with his body yesterday.”

“You did?”

“Yeah, and before you say anything about not being allowed in, Brains has been working on his processor since, and that’s the trickiest part.”

“I wouldn’t have distracted him!”

Virgil huffed. “I know Scott, but when you’re working on something delicate, don’t you want to minimize distraction as much as possible?”

“You’re working on that and talking to me,” he grumbled.

“Well, it’s not my finest work,” Virgil said dismissively, and Scott raised an eyebrow. The piece looked like a masterpiece to him, just like everything Virgil created. “And I think we both know there’s a difference between a painting and what’s essentially our brother’s brain.”

Scott grimaced. “Yeah, I know.” He ran a hand over his face. “It’d been little more than a day, Virgil. How could they have caused so much damage in a day?!”

“I suppose thirty-six hours is a long time,” Virgil responded with a note of melancholy. Scott drooped further in his seat.

“There’s not going to be any lasting damage, is there?” He finally voiced, though it was a sentiment he really didn’t want to consider.  

“As far as we can tell, no. Brains will have to finish going through his systems though, and then we’ll have to see when he comes back online. He’ll probably have to do one last system check afterwards too.”

“Oh, he’ll love that.”

“Yeah,” Virgil agreed with a slight smile, painting another small star, “though I imagine he’ll be free from them for a while afterwards.”

“Probably. Did any of his code or files get damaged?”

Virgil shrugged. “I wouldn’t know. Brains had just started when I left the room. Though he was maybe muttering something about languages getting deleted.”

“What?” Scott asked in alarm.

“Well, you know how he’s programmed to know basically every language?” Virgil paused and got a nod in return. “They probably just deleted the file for one of them. I’m sure it’ll be easy for Brains to just reupload it.”

“Right. I don’t like the idea of them managing to delete anything, though.”

“Me neither, but if they had to delete anything, at least it was something easily replaceable, unlike memories.”

“You don’t think they managed to delete any of those, do you?”

“I’m going to hope not.”

Scott gave a noncommittal hum, and the two lapsed into silence.

The movement of sunlight across the floor and Virgil’s steady progress on the painting were the only indicators that time was passing, and Scott wasn’t sure how long they sat there before there was the sound of running footsteps in the hall. It was their only warning before Gordon and Alan came crashing through the door.

Scott jumped to his feet while Virgil gasped. Luckily, he’d jerked his hand away from the painting before he’d accidentally left a streak of orange where he hadn’t meant to.

“Oh, there you are!” Alan exclaimed, and Gordon added, “We’ve been looking all over for you!”

That immediately set Scott on edge. “Why? What’s happened? Is it John?”

The youngest two just gave him a look.

“No, we were just surprised you weren’t outside of Brains’ lab, so we came looking for you. We looked all over the house too,” Gordon explained.

“Yeah. We just came up here to ask Virgil if he knew where you’d gone. Guess it worked.” Alan shrugged.

“Okaaaay. And why were you looking for me?”

“Because you’ve done nothing but hang around the lab for days, and we thought it’d be good to drag you away for a while. Dad had been planning to do it too, but we beat him to it.”

Scott rolled his eyes at the aquanaut’s explanation. “Are you all in on this?”

“Well, obviously not,” Alan pointed out, “otherwise we wouldn’t have gone running around the house looking for you if we’d known Virgil already had it covered.”

“I don’t know why you’re all so adamant about this.”

He got a flat look from all three of his younger brothers, and it was Virgil who answered, “Because you’ve spent days hovering outside of that lab, and you need to take care of yourself too.”

“I’ve been taking care of myself!” he protested.

“Uh-huh, what’s your fuel level?”

“…. 37%.”

“Took you a second,” Gordon commented as Alan theatrically whispered, “I think he’s lying.”

He glared at them, and they just smiled innocently back.

“And when’s the last time you recharged?” Virgil continued.

“Last night, and before you ask, yes, it was in my own bed.”

“And who told you to go to bed?”

There was another long pause before Scott answered, “Dad did,” and he thought his face would have flushed if it could.

“Exactly. Are you trying to land yourself in repairs after John?”

“No. I’m just worried about him.”

“So are we,” Alan protested, and Gordon nodded.

“Yeah, and you don’t see us neglecting to take care of ourselves.”

“Well, I’m the oldest. I’m supposed to take care of you guys.”

Virgil set the paintbrush down, finally turning his full attention on them, and he placed a hand on Scott’s shoulder. “We’re brothers, Scott. We’re supposed to take care of each other.”

“I know, but-”

“Besides,” Gordon cut in, “how are you supposed to take care of us if you don’t even take care of yourself?”

Scott didn’t have an answer for that, and Virgil tightened his grip. A sad smile tilting up the corners of his mouth. “Come on, fly boy, let’s get out of here. We can refuel before actually relaxing for a night.” 

“Alright,” he caved after a moment.

“Good. Alan, Gordon, grab Scott, and go on ahead. I’ll join you when I put all this away,” Virgil ordered as he waved vaguely at the paint supplies he had out. Scott couldn’t help a snort at being bossed around by the middle brother.

Alan and Gordon grinned before each of them happily grabbed a hold of Scott and practically marched him out of the room and towards the lounge of the villa.

Scott let himself get dragged forward without protest. He was grateful for what they were doing, but knew he'd be unable to relax until John was back online and he could be sure that all of his little brothers were alright. But he'd give it his best shot anyway, if only for their peace of mind. 

Chapter Text

It was late on the island. The sun having dipped below the horizon long ago, and the residents of the villa had gone off to bed. Well, all but one that was, because of course Scott hadn’t gone to bed.

Once again Jeff had tried to sternly tell Scott in no uncertain terms to get some rest that night, and Scott had tried. He’d gone to his room and changed into pajamas and everything. But he’d inevitably left his room, and made his way down the hall, checking in on his brothers as he did so. All of them were properly “asleep” thankfully, and with those checks completed, he’d made his way down to Brains’ lab, because he had to check on all of his brothers, including John.

Brains had finally finished repairs on the space monitor earlier that evening, after taking the better part of twenty-four hours to go through every line of code and every file. They’d all finally been allowed back into the lab too as Brains began to input the online sequence. However, he’d opted for a delayed reboot, and John still hadn’t onlined before Scott had inevitably been chased out for the night by their father.

Now Scott navigated the dimly lit hallways and passages easily, guided by the dim lights that lined the base boards. He was sure he could have made it in complete darkness though, all of them could (especially Gordon who could see in the dark).

As he got closer to the lab, he prepared himself to duck out of sight if Brains still happened to be up and working, but luckily, even the engineer seemed to have gone to bed for the night. Making it easy for Scott to slip into the room undetected.

He didn’t even plan to stay that long, fully intending to do a quick check on John before returning to his own room. But as he glanced at the screens that indicated how close John was to coming back online, he saw the progress bar jump forward, nearing the end. So, he sat down in a chair next to the bed because he wasn’t going to let John wake up alone.

He still had to wait more than an hour before John gave any indication of regaining consciousness though, and much like the very first time he’d come online, Scott caught the other’s fingers twitching first.

He leaned forward in anticipation. “John?”

Blond brows furrowed and John’s face scrunched up for a moment as he shut his eyes tighter before daring to open one. He then turned his head to the side where Scott’s voice had come from. “Scott?”

“Hey there, sleeping beauty, we were wondering when you’d get back to us,” Scott teased, the relief obvious in his voice.  

By now, John had opened both eyes, but he didn’t return the smile. Instead, he glanced around the room in confusion. “Scott? But how? This... This is the island.”

“It is,” he confirmed and silently cursed, wondering if John even remembered them rescuing him, but based on his reaction it didn’t seem likely. “We managed to track your signature to an army complex a hundred and fifty miles outside of Lancaster. We got you out of there.”

Scott wanted to reach out and squeeze John’s shoulder or put a comforting hand on his arm, but with the way John had tensed he didn’t think it’d be appreciated.

John didn't respond right away, seemingly trying to sort out his memories. “I thought I heard something going on,” he ventured after a moment, “but I don’t….” he trailed off in frustration.

“Do you remember me finding you? Or Virgil coming in?”

“No,” he responded a bit tersely. “A lot of my memories are disjointed or missing towards the end there.”

“I’m not surprised. You were in a bad way, and we shut you down for the trip back to the island.”  

John remained silent, seeming to process the information before asking, “How long was I out?”

“It’s been four days since we found you. Most of that was Brains putting you back together again, then he put you through a delayed boot up sequence. Said it’d be less overwhelming if we gave your processor time to sort itself out and cycle through all the new parts and systems.”

“Oh,” John sighed and closed his eyes as he asked, “any new limbs this time?” seemingly out of nowhere.

It shocked a humorless laugh out of the eldest. “Three, beating the previous record of Gordon’s two,” Scott answered and when John turned back to him, he could see the small, sad smile on his older brother’s face. “Impressive for someone whose never had a limb replaced up to this point.”

“Well not all of us can be reckless,” he quipped flatly, though it wasn’t just about a lack of recklessness, was it? It was also partly because he didn’t physically get to go on as many rescues as the rest of them, and John imagined his future status on rescues was yet to be seen.

John then propped himself up on his elbows so that he was in a semi-sitting position, allowing him to look himself over. “I imagine the electricity did a number on my systems as well?” he asked after a moment, ignoring Scott’s attempts to get him to lay back fully.

“Yeah,” Scott confirmed and leaned back in his chair with a sigh, giving up on making John lay flat again. “That’s one reason it took so long for Brains to fix you. A lot of systems and components were out right fried.”

John winced slightly and muttered “figured.”

“We’ve been more worried about your processor though,” Scott ventured after a moment and knew he’d caught his brother’s full attention by the intense stare he received. “Brains had to do some repairs on the module itself and had to sort through your programming. Seems some memory files got corrupted, along with some language files. Some of which were just gone.”

“Yeah, they deleted… um, I think Norsk when they got frustrated and kept changing my default language,” John explained casually, even with trying to remember the hazy details, and Scott just gave him a look, but didn’t get a chance to reply before the blond asked, “Did they manage to get anything?”

“No.”

“Oh, thank god,” John muttered, flopping back on the bed, and the amount of relief in his voice was almost painful. But then he looked over, still unsure, “are you certain?”

“We think so,” Scott tried to reassure before asking, “So that's what they wanted then? Information?” Finally confirming what they’d only been able to speculate until now.

“Yes,” John answered, voice barely more than a whisper, “they said they had a client who wanted information on International Rescue. Said they had to get it by any means necessary.”

Scott winced. “Explains the damage then.”

“Yeah, that was for not telling them anything.”

“You kept saying that when I found you,” Scott blurted out, and John studied him, waiting for him to elaborate, “In fact, we couldn’t get you to say anything else.”

John’s gaze slid away to look up at the ceiling instead. “I knew I’d be able to hold out against physical damage, but when they pulled out the computer…. I didn’t know what to do.” He fell silent for a moment before asking in a small voice, “they really didn’t get anything?”

Scott grabbed John’s hand at that, giving it a light comforting squeeze, and was surprised when John gripped back like it was a lifeline. “They didn’t get anything,” he reassured again, “we brought the computer back with us and Brains went through it himself. They didn’t extract any information. You can go through it if you want to be sure.”

John shook his head. “No, I trust Brains to do it, besides I don’t want to see it ever again.”

Scott squeezed his brother’s hand just a little bit tighter. “You won’t have to,” he said and decided he was going to throw a blanket over the computer or something when John wasn’t looking.

The blond nodded in thanks and settled back more comfortably against the bed. “So, where is everyone?”

“They’re all in bed, you just decided to wake up in the middle of the night is all. You can see them in the morning.”

John gave a noncommittal hum at that before side eyeing his only older brother. “So, why aren’t you in bed then?”

“Because I couldn’t leave you to wake up alone.”

“I appreciate that, but don’t tell me you’ve been here the whole time, Scott.” John raised an eyebrow at that, staring the other down.

“No, not the whole time. Brains wouldn’t even let me in here for a couple of days,” he said with exasperation and realized he wasn’t getting any sympathy from his brother.

“And were you hovering outside the door the whole time?”

“No!” but with the look John was giving him he quickly amended, “Not the whole time! Just, uh, just most of it…”

“Thought so,” John said, and Scott didn’t appreciate the somewhat smug smile. “I don’t know why you even bother trying to keep things from me, Scott, I know you too well.” His tone suddenly changed, and a worried look came over his face, “and because I know you so well, I think I can guess that you’re blaming yourself for all of this.”

Scott startled. “How?”

“Because you take your job as our older brother seriously and I know when anything happens to us, you blame yourself. But none of us could have seen this coming, Scott.”

“I still should have prevented it!”

John gave him an incredulous look. “How? By not trusting me to handle myself on rescues alone? By not trusting any of us alone ever again?”

“No, obviously not! I… I don’t know. I just should have stopped it. Should have noticed you were missing sooner or located you faster. Anything.”

“You’re an android, Scott, not Superman.”

“I know that” he huffed.

“Then you need to accept that you can’t protect us from everything.”

“I just hate seeing anything happen to you guys.”

“And you think you have some sort of monopoly on that? We all hate seeing anything happen to any of us. But it’s the nature of the job, Scott. International Rescue is dangerous work, but it’s what we were built for. What we’re programmed to do.”

“None of you were supposed to get hurt though, or kidnapped so some lunatics could try to get our secrets!”

“Well unfortunately, shit happens.” Scott gaped at his younger brother, who usually didn’t swear. John smiled wryly. “What are you going to do, Scott? Wrap us in bubble wrap and confine us to the island? Because you’ll have four very unhappy younger brothers if you do that.”

Scott slumped back in his seat. “No, I won’t, obviously. Maybe just to you though.”

John rolled his eyes. “I already spend most of my year up in Thunderbird Five, it’s essentially the same thing.”

“I guess so,” Scott relented.

It remained silent between them for a moment before John added with finality, “It wasn’t your fault, Scott, and none of us blame you. I certainly don’t.”

Scott suddenly couldn’t find his voice to say ‘thank you’ so he hoped the way he squeezed John’s hand conveyed it, and with the smile he got in return, he thought it did.

For a moment Scott just marveled at his little brother. Because here John was, conscious for the first time in days after a lengthy repair thanks to being kidnapped and tortured, and yet he was making Scott feel better. Trying to relieve him of the guilt that’d been eating at him since they’d found his watch in the rubble almost a week ago now, even though he had enough of his own problems to focus on. Scott didn’t know how he got so lucky.

He noticed then how John’s eyes had gone half lidded, expression somehow screaming exhausted. So, Scott stood up and reached over, shifting the blond bangs so that they rested more neatly against John’s forehead.

“You could probably use some more recharge I think, Johnny.”

“Mmm, I guess so. You better go get some too, in your own bed though before dad catches you down here tomorrow. I’m sure he ordered you to bed hours ago.”

“Yeah, best not get caught. Good night.”

He got a mumbled “good night” in return, before blue eyes shut completely. He paused long enough to ensure his brother was shut down before leaving the lab for his own room.

Feeling light for the first time in a week.

Chapter Text

When the computers brought John out of shutdown the next morning, he half expected to find himself back in that tiny concrete room and still strapped to that chair. Expected to find out that the previous night and his conversation with Scott had been entirely made up by his processor (and that maybe Virgil was right, and they really were capable of dreaming). But he relaxed as soon as he realized he was still in Brains’ lab, the room dimly lit by computer monitors.

He was surprised that none of his brothers were in the room with him, though, as he wouldn’t have put it past Scott to have stayed the previous night, even after John had told him to go rest in his own room. He also would have expected his eldest brother (or any of them, really) to have returned early in the morning, but instead, he found himself completely alone. Usually, he’d be completely fine with that, as he was used to the solitude on Five and had always been a bit more solitary than his brothers. But after the past couple of days, well, days that he could remember anyhow, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be left alone right now.

So, he pushed himself into a seated position, pleased that everything felt like it was working properly. John then took a moment to study himself, specifically the limbs that’d been replaced, and noted that they didn’t look any different than they usually did. If Scott hadn’t told them they’d been replaced, and if he hadn’t experienced the damage inflicted on them, then he didn’t think he would’ve ever been able to tell that these weren’t his original parts.

Satisfied that he’d been well and truly put back together, John got up and made his way to the door. Then, he slipped out into the hallway. However, as John made his way toward the elevator that’d return him to the villa, he heard the doors open with a soft ding, followed by the sound of footsteps in the hall. From the gait alone, he was certain it was Brains, and sure enough, the engineer soon rounded the corner, distracted by a datapad in his hand.

He was so singularly focused on whatever was on the datapad that he didn’t look up as he walked, and it was easy to pass by him with a “Morning Brains!” as John continued toward the elevator.

“Good morning, John,” was muttered distractedly. Then the realization of what happened seemed to finally catch up with him as Brains came to an abrupt halt, and turned back quickly with a sputtered, “W-what the… John!”

“Yeah?” he asked, turning back to the engineer just before reaching the elevator. Darn, he’d been so close too.

“When d-did you online?”

“A couple of minutes ago, but technically last night. Spoke to Scott some before getting some more recharge.”

“Oh, I s-see.”

“Do you need me to go back to the lab with you?” he asked with some resignation, which Brains seemed to pick up on as he looked apologetic while nodding.  

“I-it would be uh best if I could check on y-your systems.”

“Oh,” John hesitated a second before joining Brains in the walk back towards the lab. Silently admonishing himself for the flash of fear that went through him at the idea of another systems check.

Once back in the lab, John dutifully returned to the bed but took a seat on the edge of it. Watching Brains as he went to the main monitor.

“I had to restore some of your programming and f-files, and replaced parts of your processor,” he explained, “so I-I want to do another check now that you’re b-back online, to make sure everything has returned to full operation.”

“Right,” John said and tried not to think about it too hard.

“I had an idea for a-a new feature for you guys, though.”

“Oh yeah? What is it?” John asked, hoping it’d distract him.

“M-microbots, that can do b-basic repairs on your systems. Then you w-wouldn’t have to wait for every injury to be repaired by Virgil or I.”

“Hey, that sounds like a great idea! If you need help programming them, then I could do it,” John offered, mind already going over the problem at hand. And for a moment, he was so distracted by the idea that he was unprepared to find the engineer standing there with cables in hand when he turned back to him. He flinched at the sight.

Brains quickly moved his hand behind his back, obscuring the cables from the android’s line of sight, and studied him for a moment. “Sorry, I-I should’ve realized that seeing the cables m-might make you uncomfortable.”

“It’s fine,” John huffed, annoyed at himself for his reaction.

“We cannot d-do this if you don’t want to,” Brains offered, and John shook his head.

“No. You said it needs to get done, so let’s just get it over with. It’s not like I’ll be awake for it this time.”

 “N-no. Definitely not,” Brains assured, a deep frown on his face, “Do you w-want me to call one of your brothers down here?”

John shook his head harder. “No, it’s just a check. It’ll be fine.” He could make it through one last system check. So, he lay back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling, and made sure to keep his tone neutral, bordering on bored as he said, “Alright, go ahead.” Even though he would rather be anywhere else. Well, maybe not anywhere, but he quickly shut that thought down. 

Brains still looked a bit hesitant, but he walked over to the bed anyway, making sure the cables were out of sight before, as usual, the spot behind John’s left ear was pressed and he was shut down for what felt like the hundredth time recently.

As was usual when he onlined, there was no telling how long he’d been shut down for; it could have been minutes, hours, or days if last night had been any indication. But this time, he woke up and his head hurt. Like there was foreign code once again trying to break into his memories. Like there was electricity running through his system or a battering ram in his head.

John gasped and screwed his eyes shut tighter. His hands flying to grasp at either side of his head (and it didn’t even occur to him that his hands were free when they should have been pinned down).

Then there was a soft voice trying to reassure him that “it’ll be okay” as gentle hands tried to pry his hands away from his head.

Two more voices joined the first.

“What’s wrong with him?” a second was demanding, while a third answered, “I-I don’t know, everything w-was fine on the s-scans.”

John winced, and the first voice told the other two to “be quiet” before returning to soft reassurances. The other voices fell silent.

The disorientation lasted until the feeling of foreign codes and electricity faded away, and John peeked one eye open. Enough to tell that it was Virgil in front of him, who he thought he should've recognized by voice alone.

Virgil noticed him looking and offered a smile. “Hey John, you back with us?”

“Yeah,” he answered, though his voice wasn’t exactly steady.

He wasn’t surprised when a moment later Scott seemed to materialize out of nowhere. “How are you doing?” he asked, but John avoided the question.

 “Is Brains done with the systems check?”

“Yeah, he’s done. Do you want to get out of here?” Virgil asked, and John merely nodded, not trusting his voice to respond at the moment.

So, Virgil and Scott both backed away from the bed, giving him room to stand up, which he was grateful for. Glad that they weren’t crowding his space and hauling him up themselves. Yet as they went to leave the lab, it didn’t escape the space monitor’s notice that his two immediate brothers had positioned themselves on either side of him. Like they were trying to protect him in between them, he didn’t comment on it.

“So, when were you going to tell us you’d woken up?” Virgil eventually asked, breaking the silence.

John shrugged. “Scott already knew. He was there.”

“Of course he was,” Virgil sighed.

“And I’d been on my way to the villa when I ran into Brains this morning,” John continued before asking, “What were you guys doing in the lab anyway?”

“Well, Brains called us down,” Scott explained, glancing at the blond out of the corner of his eye. “Said he was doing one last check and then you’d be free to go, so we thought we’d wait for you to come online. Seems like it was a good thing we did.”

“I told him not to call you,” John muttered, and could tell that the two brunettes had exchanged a look. Seeming to talk without words as they often did.

“Let’s not talk about it here,” Virgil said after a moment, glancing at the plain hallway they were walking through, and John rolled his eyes. Not voicing that he’d rather not talk about it at all.

He let them lead him outside to the pool, though, and a grin spread across his face as he caught sight of his two youngest brothers. Gordon was in the pool, treading water as he talked to Alan, who sat on the edge with his feet in.

However, their attention immediately turned to the three older brothers as they exited the villa before running over with cries of “JOHN!” at seeing their second-oldest brother up and about.

Virgil and Scott stepped to the side, leaving the blond to get crushed into a hug by the terrible two. It got a laugh out of him, though, and he didn’t even mind that his clothes were thoroughly soaked thanks to Gordon.

“We didn’t know you were awake yet,” Gordon said, as Alan spoke over him with “It’s really good to see you!”

“Aw come on guys, don’t overwhelm him,” Scott admonished after a second when it became obvious that they were going to keep talking over each other.

“It’s alright, Scott,” John said.

“Yeah, see, he’s fine,” Gordon added, sticking his tongue out at the eldest, who gave a long-suffering sigh.

Virgil merely shook his head before placing a hand on John’s shoulder and steering him over to one of the pool chairs and practically shoved him into it. John huffed in annoyance but got into a more comfortable position, watching as his brothers arranged themselves around him. Gordon and Alan decided to share the pool chair to his left while Scott dragged one around to sit closer to the group. Virgil took a seat on the same pool chair he’d shoved John into.

It was silent for only a moment before Virgil reached over and poked at one of John’s knees (which he’d drawn up to his chest in order to make room for his brother at the foot of the lounger). “Alright, spill.”

John stubbornly kept his mouth shut as Scott and Virgil watched on in concern, while Alan and Gordon looked confused.

“Huh?” The aquanaut questioned, “spill what?”

“What just happened after his systems check,” Virgil said, but didn’t elaborate any further, still leaving the two youngest confused.

John gave his immediate younger brother an annoyed look. “I’m sure you can put it together yourself. Why do you need me to say it?”

“Because it’d be better for you to say it out loud and talk about what you went through instead of bottling it all up like you usually do,” Virgil explained, and earned an eye roll.

“I don’t bottle up my feelings.”

“Yes, you do,” Virgil retorted, voice bordering on exasperated, “you and Scott are the worst about it.”

“Hey!” Scott protested, but was ignored by the two middle brothers, who were busy staring each other down.

“What do you want me to say, Virgil?” John asked in a low voice. An indicator that he was starting to get frustrated, though Virgil remained unflappable at the rare sight of his immediate older brother’s anger. “That I freaked out after a systems check because I thought I was getting hacked again?!”

“That’s a start,” Virgil said, and John opened his mouth, intending to give an angry retort, but was interrupted by Gordon.

“You did?”

And oh, right, they hadn’t been there for that. When John glanced at the two youngest, their expressions were so openly concerned that he had to look away, and he knew his face would have flushed in embarrassment if he were human.

“Yeah, guess so,” he mumbled, still not looking at them.

“What’d getting hacked feel like?” Alan asked quietly and earned a hissed, “Alan!” from their eldest, who then got nudged by Virgil.

“I don’t…” John trailed off before he could finish saying he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t, but unfortunately, Virgil was right, and it would probably help. He was silent for a long moment, though, and they waited him out.

“It hurts,” he eventually said, and Virgil placed a comforting hand on his knee at the admission. John let him leave it there. “It hurts having something trying to break through your encryption. To have someone rooting around in the most important part of you. It feels like electricity or what I imagine humans mean when they say it feels like something crawling under your skin, and it...” he hesitated, “it was scary knowing that they wanted information on International Rescue and if they got through the encryptions, there was nothing I could do to stop them.”

Scott got up then and moved so that he was sitting on the lounger with his two younger brothers, placing a hand on John’s shoulder. “Like I said last night, they didn’t get anything, John.”

“I don’t know, Scott. I just have this bad feeling that they did….” He bit his lower lip, brows furrowing as he tried to go over his jumbled memories. It felt like he was missing something. Something important, and after a couple of moments, it finally came to him. “Oh shit,” he muttered and turned to look at them with wide-eyed fear, “they found out about dad… about Jeff.”

“What do you mean?” Scott questioned cautiously.

“When they managed to get into some of my memory files, they found mentions of Jeff Tracy, and it’s not hard to figure out which Jeff Tracy that could be referring to.” He then ran a hand through his hair out of nervous habit. “They didn’t know how he was involved, though. Luckily, they never got that far, but they still know he’s connected to us and International Rescue somehow.”

“John,” Scott tried to start, but the space monitor just shook his head and looked at them with a stricken expression.

“They found out…. They found out through me, and now the secrecy of International Rescue is in jeopardy.”

“No, hey, it’s okay.” Scott tried to soothe, reaching out and grabbing John’s hand so that he couldn’t keep running it through his hair. “It doesn’t matter.”

“But-”

“No, it doesn’t matter because they’re dead.”

That gave the younger pause, and he stared at Scott for a moment before asking in a quiet voice, “They’re dead?”

“Yes. Casualties of the rescue mission, so they won’t be telling anyone about dad’s connection to International Rescue or that we’re androids.”

“How though?” John questioned and noticed Scott’s quick glance toward Gordon, and that the aquanaut was firmly looking at the ground.

“There were firefights; it could have been anyone,” Scott answered in a tone that brokered no argument.

John’s eyes narrowed slightly, and he could tell Virgil didn’t entirely buy it either. He wanted to continue questioning it, wanted to know what exactly had happened, but he decided to let it go for now. He’d find out eventually.

“And we’re sure they didn’t tell anyone?” he asked instead.

“As far as we can tell, no,” Virgil answered, “we took their computer with us, and there was no evidence they’d sent a message to anyone about it, and they didn’t seem to have any other electronic records.”

“What if they told someone verbally? Like over the radio?”

“Well, if the news gets out, then we’ll deal with it,” Scott said.

“Yeah, and it's honestly kind of a miracle that no one’s noticed yet,” Alan added, “especially with Gordon around!”

“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Remember when you were in a rush and forgot to bring an oxygen tank with you, so you were underwater for like fifteen minutes with no way to ‘breathe’.”

“Oh yeah,” the aquanaut mumbled before shrugging, “good thing no one noticed, huh? Just like no one notices how you run too fast, and Virgil’s too strong.” He turned back to the older blond. “See, Johnny, if anyone is going to give away that we’re androids, it’s not going to be you. Especially since you’re always in that tin can.”

“Don’t call her a tin can,” John retorted reflexively before sighing, “I’m going to be stuck up there more now, aren’t I?”

“Why? Because Scott’s gonna be overprotective and keep you there?” Virgil joked. Scott glared at him for it, but didn’t protest out loud when he saw the small smile on John’s face.

Though it fell a moment later. “No, I just don’t think I’m going to be going on rescues any time soon since I’m the only one dumb enough to go and get kidnapped.”

“Hey, you couldn’t control that!” Alan protested.

“Yeah, it wasn’t your fault!” Gordon added.

“They’re right, and you’re not dumb,” Scott said, “you couldn’t have known those guys were going to abduct you. It wasn’t your fault."

“I guess,” John muttered, wrapping his arms around his knees and pulling them closer to his chest. “I don’t understand humans,” he then added, seemingly out of nowhere, but it’d been eating at him since his first night in that tiny concrete room, “All we try to do is help them, and then they want our secrets and will do anything to get them.” He shuddered then, trying to push away memories of knives, electricity, and cables.

Virgil snorted. “I’m not sure humans understand humans, but I think the majority are good. And we’ve saved a lot of good people, and kept a lot of families together, like Jeff and Brains dreamed we would.”

 “Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” he admitted.  

Scott put his arm around John’s shoulders in a side hug. “It’ll be alright, John, you’ll see. We’ll keep rescuing people, and you’ll be right there with us, either physically or on Five, being our voice in the sky. Don’t forget, we’re Tracy’s, we were built to be tough!”

“I know, I know,” he said with a slight laugh.

And he wasn’t exactly an optimist. He was a realist. He was into facts and figures. And right now, he didn’t exactly feel alright, and he knew one conversation wasn’t going to fix what he’d been through, but surrounded by his brothers, he could at least believe that Scott was telling the truth that it'd be okay eventually.

And when Jeff came out to join them by the pool and greeted them with a “Good morning, boys,” before looking at the second eldest with a smile and said, “I’m glad to have you home, son,” John was able to give him a genuine smile.

“Thanks, dad,” he said and relaxed.

Because sure, maybe he didn’t understand how humanity could be cruel, but some were good. Like how one man could suffer the loss of his entire family and be inspired to create a rescue organization to prevent others from suffering the same tragedy. Then that same man could help create five androids and treat them like his own offspring. Like they were human too.

John glanced around at his brothers then, still huddled around him, and his smile grew a little wider as he leaned further into his eldest brother’s side. Yeah, just like Scott had said, they were built tough, and they’d eventually be alright. John was sure of it.