In his mind's eye, he imagined that the building above was nothing more than a pile of rubble. That his brothers had seen it collapse; had watched in horror from their video feeds as the grand behemoth that had once stood fifty stories and boasted the square footage of a New York City block, had given in to structural deformities exacerbated by a heretofore unheard-of 7.8 earthquake.

He himself could hardly believe that not only had there been an earthquake in Florida, of all places, but that he was still alive to be confounded by that fact. Because by all rights, he and the two people with him should be dead.

"Are you hurt?" he'd asked once the shaking had ceased; an aftershock that felled the mall-slash-apartment complex-slash theater above them.

"No," the women had answered simultaneously.

Scott was relieved to hear it, but at the same time, fearful for his own health and well-being. Because while the women he'd gone in to get out – there simply hadn't been enough time to wait for Thunderbird Two to arrive – said they were okay, Scott was not.

How many times had he drilled it into his brothers' heads? "You never enter an unstable danger zone until there is reasonable assurance that you can safely effect a rescue without becoming a victim yourself," had been his mantra to them early on. And when Alan had disobeyed that fundamental rule of the rescue business, Scott had seen to it military-style that the kid never forgot that axiom again.

And yet here Scott was, not only having disobeyed his own rule, but now paying the price for that monumentally effed-up decision. Leaving the two women in the bank vault with him – the place he'd urged them into when the aftershock had hit, knowing if anything could withstand it, the vault could – without anyone to help them get out.

Of course, if they were buried under miles of rubble, Scott wouldn't have been able to dig them out even if he had been functioning at one hundred percent.

Which, at the moment, he most certainly was not.

Scott had notified Base that he was going in because seismologists were predicting an aftershock within thirty minutes, Thunderbird Two wouldn't be there for another forty-five minutes, and there were two female bank tellers unaccounted for. The last their manager knew, they'd taken their fifteen-minute breaks together, yet they'd not been outside once headcount was taken, which meant, he thought, they might've been in the bathroom.

"It'll be a quick in and out," Scott had reassured his concerned father. "By the time Virgil gets here, that building might be on the ground. Those women will be dead!"

And while Jeff hadn't exactly given him his blessing, he'd sighed and nodded his head once, and that'd been all Scott needed to pass-code Mobile Control, arm himself with a flashlight and a first aid kit, and sprint past the area the local firefighters had blocked off with black and yellow CAUTION tape.

"Hey!" the Chief had called out after him.

But there was no time for explanations or pleasantries, or arguing about safety. There were two women whose lives Scott could save, if Time and Luck stayed on his side.

Evidently, those two things had run for the hills as soon as Scott Tracy entered the building.

He'd taken a bad hit to his ribcage. Blood was bubbling up into his mouth. He kept having to spit it away, hating the metallic taste that made him envision sucking on a length of rebar.

"Are you okay?" one of the women asked.

"Not particularly," Scott replied, and knew his voice didn't sound good.

Broken ribs, probably a punctured lung, who knew what else. God, this sucked: dying with strangers who might wind up dying, too, all because he didn't get them out in time. Dying a needless death because if he'd followed his own rules, he wouldn't be here in this mess right now.

"Is there anything we can do?" the other woman asked, and Scott felt her searching hand touch his booted foot.

"Maybe if you can locate the flashlight I was holding," Scott suggested, but then had to stop, because breathing was not coming easy to him right now.

"Feel around, Kelly," the first voice said. "You go to that side of him, I'll go to this side."

Scott felt hands touching his feet, his shins, following the line of his body up, moving away to search the floor for the shape of an industrial-strength flashlight.

"Hey, hey, Mari, I think I found it!" the second voice crowed. It echoed in their small enclosure.

Just like that, they were engulfed in bright LED light.

When both women looked at him and gasped, hands flying up to cover their mouths, Scott figured he'd been right: whatever had happened to him was not good.

He took a couple of breaths that weren't deep by any stretch of the imagination, and looked down at himself, and nearly chuckled at the irony of his rebar thoughts. Because that's exactly what had punctured his left side directly below his pectoral muscle, right into his ribcage: rebar.

"You're bleeding from your mouth," the nearest woman said as the other scooted closer to his back.

The one in front of him had a smart businesswoman haircut, hair alternating in stripes of brown and blonde. Her eyes were small and pale green, and she squinted at him, reaching a hand out, toward his face, then pulling it back.

Scott turned his head to look at the second woman. "I'm Kelly McInerny, Irish and proud of it," she said in what he guessed was an attempt at levity. Well, she had the fiery red hair, pale skin and emerald green eyes to prove it that heritage, anyway. Scott blinked, transfixed by her even in the predicament they were in. She looked almost surreal in the LED light. "What will happen if I pull this metal pole out of your side?"

"Probably bleed out, maybe collapse my lung altogether," Scott replied.

Because Scott was lying mostly on his right shoulder and the spot between his right hip and right butt cheek, he had to crane his neck around to see Kelly. After a few seconds, he found it too painful and let his head drop back down to the metal vault floor, right cheek feeling how cool it was and reveling in it as his body temperature climbed.

"You could get tetanus from that," the other woman – Mari – said, backing away on her knees a bit like she was scared to be near a dying man. Hell, maybe she was. Scott couldn't blame her.

"I think that's...the least of...my worries...right now," Scott said, having to take small, shallow breaths just to keep oxygen coming.

Shit. He was going to die here. He could almost feel the figure in a black robe with skeleton hands holding a scythe, creeping closer in the eerie silence surrounding them. He knew on some level it was blood loss and a lack of enough oxygen just making him batty, but still and all, he had a feeling this really and truly was the last rescue for IR's field commander.

"Hey," Kelly said, hiking her business suit skirt up high enough that she could move from Scott's backside to his front by straddling his legs to cross over them. He could see her much better now as she leaned down so far that her elbows were resting on the floor in front of his abdomen. Not a bad way to go, with her in my line of sight, he thought when she gave him a small smile.

Kelly turned and handed the flashlight to Mari, who shone it beyond Scott's head about a foot, enough so that they were all still illuminated, but not being blinded. Kelly reached up and lifted his left hand from where it rested along his hip. She pulled it in to cradle it between her own two small, pale hands.

"I'm sorry," Kelly finally said. "When the first quake hit, we were both, uh...indisposed. And by the time we got ourselves together, the bathroom door was blocked."

Scott tried to smile, but he figured it looked more like a bloody grimace at this point than anything. "Not...your fault," he managed to say, even as his head started to spin.

"Oh, no, you don't," Kelly said, squeezing his hand between hers and lowering her torso so that her eyes were right in front of his. "You're a hero."

"Not right now," Scott whispered, eyelids fluttering as he tried desperately to keep them open.

"Sure you are," she soothed, one hand leaving his to smooth the wavy a-little-too-long hair off his sweat-damp, filthy forehead. "You're International Rescue. You risked your life to save us. If we'd been in that bathroom still, we'd probably be dead right now."

"Yeah, but instead we're trapped and he's not doing very well," Mari said.

"Shut up!" Kelly hissed, shooting her friend a look. Then she turned back to Scott. "Do you have a way for me to contact anyone? Any of your team, tell them where we are?"

Scott had nearly been asleep...sweet, blessed darkness...but when she said the word 'team,' he forced himself to remain conscious. "Watch," he said. "Button."

I fucked up. I'm sorry, Dad...

And that was all he had left to give.

"Jesus Christ, did he just die?" Mari breathed.

Kelly paid her friend little mind. She felt the wrist she still held in her hand, shoving a watchband aside to get to where she wanted. There was a pulse, but it was thready. Then she looked at the watch and blinked. "He said 'watch'," she breathed, and looked more closely at the face of the gold Rolex.

It had a digital display that told a lot of things other than the time, including the date, the current temperature and few other symbols and numbers she didn't know the meaning of. "Button," she muttered. Seeing nothing on the watch face that resembled a button, she ran the tip of her index finger around the left side of the face, then the right. She missed finding anything the first couple of passes, but then her finger detected a slight bump. She twisted the watch into the flashlight's beam to have a look, and found a really small button that was nearly flush with the metal. She pressed it and-

Nothing happened.

At least, not at first.

Then suddenly a face appeared where the time display had once been. It was a man she didn't recognize, but who was wearing a telltale blue hat on his head. He looked concerned. "Scott, come in!" he said.

"Hi," Kelly said as Mari scooted closer to have a look. "Um...I'm Kelly. Is...Scott the team member of yours with dark hair?"

"Yes," the chestnut-haired man on the watch face replied. "Where is he?"

"You have to get us out quick, he's not too good. He's unconscious, and has a metal bar sticking out of his ribs."

"And blood dribbling out of his mouth," Mari added from over Kelly's shoulder.

"Damn," the man in the watch replied. "We've just arrived. Where are you?"

"In the bank vault," Kelly replied. "It's directly behind the bank president's office. That is, if the office is even there anymore."

"Are you able to get out of the vault?"

Kelly took the flashlight from Mari, and shone it all around in a complete three-sixty. "No," she said, looking back down at the worried International Rescue operative's face. "The only way out of the vault is the door, and it was smashed in the last aftershock. It's covered over by concrete and stuff now. Your Scott, he got us out of the bathroom before it hit, but there wasn't time to get out of the building."

The man in the watch face appeared to be talking to someone slightly behind him and to his right, but Kelly couldn't hear what was being said. Then he turned back to look at her. "Have you tried seeing how much of the crushed vault door is buried, how deep the debris there is?"

"No. It's only been a couple minutes since that last aftershock. I was more worried about your friend here."

"Okay, let me see the injuries. You'll need to take his watch off. There's a clasp over his wrist. Push down on it and slide the cover toward his thumb."

Kelly nodded, managed to unclasp the watch, and held it up in front of her face. Her left hand still held Scott's tightly. "Okay, do I just point you in the right direction?"

"Yes."

So Kelly did, first showing the operative Scott's face, where a trickle of blood was still coming out of the corner of his mouth, and then moving around behind Scott. She motioned to Mari to bring the flashlight around. "Shine it directly on the metal rod," she instructed, then turned the watch toward the area.

She heard the sharp intake of breath from the watch, and didn't blame the guy one bit. The rebar had pierced Scott's uniform and the entirety of the back of the shirt, as well as part of the pants, were soaked in blood.

"All right, what's your name again?"

"I'm Kelly McInerny and my friend Mari Stevens is here, too. It's just us and Scott."

"All right, we're advancing on the structure as we speak."

Kelly could see the bright blue sky beyond the IR operative's head, and every now and then another operative who had very light blonde hair bobbed into view as well. "What do you want us to do?"

"I need you to keep our man alive," the Watch Face Man stated. "You let us worry about getting you out of there."

"But I only have basic first aid and CPR," Kelly protested. "He's been skewered! How do I keep him alive?"

Suddenly the man's movement ceased, and he came so close that Kelly could see his unusually-colored eyes very clearly. "Keep him breathing. Keep his heart beating. Please."

Kelly nodded. "O-okay. I'll...do whatever I can."

"Thank you. Virgil out."

So there you had it. International Rescue was a brave man named Scott and a really worried man named Virgil, and undoubtedly more members out there with Virgil. And they were working hard to get Scott, Kelly and Mari out of the vault...but depending on Kelly to keep Scott alive.

She wasn't quite sure how to go about doing that, so she did the only thing she could think of, remembering childhood tales woven by her grandmother about how she'd kept her own mother alive after she'd been kicked in the chest by a horse, doing nothing more than talking to her, touching her and telling her she would live.

Kelly wasn't sure she'd ever quite believed that tale, but what the hell else could she do?

First, she scooted around to Scott's front. Then, she fastened the watch back onto his wrist. After that, she picked up his left hand, held it tightly and laid down facing him, her forehead nearly touching his.

"What the hell are you doing?" Mari asked as she moved around so that she was behind Kelly, flashlight still illuminating their small little world.

"I'm just going to talk to him," Kelly said. "Try to keep him with us."

"He's unconscious!"

"You got any better ideas?" Kelly snapped. Honestly, sometimes Mari was such a friggin' pain-in-the-ass. So literal about everything, so 'if it's your time to go' always. Kelly didn't know why she hung around with the woman at all, except that they worked together and she was a hoot during breaks from their windows.

"No, I just...you can't keep him alive by talking to him, Kelly. Not if his lung's punctured or whatever."

Kelly shot Mari a look. "Just try me," she said. "He risked his neck to save us. I'll keep him alive by sheer willpower if I have to."

It seemed to take an eternity, but in reality, one hour and two minutes passed between the moment Virgil signed off with Kelly via Scott's watch, and the moment International Rescue broke through the rubble blocking access to the bank vault.

Firefly to get the hottest rubble out of the way, which Virgil handled himself, and then local backhoes and bulldozers to get through what was neither burning or hot, but still obstructive. The last few feet had come down to Virgil, John, Gordon and fifteen local firefighters manually moving smaller chunks of concrete and beams of steel to reach the three trapped people.

One of which had been Scott.

Now, Virgil tried to keep his hands from shaking as he stood quietly with his father outside the clear glass walls of Scott's room.

The first order of business was always the victims, and Virgil had been the first to get eyes on Mari – who practically knocked him on his ass scrambling past him and out of the vault – and on Kelly. But it was the way in which he'd found her and then, by default, his brother, that was still affecting him so deeply.

There Scott lay on his right side, arm crooked under his head. Attached to his forehead was the forehead of the red-haired woman he recognized from Scott's watch. Scott was pale, nearly as pale as the woman herself, though Virgil figured for her, that was simply her normal coloring.

Scott was unconscious, and Kelly was speaking softly to him, words that Virgil began to pick up the nearer he came. "...horseback with their long manes and tails flowing in the wind as we gallop through the wide-open prairie. The grass is so tall it reaches the horses' knees, and there are a few trees here and there, but mostly nothing to block out the bluest sky you've ever seen, or the lightest, fluffiest clouds that ever existed, rolling lazily by. We stop when we reach a small creek, and get off the horses to let them drink the fresh, cool water. Birds fly overhead, chirping and tweeting as they land in a nearby apple tree, and suddenly you're hungry."

"Kelly?" Virgil said, reaching down and touching Kelly's shoulder.

Her eyes snapped open. She appeared dazed for a moment as she looked up at him, but her expression quickly cleared. "Virgil?"

He nodded as she got to her feet and backed quickly away, down closer to Scott's legs. The thing Virgil hadn't seen before was that she was holding Scott's left hand. She kept hold of it as Virg took Scott's pulse and flashed a penlight into each eye.

"How is he?" John asked.

"Not good. With this rebar sticking out of his side, this is going to be a difficult extraction," Virgil replied.

"Miss?" Gordon said, reaching a hand out toward Kelly. "Let me get you out of here to be checked by paramedics."

Virgil had turned to look up at Kelly when she replied, "Please, I...I don't want to be in the way, but...I just feel like if I let go, he'll..."

Her voice trailed off as she met Virgil's eyes, her own filling with tears. "I'm sorry," Virgil said, "but you need to go."

Kelly nodded, brought Scott's fingers to her lips and kissed them, then gently laid his arm and hand back down along his side. "You'll live," she whispered, and then followed Gordon out of the vault.

Twenty minutes later, Virgil, John, Gordon and Scott, whose breathing was so shallow and labored Virgil thought for sure he wouldn't make it to the Cleveland Clinic even at Two's top speed, were on their way.

Scott had broken one of International Rescue's rules by going into the building alone. Gordon had then broken a second one by telling Kelly where they were taking Scott. Virgil didn't have the heart to give him grief. Not when the non-IR part of him felt to his very marrow that Kelly deserved to know at least that much, for trying so hard to keep their brother alive.

"Virg," John said in the privacy of the cockpit, "we can't go in with him, not as International Rescue."

"I know that!" Virgil snapped. "Dad's on his way already. As soon as he gets here, we'll go back to Base and come back with everyone on one of the Tracy jets, like we always do."

Virg hadn't meant to snap but fuck, he was so goddamn scared that Scott would die before his green girl could deliver him to the best place for people with damaged organs, he didn't need John acting like he didn't know all this already.

"Okay, okay, just...he'll be all right," John stated.

Virgil wanted to believe him.

So, so much.

Scott had lived, so far...all the way to Cleveland...and for two whole days beyond that. The rebar had been removed. They'd lost him twice on the table during that surgery. And now he was hooked up to a ventilator. Both Virgil and Jeff had been in the room with him nearly continuously for the past forty-eight hours, ever since Virgil and the rest of the family had come fast as they could on the jet after picking up Grandma and the Kyranos.

Kelly had told Gordon that Scott said he thought he had a perforated lung. Unfortunately, the doctors had confirmed that he did indeed...and though Scott was stabilized, he still had a huge problem: his left lung was irreparably damaged.

Jeff had just returned from a meeting with Scott's physician, Dr. Miles Anderson, in which the surgeon had detailed what precisely Scott's outlook was, as well as his options.

"If they remove the lung," Jeff now explained to Virgil as doctors and nurses milled around, moving in and out of rooms and hallways in the large, square-shaped, busy administration area surrounded on all sides by the glass-walled patient rooms, "life as he's known it is over. No rescues. No physical activity more strenuous than walking at normal speed."

"Mobile Control?" Virgil asked, brow knitted, feeling like he wasn't sure whether he wanted to puke or just run until his legs gave out, hearing that kind of news.

"Theoretically he could still man it, but he would have to remain on Base to remove the possibility of him just trying to jump in and help all of you, and to keep him from being exposed to noxious fumes and smoke. Anything happens to his right lung and he might not make it back here in time to save his life."

"Then no more Thunderbird One," Virgil said quietly.

"No," Jeff replied, shaking his head sadly. "Not with Scott as her pilot. He could take her up, but given the forces One exerts on the body, and the fact that it's too risky for Scott to be physically present on-scene, there's no point. It's just too dangerous."

Virgil swallowed hard, staring through the glass wall at his unconscious brother lying in the slightly elevated hospital bed. "If he can't fly, he won't think there's any point to living, Dad."

"I know," was Jeff's gravelly response.

Virgil felt the backs of his eyes stinging as he looked carefully at his father. You didn't have to know the man well to see how much this was hurting him. He'd been through almost losing Gordon, and once they'd thought they were going to lose John. There'd been another incident with Virgil himself on a rescue which could've been disastrous had he not moved just the right way at just the right time. And then, of course, going way back to when they'd lost Lucy...Jeff had been through this so many times already.

And Scott lying there unmoving, with his entire future at stake, was – if Virgil was reading Jeff's face right – very nearly about to break the billionaire former astronaut. Virg knew Jeff was like this each and every time one of his boys was gravely wounded, but he'd never stopped long enough to just look at his dad while it was happening, until now.

That Jeff was so frightened, made Virgil even moreso.

"Is there any other option?" Virgil finally asked.

"There is," Jeff told him, rubbing his forehead with his thumb and forefinger like he was trying to stave off the inevitable headache. "Scott will go on the waiting list for a donor, but he'll be listed at a very low score on the scale of need. Other than his left lung, he's in perfect physical health and won't die without it being replaced."

"How long a wait are we talking here?"

"Some people never get the call, Dr. Anderson said. And in truth, there are people in greater need of a lung than he is, all over the world. It's just..." Jeff's voice trailed off. He swallowed hard.

Virgil chewed on his lower lip for a moment, then asked, "If he got the lung, would he be able to return to IR at some point?"

"Anderson tells me that as long as his body doesn't reject it, a new lung will perform just as well as his old one did. I asked about strenuous physical activity, about smoke inhalation, everything you boys experience out in the field, and he said Scott would react the same way as any person with two healthy lungs."

"So he could be out with us."

"Yes," Jeff replied. "But only if a donor surfaces."

"Meaning if someone dies and there aren't any matches to that person's lungs besides Scott?"

"There's his position, yes, but the matching is difficult, too: type, size, in a lot of factors. It's a tricky match to make, Anderson said."

Ruth Tracy, looking an awful lot older than her eighty-five years was making her look only last week, approached her son and grandson with an arm looped through Tin-Tin's on one side, and Kyrano's on the other. John and Gordon had returned to Base to bring Alan down from Thunderbird Five, because until further notice, International Rescue would not be operating.

"How is he?" Ruth asked, moving away from the Kyranos and laying a hand on Jeff's forearm.

"Stable," Jeff replied quietly.

No one said a word when Ruth swiped at a lone tear that trickled out of her left eye.

"Excuse me, you're the family of Scott Tracy?" said a voice. As one, they all turned to find a man about the same height as Jeff, with dark, wavy hair peppered with gray, and serious-looking hazel eyes, standing before them. He wore a white lab coat and had an air of authority about him. "I'm Shane Acton, head of our Transplant Unit," the man continued, holding his hand out toward Jeff.

"Jeff Tracy, and yes, all of us are Scott's family."

"I understand you've agreed for your son to be listed with UNOS, the United Network for Organ Sharing."

"That's correct."

"And Dr. Anderson has gone through all the options, but said you weren't certain what road to take here."

"That's right," Jeff replied. "I want to talk with Scott, first and foremost, and I also want the rest of the family to be here so we can discuss the options together."

"I understand that completely. And since Scott's not in imminent danger health-wise, you can take your time. However, might I suggest that just in case, you determine which of you might wish to be donors for him, and begin compatibility testing to find out if those of you who would wish to be in that position, are actually eligible to do so?"

"Wait, what do you mean, 'just in case'?" Virgil asked. "I thought he was doing okay with only the one lung."

"He is, for right now. But I've been doing this for more than two decades, son, and you just don't know how the human body is going to handle the kind of stress Scott's been under since the initial injury. It can't hurt to simply have all your information on file, especially since we're also looking at possible liver damage."

"Dr. Anderson said he expected the damaged part of Scott's liver to regenerate without interference," Jeff countered.

"He does," Acton replied. "And I concur with his findings. But like I said, things can often take a turn even when it appears to be smooth sailing."

"Well, you can test me," Jeff said.

"And me," Virgil added.

"My daughter and I will be tested," Kyrano chimed in.

Jeff nodded. "I'm sure the rest of Scott's brothers will agree to be tested. They should be here within a couple of hours."

"What about me?" Ruth asked Dr. Acton. "Am I too old to help?"

"Not necessarily, depending on your health," Acton replied with a gentle smile. His words got a huge smile from her in response. "I'll notify the appropriate personnel to prepare for the tests. In the meantime, each of you will be met with one-on-one by Juanita, our Head Nurse, for an interview. There will also be a psychological component to the testing, just so you're forewarned, which will come after the interview and the medical tests."

"Thank you, Doctor," Jeff said, shaking the man's hand again.

"You're welcome. And in the meantime, since you have such a large complement, we've arranged for a small conference room just down the hall from this pod, where you can stay while the testing's occurring. However, if you want to remain here after that's completed, our policy is that you cannot all stay in the hospital proper. There is lodging right here on our main campus that we can ensure you're all comfortable in. You will be contacted immediately should anything with Scott's condition change."

Jeff nodded as Acton walked away and began speaking to a short Latina woman dressed in maroon scrubs about halfway across the room.

"I think I may go sit down in that conference room," Ruth said, looking far too weary.

"I'll find out where it is, Mrs. Tracy," Tin-Tin said, and moved off toward the nurse and Dr. Acton.

"Dad?" Virgil said, trying hard to wrap his mind around everything Dr. Acton had told them.

"Yes, son."

"I'd like to sit with him for a bit, if you don't mind." Virgil hesitated, looked away. "Alone."

Jeff nodded, placed a hand on Virgil's shoulder and squeezed. "Well join Mother and Tin-Tin," he said, nodding his head at Kyrano. "And find out how the boys are doing retrieving Alan."

Virgil headed for Scott's room. He didn't know exactly why he wanted to sit with him alone for a while, only that the pit of his stomach felt like lead, that his gut was churning and that he wanted to be damn sure there were a few things Scott heard from him if, for some reason, one of Dr. Acton's ' just in case' scenarios played out, and Luck wasn't on Scott's side.

He didn't want to think that way. But he had to. Because if Scott didn't make it for some reason, Virgil would never forgive himself for not speaking to his brother – even though Scott was unconscious – when he'd had the chance.

He breathed in deeply, letting his lungs fill to capacity, allowing the scents of the day to invade his nose, to permeate his entire being. Rarely had he ever felt so at peace, standing there next to the beautiful Arabian horse he'd ridden to the creek on. Mostly white with a white mane and tail, the stallion's muzzle was pitch black from nose to eyes, while his hindquarters were dappled light gray with pale white spots. He drank from the stream, then lifted his dripping face to nuzzle into Scott's side.

Scott laughed as the tee shirt he was wearing became soaked. "Come on, now, King," he said, fondly running his hand from the top of the horse's head all the way down to his muzzle. "I already had a shower today, buddy."

A light, lilting laugh sounded from beyond King, who backed up a step to reveal a lovely woman who couldn't have been more than five-four or five-five in height. Her hair was fiery red and fell to her shoulders in a gentle wave. Eyes of emerald green regarded Scott merrily, even as a small mouth with full lips curved upward in a grin.

"He's really taken a liking to you," she said.

Scott knew this woman. Only he didn't quite know how he knew her.

"Well, I'd say you're not doing half bad with his companion, there," Scott replied, indicating the woman's horse with a nod of his head.

The mare was also an Arabian, but light gray all over, to the point where she seemed almost silver in the bright sun shining from above. Her mane and tile were off-white and she proudly tossed her head as though she knew herself to be the topic of conversation.

"Julie's a doll," the woman said, patting the horse's neck fondly. "Now, Scott, I need to keep you grounded to your life, okay? Do you know who I am? Do you remember my name?"

"Of course, I—" Scott cut himself off when it occurred to him that he didn't. He frowned, moved around King's head and slowly covered the few feet that separated his horse from the red-haired woman. "I know you."

She nodded. "Yes."

"But how? Why can't I remember your name?"

She smiled, but unlike her last smile, this one seemed sad. Scott couldn't fathom why. They'd ridden out here like the horses were sailing on the wind, galloping so fast that his own hair, he was sure, was standing on end. The woman's looked like she'd just stepped out of a convertible, though she tried to smooth it all back down with her hand.

"Scott, we met at the Portman Center, inside the First National Bank of Dade County."

"Bank? Did I...come in there to do business?" he asked, thoroughly confused. It was as though his mind was a complete blank all of a sudden. The only thing he remembered was riding the horses across an open prairie, him astride King and her astride Julie. He knew his own first name, but even his last was escaping him. "What's wrong with me?"

"You're going to be okay, Scott. You have to believe me when I tell you that."

"What's happening?"

She moved forward, took his left hand between both of hers, raised it to her lips and kissed the backs of his fingers. "My name is Kelly. You're injured. You're with International Rescue. You came in to save me and my friend after an earthquake, and we were trapped in a bank vault at the Portman Center."

"International...Rescue?" Scott asked, right eyebrow arching in disbelief. "Bank vault...Florida..." Her words rang true, ping-ponging through his mind as he stared into her eyes.

"Yes. You're with International Rescue. A man named Virgil is coming to save you."

"Virgil," Scott breathed, eyes widening. "Virgil."

"Yes."

"He's...Virgil's my brother!"

Kelly's face registered surprise, but it quickly passed. "Scott, you're hurt, but you're going to live. As long as you hold onto me, hold onto this moment here with the horses in this field, you'll live. Do you understand me?"

"Kelly?"

She nodded, smiled. "Yes. That's my name. Kelly McInerny."

"And Virgil's coming for me?"

"Yes. He's coming. I spoke to him through your watch. I guess it's some kind of communicator."

"Watch. International...Virgil...Dad!" Scott's eyes widened as everything came back to him, everything, and then without warning Kelly suddenly vanished. The horses were still there, but she was gone, just gone, and he panicked. "Kelly!" he cried out. "Kelly, no, don't—where are you? Kelly? Kelly!"

Virgil wasn't prepared for it when Scott jolted awake so violently it threw Virg's hand right off Scott's arm where it'd been resting as he dozed in the chair next to the bed. Before he knew what was happening, alarms were blaring and Scott was convulsing in the bed before him. As Virgil jumped to his feet and yelled for a doctor, a long, solitary beep was followed by Scott's body collapsing completely back into the bed.

"No," Virgil breathed, tears filling his eyes as the doctors and nurses shoved him back out of the way, barking vital signs and orders back and forth while shoving a crash cart into place next to the bed.

Virgil shook like a leaf, leaning back against the glass wall, staring at the scene before him. It couldn't be real. This couldn't be happening!

He was frozen in place. He couldn't think. Could hardly breathe. He closed his eyes, but what he could no longer see, he could still hear.

"BP's way too low!"

"I'm not getting any self-induced respiration here, people!"

"Adjust the flow, up it by point-two!"

"No pulse, he's asystolic, paddles!"

"Watch the ventilator, we've got blood!"

Virgil reopened his eyes when they hit Scott with the defibrillator paddles. His body jumped off the bed. The flatline was still sounding, piercing Virgil's mind and heart as they charged the paddles again.

"Scott, please," Virgil breathed, as tears threatened to fall. "Please..."

Jeff and Grandma were sitting with Scott now, as Kyrano and Tin-Tin tried to rest in the rooms that the Tracys had been provided in the hospital's lodgings. Virgil wasn't sure where his other brothers were.

He wandered around the grounds of the main campus, unable to get that horrible scene out of his mind. He'd shrugged off his grandmother's hug, avoided looking into his father's understanding eyes. Barely said hello to John, Gordon and Alan when they'd arrived not forty-five minutes after Virgil watched Scott die.

Watched Scott die.

He had no handle on a situation like this. Sure, they'd all been in tough spots before, some of them at Death's Door. But there was something about seeing his older brother – the one he'd been attached to by some unseen cord from the first moment he and Scott had laid eyes on each other shortly after Virgil's birth – the way he was seeing him now.

Scott had hurt himself in the field plenty of times, but it'd never been more than a busted bone, a twisted ankle, a nice, long gash requiring stitches, a concussion, a black eye. The guy had horseshoes up his ass, and in fact, his luck had been a running gag in the family since International Rescue had first started operating eight years earlier.

Where John and Gordon had been through their share of near-misses with the Reaper; where Alan and Virgil had come face-to-face with the grave and lived to tell the tale, even when Scott had crashed his damn 'bird in the desert, he'd come away with nothing more than a gash in his head, a two-day headache and a few aches, pains and bruises.

Christ, even Brains, who was the only one still on Tracy Island right now, had been buried up to his neck in sand and nearly drowned in Lake Anasta. But Scott, he was as indestructible as the patriarch of the family had always been. At least, until now.

And something about that shook Virgil to his very core. Seeing his brother so pale, having watched as the staff had, initially, given him so much blood in transfusions that Virg was convinced Scott didn't have any more of his own blood in him at all. Waiting while expert surgeons' hands removed rusted rebar from Scott's side, tried desperately to patch up a punctured lung. Having to hear in the aftermath of six hours of surgery that they couldn't save the lung, that it was there, and it was momentarily fixed, but that the fix wouldn't last.

To think he was stable, lying there so still and quiet and so un-Scott-like in a bed hooked up to monitors and machines for breathing and IV lines to nourish his body. And then to be frightened awake by him convulsing, flatlining, Virgil couldn't get that goddamn beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep out of his head no matter what piece of Chopin or Mozart he tried to force himself to replay in his mind.

That Scott's heart had completely stopped would've been enough in and of itself. But then, once the amazing medical team had brought Scott back to life by some miracle of their skill and dedication, to have to hear from Dr. Acton himself that Scott's left lung had to be removed as soon as he'd been stable for at least twelve hours due to infection; that the lower lobe of his right lung, even, was now compromised as a result of that same infection...to know that Scott's liver was failing despite the hospital's best efforts, it...it was just too much.

Scott's body was giving out on him. The man that nothing had been able to beat in the past, not the death of his mother right in front of his eyes; not having to fight his way out of enemy territory during the war in Bereznik; not any of the flights in Thunderbird One or the hairy situations at Danger Zones had ever beaten Scott Jefferson Tracy.

Yet it seemed that Scott's luck had gone for good. They were keeping enough oxygen flowing into him to avoid brain damage and to feed his cells, but it was forced and there was no way that Scott could breathe on his own right now. Never mind the dialysis machine he was also hooked up to on top of everything else.

Now Scott's ranking on the UNOS list had gone way, way up. His score was high enough that only three people were ahead of him on the list for partial lung transplant, and two ahead of him for a new liver.

Acton had gone over the new options now facing the Tracys in great detail, and Jeff had had to give up the idea that Scott would have any say in the matter at all, given that he wasn't conscious and wasn't likely to be able to communicate much even if he did wake up at some point.

Virgil scrubbed a hand over his face. He'd been the first to go through the interview, the medical testing and the psychological test as a potential donor of any and all of his organs. He'd give them all up for good, even if it meant never flying his 'bird again, if only Scott would live. If only Scott would go back to being the totally together, in-charge, supportive, military-like beloved older brother that Virg wasn't sure he could live without.

He took a deep breath as a very faint light appeared on the eastern horizon. He hadn't slept in much more than brief catnaps; none of the family had until the Kyranos finally went to their rooms to try. Virgil looked at his watch. It was 5:12am in Cleveland, Ohio, and his brother was fighting for his life.

He watched dully as a cab pulled into the multi-lane circular driveway in front of the clinic's main entrance. Watched as a woman with her hair pulled back into a ponytail reached forward from the back seat to hand the cabbie a credit card. Looked away, up at the glass walls of the many-storied main hospital, then over to halfway around the circle where a couple of people were having a quiet conversation near the end of the awning that shielded arriving patients and visitors from the elements.

The back door of the cab opened. A jean-clad leg with a white sneaker on its foot appeared. Virgil looked up as the rest of the person emerged, and blinked. He couldn't be hallucinating, and yet...how could it be...?

"Kelly?"

She looked up as she closed the door behind her, large black duffel bag slung over her shoulder. "Virgil?" she said, making her way up to where he stood on the sidewalk, hands stuffed into his pockets.

"What are you doing here?" Virg asked, blinking, not quite able to believe this was the woman that, not even three days ago, he'd found with her forehead glued to Scott's. The woman who was the last one to actually speak to Scott while he was still conscious.

"The man who led me out to the paramedics...he wouldn't tell me his name, sort of dark copper-colored hair...he told me you were bringing Scott here."

"Yeah," Virgil said, "he mentioned he'd let that slip."

Kelly looked Virg up and down, and Virgil could only imagine what she thought because he knew he looked like sixteen miles of bad road right now, what with his three-day beard and his unkempt hair and rumpled clothes.

"How is he?"

Virgil swallowed hard. "We almost lost him overnight," he found himself saying. On some level he knew he shouldn't be telling this woman anything, and yet dammit, she'd kept Scott alive, however it was she'd done it, stayed with him, held his hand, talked to him. Damn near made her family as far as Virg was concerned.

Only thing was, she wasn't supposed to know anything about who Scott was. Or Virgil, for that matter.

"Is he..?" Her voice trailed off. She looked away, down at the loafers on his feet, along the perfectly-poured concrete sidewalk, then finally looked back up at his face. "Is he going to be okay?"

A question that just brought it all crashing down on Virgil to the point where he didn't trust himself to speak. But apparently his silence and the rapid blinking of his eyes was answer enough for her.

"Look," she said, laying a hand on his bare forearm, "I know nobody's supposed to know who you guys are, okay? I know that you depend on secrecy to stay in business, and I don't want to mess with that."

He managed to look her in the eye, at least.

"But I really just...I want to see him. I feel like...like I need to. I can't explain it any better than that." She huffed out a laugh that held no mirth. "I took three different planes to get from Florida to Ohio. I've been flying all night because I was so compelled. Mari said I was nuts, that even if I came here, there was no way I'd be let in to see a Top Secret patient." She stopped, looked down at where the fingers of her right hand were fiddling with the zipper on her bag. "I honestly didn't even know what I was going to do once I got here."

"Fast talk your way in?" he asked, wondering himself how on Earth she ever would've made it past Reception if he hadn't been standing out there like their meeting had been pre-arranged.

"Doubt it. I'm not like that." Her hand fell away from his arm, the duffel bag sliding off her shoulder to the ground. "Is there any way I can see him without being related? I don't want to know your identities, I just..." She shook her head, turned away, shoulders slumped. "God, I don't know what I'm doing here."

Virgil remembered her softly-spoken words to Scott about horses and manes and tails and a prairie and a creek with cool water. He remembered how she didn't want to let go of Scott's hand. When he looked at her now, he didn't have the kinds of warning bells going off that he sometimes did when a reporter attempted to disguise who they were just to get the scoop on International Rescue, or when someone else tried to get close to them for some other reason that wasn't in his family's best interests.

"Let me make a call. Give me a sec?" he said, because he figured if she came in with him, sat with Scott for a bit, and then left, as long as Jeff and the others were nowhere near, she could never put two and two together and figure out their identities. She'd already seen four of the five brothers as it was, and had spent quite a bit of time with one of them. And who knew, since hers had been the last voice Scott had heard as he lost consciousness, maybe in some weird way it'd help him to hear that voice again.

Virgil knew it sounded like tinkly fairy shit; even to him it was borderline nuts. But he also, at this point, was open to grasping at any straw he could reach.

Kelly nodded. Virgil pulled out his cell phone and walked quickly away, far enough around the curved front sidewalk that he couldn't be overheard by her or any of the other handful of people out and about. Well, if Virg was going to break the rules, he was going to enlist the help of the guy who'd broken this particular rule to begin with.

Gordon answered after the second ring, just as the very tip-top of the sun peeked over the horizon. Something about its light, about the way it seemed to be surrounded for a brief moment by a halo of oranges and fiery reds, calmed Virgil's nerves for the first time since he'd watched Scott flatline.

"Gordo," he said into the phone, "I need your help with Dad."

Virgil wasn't certain how exactly it was Gordon had managed to get Ruth, Jeff, Alan and John out of the room. His only request of Gordon had been to at least get Jeff away. He was the most likely to be recognized by anyone, due to Jeff's bout of fame as an astronaut and being the owner of the highest-grossing privately-held company in the world.

But at this point, Virgil didn't care if Gordo had clubbed his dad over the head and dragged him away, because the moment that he led Kelly across the threshold of Scott's room, he knew he'd done the right thing, somewhere deep down in his gut.

Kelly placed her duffel bag on one of the four chairs scattered around the room. It was as big as a standard motel room, but filled with machinery and technology and every manner of top medical equipment imaginable. That left room only for the four chairs, Scott's bed and maybe standing room for two or three more people, with a clear pathway for medical staff from door-to-bedside in case – God forbid – Scott took another turn for the worse.

She advanced upon the bed slowly, eyes wide. Virgil could see fear in every line of how she was holding her body, in her face, in her eyes. It was a fear he knew all too well as daylight dawned on Day Three.

"He can't breathe on his own," Kelly said quietly, eyeing the ventilator machine.

"No."

"What's this?" she asked, pointing at a second machine that was on the other side of the bed. Long plastic tubes disappeared from it into Scott's body. Tubes filled with dark, dirty-red blood.

"Liver dialysis," Virgil replied, staying where he was, hands still jammed into the pockets of his jeans.

"His liver was damaged? As well as his lungs?"

"Apparently as a result of the rust on the rebar," Virgil explained, not really knowing why he was divulging, but at the same time feeling as compelled to tell her, as she apparently had been to travel all night to get to Scott's bedside. "The only real problem initially was his left lung being perforated," he continued. "But then something happened overnight, an infection brought about by the rebar. The lower lobe of his right lung is compromised, his left lung's completely shot and some liver damage that they thought would fix itself has turned into complete liver failure."

It wasn't lost on Virgil that Kelly's eyes were shining with unshed tears in the pale light coming through the wall of windows that faced outside. He felt his cell phone vibrate, pulled it out of his back pocket and saw a text from Gordon.

Dad's asleep. You owe me bigtime.

Virgil texted OK back to his brother, and shoved the phone back into his pocket.

"Can I...can I touch him?" Kelly asked, hand hovering in the one foot of airspace separating it from the metal bar that edged Scott's bed.

"Yeah," he replied. "You can touch him, but Kelly..." God, he felt like such an idiot for wanting to make this request. Yet she was the one who'd done it to begin with, so maybe she wouldn't think it was as stupid as he felt it sounded. When she turned to look at him, her face was open, fearful, honestly curious. He swallowed hard. "Would you talk to him?"

"Talk to him?" she repeated, looking back down at Scott.

"Yeah, like...like you were doing when we found you." Virg felt a flush creep up his neck. Christ, if his brothers heard him right now they'd give him such crap. Well, they would've, back in the day. Now, with Scott hanging on to Life by a thread, maybe not so much.

"I'd like nothing more," was Kelly's answer. So Virg pushed one of the silver and black chairs forward. Kelly sat down in it with a quiet "thanks," and scooted closer to the bed. A nurse entered the room, checked all of the machinery, smiled at Virgil, nodded at Kelly, and was gone five minutes later.

"I don't know how long you can stay," Virgil said, keeping in mind that with his luck, Jeff would be up again within the hour and fighting to come back to his son's side regardless of what Gordon did or said to keep him away.

"I understand," she told him as she reached through the slats of the metal railing, grasped Scott's left hand, and sandwiched it between her own two. She looked up at his face, partially hidden as it was by large ventilator tubes delivering oxygen to what little of his lungs he had left.

Virgil sat down in another chair, angled so he could keep an eye on the direction he knew Jeff or anyone else from the lodgings building would have to come from, but positioned so he could also watch Kelly and Scott.

"Scott, I don't know if you remember me, my name is Kelly McInerny," she began, and Virgil closed his eyes, praying that this would somehow help his brother. "You saved my life. Mine and Mari's. I don't know if I really helped you or not when we were trapped in the vault," she continued, "and I really don't even know why I'm here. But Virgil asked me to talk to you, so I guess I'll just continue our story, okay?"

Kelly turned to look at Virgil uncertainly just as Virg reopened his eyes. He gave her a small smile and a nod to continue.

She seemed uncertain; maybe even a little embarrassed. Heck, Virg figured he was both in spades, so why the hell not? A perfect stranger, nobody to the Tracys other than a victim that needed to be rescued in the aftermath of an unheard-of earthquake in the state of Florida. And yet here she was, telling fairy tales to IR's field commander like she was meant to be there.

Maybe it was because he hadn't slept enough. Or maybe it was because he was ready to believe in things he'd never believed in before, if only it would help his brother. Things like Kyrano was always talking about, stuff that was more mysticism than it was, science. Whatever the cause, Virgil felt strangely like Kelly did belong there. Like she was meant to be there. And at this point, for him, that was good enough.

He heard the trickling of the creek, the softy whinny of her horse, the louder neigh of his own. He opened his eyes to find himself sitting on the bank of the creek, her right next to him. He blinked in the bright sunlight and turned to look at her.

"You disappeared," he said.

"Yes. Virgil and some others from International Rescue came to get us out of the vault. Do you remember being trapped there? Being injured?"

Scott looked back down at the lazily-moving water. The creek was only about three feet wide, and so clear he could see the smooth rocks on the bottom, small minnows glinting silver in the sunlight, darting in schools here and there searching for food.

"I know something's wrong," he finally replied as he looked at her again. "I know your name's Kelly, and that you know Virgil."

She nodded and smiled. "That's good."

"You said I was injured?"

"Yes. Pretty badly."

It felt so strange, so odd to be here in perfect health, sitting in the middle of a wide-open space with only two horses and someone he was supposed to have rescued for company. Images went fleeting through his mind, too fast for him to catch, and yet somehow they managed to give him a picture of what had happened in Florida. Yet right now they were nowhere near Florida; he could tell by the prairie lands around them. So how was it he was here, instead of in some hospital somewhere?

"You look confused," Kelly stated as she tossed a small pebble into the creek.

He watched the pebble land, and sink into the water. "I am. If I was hurt, we were in Florida, I don't...how am I here? How are you here? Where are we?"

"I'm not really sure. I'm just telling you a story, but it seems like when I start telling you, I sort of...I don't know...zone out, and then here I am, talking to you like you're totally fine."

"You're telling me a story."

She nodded. "I started with the same tale my grandmother told, of riding beautiful Arabian horses across an endless field of grass," Kelly explained, looking all around them where tall grasses swayed in a light breeze as far as the eye could see. "But when Virgil arrived, I had to leave. His voice snapped me out of it."

"So we're out of the vault, but we...we what, moved to here? To your story-land?" Scott was thoroughly confused now. None of this made sense at all.

"We're out of the vault, but we're in a hospital. You're at the Cleveland Clinic. I flew all night to come see you."

"So we're in a dream? You're in my dream?"

"I don't know," Kelly replied, rising to her feet. "But I think I need to keep telling you the story. As long as I know you're grounded, that you know this isn't real, but you stay here, then...I don't know, maybe I'm helping somehow."

Scott watched as she walked back to her horse...Julie, that was the horse's name. She put her foot in the stirrup and easily swung herself up onto the horse.

"You know how to ride pretty well," Scott observed, rising to his feet and dusting pieces of grass from his jeans.

"Thanks. My dad had a ranch for a while when I was a kid in Oklahoma, but sold it and we moved to Florida when I was twelve. I was around horses all the time when I was little. You?"

Scott palmed King's reins and put his foot into the stirrup of his brown leather saddle, pushing off the ground and swinging his leg up and over. "My grandparents had a couple older horses on the farm still when I was a kid," he replied as they guided their horses away from the creek. "Grandpa taught me to ride. Taught Virgil, too. But by the time Johnny was old enough, the horses were too old and then—" He stopped. He didn't want to think about his mother's death now.

"Well, then I guess I chose the right story to tell," Kelly said, eyeing him like she maybe knew something he didn't. "Better keep telling it to you, huh?"

He looked at her, smiled, nodded. "Sure. What's next?"

"What's next?" she asked, looking all around them. "Well, Grandma's story never went on this long, so I'm making this part up as I go." She held her hand over her eyes and squinted off into the distance. "See that apple tree way over there?" she asked, pointing with the hand holding Julie's reins.

He followed the line. "Yep," he replied.

"What's next is seeing if you and King can beat me and my girl to it," she said, voice holding a hint of challenge.

Scott grinned as Kelly's heels dug into Julie's sides and the horse rocketed away at full-speed. "Come on, King," he said to his horse. "Let's show 'em who's boss." And with that, he had King galloping after them.

No, none of this made any sense to the man who was used to commanding a team of rescue personnel, who was used to making life and death decisions. Who was used to being in control. But for a change, he didn't actually care that he had no control over what was happening. Because even though at the back of his mind it niggled that he shouldn't be here enjoying a carefree existence right now, he reveled in the fact that he was, for the moment, without any responsibilities at all.

As King's mane flew back to flutter against his torso, as the wind created by their speed whipped through his hair, Scott let out a laugh. He felt like a child again; the child he'd been before his mother had died.

And he could breathe...something that seemed like it shouldn't be.

So he just let it happen.

He figured there was time to worry about whatever that hospital was Kelly had mentioned, later, maybe next time they stopped to let the horses rest.

As though being plucked away with each beat of King's hooves on the ground, all memories of International Rescue and his family and his job slipped slowly away...leaving nothing but the prairie, the apple tree, Kelly and two horses.

Scott thought – as Kelly and Julie made it to the tree first, and Kelly gently urged her horse into a proud bow of victory – that he would be perfectly happy to stay here in this place forever.

Virgil jolted awake when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He looked up and froze when he saw that hand belonged to his father. He looked beyond Jeff to find the entire family either beside him or behind him, then sat up straight and looked at the bed.

Scott was still, quiet, hooked up to a million machines as usual. But Kelly was nowhere to be found. Virg looked at the chair he'd seen her put her duffel bag into; it was empty. Before he could even wonder to himself where she was, or be grateful that she wasn't there when his father arrived, Jeff spoke.

"Son, we need to meet Dr. Anderson and his team in the conference room."

Nodding, Virgil got to his feet, looked at his watch and realized it was already nearly lunch time. He'd fallen asleep for six hours? Really? He scrubbed a hand down his face, ran his fingers through his hair and nodded at his dad. Jeff and the rest of them turned as one unit and headed for the conference room, Gordon lagging behind with Virg.

"He slept for four hours, but after that he insisted on coming back here," Gordon whispered to him as they walked. "I followed just in case, but nobody was here other than you."

"So she left two or more hours ago?"

"I guess," Gordon replied with a shrug. "Dad disappeared for a while, while John, Alan and I stayed with you and Scott. I never saw anyone who looked like the red-haired lady we rescued hanging anywhere around."

"Damn," Virgil swore softly, because while he was definitely happy there hadn't been a run-in between Kelly and Jeff, he also had no way of knowing what had or hadn't happened since he'd gone out like a light. And no way of contacting her. Shame, he thought. She was nice.

The family filed into the conference room, took seats around the large glass-topped table and waited quietly. At least Grandma, Kyrano and Tin-Tin appeared rested, Virgil thought, and his dad had obviously had a shower and a shave. Virgil grimaced, because he knew he needed both.

"Hello, everyone," said a voice, and they all turned to look at the door of the conference room. "I have met some of you, but for everyone else, I'm Dr. Anderson, the surgeon in charge of Scott's case." Anderson walked in and gestured to each of the two people who followed him, in turn. "This is Juanita Lopez, the Head Nurse in our Pod, and the one in charge of Scott's general care for the duration. Dr. Bakri Wek is my partner on this case, and is here to speak to you about the non-organic questions that you raised with me an hour ago, Mr. Tracy," he finished, looking directly at Jeff.

So, Virgil thought, Dad's been busy.

Jeff held up a hand. "I want to bring Virgil up to speed, since he doesn't know this yet," he stated, then looked across the table at him. "Early on, I forbade the Cleveland Clinic from offering technological replacements for Scott's lung, when it was only his left lung affected, and before they discovered a rampant infection that's compromised his other lung and made his liver non-functional."

Virgil nodded. "I remember talking to you about it while Scott was in surgery."

"Right," Jeff replied. "But after nearly losing Scott last night, I wanted to know every option that's open to him."

"I thought you didn't want artificial organs or robotics used in any way," Virgil countered, brow knitting. He couldn't say out loud why that'd been, of course. Not with the doctors and nurse here. But he clearly recalled Jeff's concerns over how an artificial lung would affect Scott being able to fly Thunderbird One, for one thing. The g-forces alone, Jeff had felt, could wreak havoc with anything that wasn't made of human flesh, let alone how something like that would affect Scott being in the field on rescues.

"I didn't, because I didn't think Scott would want it," Jeff explained with a knowing look. "However, with the problems he has now, I'm prepared to hear the team out, and I wanted you all to hear this as well."

"We've asked those of you not actually related to Scott by blood, sign confidentiality agreements already," Juanita piped up, nodding toward the Kyranos. "Sorry we had to do that; we're not accustomed to discussing patient information with non-family members, but Mr. Tracy insisted."

Kyrano gave a small nod, while Tin-Tin appeared somewhat perturbed.

John, seated to Virgil's right, leaned close and whispered in his ear, "Wait until Penny gets here. They think they're keeping her out of the loop, or getting her to sign one of those things, they're in for a surprise."

Virgil gave his brother a wry grin, because never were truer words spoken.

"Okay," Dr. Anderson said, as he moved to the far end of the room where a five-foot long touch-screen display hung on the wall. Not unlike our own in our conference room back on Tracy Island, Virgil thought.

For the next hour, everyone in the room learned about where artificial organ technology had advanced to in the past decade. In 2028, the first successful artificial dual-lung transplant had been performed, and the patient was still going strong now, six years later. In 2030, multiple artificial organ transplant had finally been allowed to be introduced into a patient whose body continued to reject all human organs after four separate attempts to do so.

Halfway through the meeting, Virgil realized Jeff had Lady Penelope engaged via his wrist communicator, and had to stifle a smile. He could only imagine the conversation his father must've had with her about having to sign a confidentiality form. Asking one of the best spies in the world, and International Rescue's top agent, not to tell someone's secrets, was kind of funny. When it came to International Rescue, and their personnel, Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward knew everything but what color underwear its operatives wore. In some cases, she probably even knows that, he thought ruefully.

Well into Hour Two, Dr. Wek finally got around to something that was more relevant to Virgil than getting a medical history lesson. "You can see here," Wek said, his Sudanese accent thick, "that I have done a mock-up of Scott's thoracic cavity. The primary concern at this point are his lungs." The doctor moved images around, used two fingers to make some larger and more visible. "The right lung has three lobes. Currently, only the lower, third lobe, of Scott's right lung has been compromised." He swept that picture away and another took its place. "His left lung is beyond repair, having fully collapsed at this point. All attempts to patch and re-inflate it would only place further strain on Scott's system that his downward spiral overnight has made clear he can't tolerate."

Dr. Wek pushed all that to the side with his left hand, and used his right to bring in a new image. "Scott's liver is one hundred percent non-functional at this time. There is no uninfected tissue left to regenerate the organ completely in six to eight weeks, which is the normal time for a partial human liver to do so."

"You can put that artificial lung you showed us, and an artificial liver, into Scott?" John asked.

"I can indeed," Wek replied. "Dr. Anderson and the head of the transplant unit here, Dr. Acton, are the premiere surgeons in the human organ transplant arena, but I have performed over forty-five artificial organ insertions of lungs, heart and kidneys. I also assisted on the first cybernetic ocular implant in the world three months ago, at the Mayo Clinic Transplant Center."

"But no artificial livers?" Gordon asked from his spot across the table and to Jeff's left.

Wek shook his head. "Because the liver regenerates itself, which means live donors can give part of their liver to a patient rather than the patient having to wait for a death to obtain a full or partial organ, the focus in the scientific and medical communities has been more on the rarer organs, or those more difficult to obtain matches for. Even kidneys are only recently being replaced by artificial counterparts due to the fact that humans can live with only one kidney. In addition, the number of human beings willing to donate one of theirs to help someone out has increased substantially over the past decade. That's left livers on the back burner while we work at perfecting hearts and lungs, as well as other more complicated endeavors, such as cybernetic implants for deformities of, or damage which has occurred to, the human brain."

"Well, one thing I want to know," Alan said from his spot to Jeff's right, "is what this would mean for Scott in terms of his recovery." Virgil nodded. That was probably first and foremost on everyone's minds, only not for the reasons the doctors probably thought it was.

"That depends on what you choose for Scott, or if he regains consciousness, what he chooses to himself," Anderson said, pushing off the wall where he'd been leaning with his arms folded over his chest for the entire time Wek had been speaking. "Given that his right lung is functional except for the lower lobe, we could remove the lobe and leave things that way. That lung will still function and, assuming his other lung – whether human or artificial – functions at one hundred percent, he should have no lasting aftereffects."

Virgil cocked his head to the side. "So he'd be able to exercise? Strenuously?" he asked.

"Yes. There are very few restrictions on patients after about a year of their bodies adjusting to the artificial organ, and them learning the few things they can't do."

"Which are?" Jeff asked, and to Virgil, his father's voice sounded like he already knew the answer.

"Well, for one thing, it's a good thing Scott isn't active in the Air Force anymore," Anderson replied.

"Why is that?" Tin-Tin questioned.

"Because he wouldn't be allowed to fly any kind of jet other than maybe a commercial airliner – though certainly not the Fireflash series – which would effectively put an end to his career, if he were still active, of course, encountering the types of g-forces those pilots do."

Which meant that Scott would never be able to fly Thunderbird One again. The looks Virgil and all the rest of the family were giving each other, told Virg they were all thinking the same damn thing.

"How does environmental interference affect the artificial lung?" Jeff asked. "Inhaling smoke from fires, or peoples' cigars and cigarettes, for instance."

"There's a filter built into the artificial lung which removes any contaminants that make their way into it using a push valve that provides the body the capability of handling these things in the same fashion it does now, through turning it into waste products. Should anything more foreign than particles, such as water, enter the lung, it senses the intrusion and immediately drains the foreign substance from the cavity of the organ. It functions much better than human lungs in that manner."

"So Scott can't ever fly again," Virgil said. His eyes met Jeff's across the table. Virgil looked away first.

Dr. Wek fielded that one. "Again, he can, if he wished to. Helicopters, helijets, and any jets which do not move faster than the older, more traditional passenger jets. All the new ones such as the Fireflash V-3, anything that breaks the sound barrier or produces g-forces which require their pilots to pass military-grade fighter pilot medical tests, for example, is out of the question. We've had both Air Force and Navy medical personnel attempt to qualify otherwise fully healthy single- and double-artificial lung recipients, and they didn't pass three out of the five sections. Tests in the lab have shown that the force of gravity once you go beyond a certain level, is simply too great, even with the latest materials that are being utilized to construct the outer wall of the artificial organ."

Anderson moved slightly to catch everyone's eyes as Wek closed down the files on the touch-screen that he'd been using. "It's not as easy as, put in an artificial organ and the recipient is magically an indestructible cyborg," Anderson stated. "As far as we've come with man-made replacements for human body parts, the fact is also that in many cases, the human body rejects the artificial organ, which leaves the patient with no organ, and much less time to find a human donation than they might have had prior to the attempt at artificial replacement. In addition, in order to move flexibly within the human body cavity, organs cannot be made of stronger materials such as those that are used for bone replacement, like quadritanium, or any of the other metals that could protect them from collapsing or breaking due to things such as high g-forces, or being slammed into."

"Slammed into?" Gordon repeated.

"Yes," the doctor nodded. "For example, if Scott had an artificial lung and got into a nasty barfight where a guy's Size 11 smashed into his chest directly over the lung, it could actually damage it irreparably, simply due to the force applied. A normal human lung might get bruised by the ribs, but it would heal, unless a rib broke and perforated it. With an artificial lung, it's flexible to a point, but not nearly as perfect as the Nature-created version. And unfortunately, the only organ we can get to generate is the liver. Other organ generation experiments, from things such as stem cells or cloning attempts, have all failed to some degree, at this point."

Virgil exchanged looks with everyone at the table one by one, eyes finally coming to rest on Jeff's.

"Look," Juanita said, the first time she'd spoken since Wek's lecture had begun, "I know that Scott works for you in various capacities, Mr. Tracy." Jeff's eyes met hers. "And as long as he continues this work with you, there would be no reason he couldn't live a full, long, happy life with an artificial lung and liver. He could stay fit, he could marry, have a family, whatever his goals are."

No, Virgil thought, and when Jeff looked back at him, he knew they were thinking the same thing once again. If Scott couldn't be International Rescue's field commander, his life would never be full, long or happy.

"We'll leave you to discuss all of this now," Dr. Anderson said. "We realize that it's a lot to take in, but I've got to remove Scott's left lung and the lower lobe of his right lung no later than this evening, and I'm not keen to do that with a liver dialysis machine in my way. We have the artificial organs available here at the Clinic, right now."

"What if human organs become available after you implant the artificial ones?" Virgil asked. "So to keep him alive, to get him healthy and get rid of the infection, you put the fake ones in, then a donor that matches him comes up. Then what?"

Anderson and Wek exchanged a look with Juanita, then Anderson looked directly at Virgil. "I'm sorry, but if we do an artificial transplant, the patient is removed from UNOS for the organs in question within forty-eight hours of successful transplant. The only way Scott would be relisted, is if his body fails to integrate the artificial lung and liver, meaning we would have to immediately remove whichever is being rejected, and he would hit the top of the list with the other one percent of over two thousand people currently waiting for lungs whose cases are just as critical."

"But he'd have no organ at all at that point," John said.

"Right," Dr. Anderson replied. "We can keep him functioning with the remainder of his right lung, as long as the infection hasn't spread to it, and we can use an external liver dialysis to perform liver functions for about a week before his body starts protesting. Are there any more questions?"

No one said a word.

"All right, we'll leave you to it, then. I'll be in the admin center out on the Pod floor when you come to a decision."

With that, the three staff members exited the room, closing the door behind them. Virgil eyed his dad. "No friggin' way," he said to Jeff, and to them all. "Saving Scott's life by grounding him from International Rescue is not an option."

"But what if there is no other option, Virgil?" Tin-Tin asked. "If they put the artificial organs into Scott, at least he'll be alive. He'll be whole by tonight."

"No," came a small voice from next to Alan, and everyone turned to look at Ruth. "You all know that boy as well as I do, and Virgil's right." She swallowed, wrinkled hand gesturing in the air between herself and Alan. "Scott doesn't have a death wish, but he's your field commander. If he can't do that job, what do you think he'll do with himself? Take up a desk job at Tracy Corp's headquarters in Manhattan?"

John snorted, a pretty clear indication of his opinion on the possibilities of that happening.

Forty-five more minutes passed, with everyone around the table debating keeping Scott alive for certain right now using artificial organs vs. waiting for donors. There were pros and cons to both, and yet everyone knew what would happen if they went with the easier and more immediate option of the artificial transplant.

Scott would never be his true self again. And Jeff concluded, after listening to the opinions of every single person at the table, that he wasn't prepared to condemn his son in that way just yet. Not when there was still a chance for Scott to get human organs. Virgil couldn't have agreed more. Yes, he'd seen Scott flatline. But a call could come in at any time with an available organ, or any one of them could be matches to help his brother out; they hadn't heard the results of those tests as yet.

As everyone was resigning themselves to the fact that they would not be seeing artificial organs introduced into Scott's body tonight, at least, and what that meant for Scott's current state of health, there was a knock at the glass-walled conference room's door. It was the head of the transplant unit, Dr. Acton. He entered with a 2-D holo-computer pad in-hand and a large smile on his face.

"I've been briefed by Doctors Anderson and Wek as to the meeting you just had in here," he said, "and I think I may be able to make this a little easier on you."

Every one of them leaned forward, elbows on the table, anticipating some good news for a change.

"Two of you are matches for Scott's liver," Acton replied, looking down at the computer pad and tapping at the in-air stand-up see-through display. "Virgil and John are both exact matches. If either of you wish to live donate, Scott can have part of one of your livers tonight, and won't require either dialysis or an artificial liver at all."

"Done!" John and Virgil said at the same time, getting a few chuckles from those around the table.

"I also have some pretty decent news about Scott's left lung," Acton continued. "Three of you are matches."

"What?" Gordon asked incredulously. "You mean we can give him a whole lung?"

Acton grinned. "Of Virgil, Alan and you, Gordon, one would give a lower lobe of his lung, and another would give a lower lobe of his lung. Using the two lobes, we can fashion a complete lung for your brother that is capable of functioning the same as the lung he was born with did before his injury."

"So," John said, "Virg or I can give the liver, but only they," he indicated his three brothers with a wave of his hand, "can give lung lobes."

"That's right. It's about more than just blood type. It's about a lot of other things, too, and your lungs aren't as precise a match as theirs are."

"But if we give a lobe of our lungs, what does that do to us?" Alan asked.

"Well," Acton said, leaning back as he set the holo-computer down on the conference table, "giving only a single lower lobe means there will be very little impact to you since the rest of your lungs are perfectly healthy, just like Scott not getting a replacement for the lower lobe of his right lung shouldn't keep him from doing the things he loves to do."

Virgil could've sworn that the entire room sat back and sighed in relief.

Scott wouldn't have to face never being able to fly One again. He wouldn't have to face being grounded or removed from any part of International Rescue.

"Let's get to it, then," John said. "Since I can't donate part of my lung, I want the liver to come from me."

"I'll do a lobe," Virgil said, because of course he would. He looked at Gordon and Alan. "You two can duke it out for the other lobe."

For the first time since this whole shitstorm had begun, Virgil actually felt optimistic. He could tell from the look on his father's face that he did, too.

Kelly smiled at Juanita as she entered the small consultation room. "Hi," she said, reaching out and shaking the nurse's hand. "Kelly McInerny."

"Juanita Lopez," was the response, accompanied by a firm handshake. Kelly looked into her brown eyes as she then asked, "You say you're a cousin to Scott Tracy?"

Tracy? It was the first time she'd ever heard a last name to go with Scott. "Yes, I'm Scott's cousin," she replied, keeping her face as neutral as possible. "I sat with him for a few hours, and I overheard you and another nurse outside saying Scott's family was going to be gathered to talk about Scott's impending surgery and potential organ transplants, so I thought maybe I should get tested to see if I'm a match, you know? I mean, you can do partial livers and stuff like that, right?"

Juanita nodded. "Yes, we absolutely can. And while there's no reason we can't test you as a backup, Dr. Acton's just delivered the news to Scott's family that several of them are matches. Undoubtedly they've already determined who will donate for Scott."

Kelly thought for a moment. "Is Virgil one of the matches?" she asked.

"Yes, for both lung and liver," Juanita replied. "Given the sheer number of family members, it's no great surprise that three of the brothers were lung matches. Only two for liver, though."

Three of the brothers, Kelly thought. That means Virgil is Scott's brother, and that there are more brothers than just Virgil. "I'd still like you to test me," she said aloud. "For a 'just in case' scenario, please."

"Will do. I'll let them know you're being tested next time I see them."

"No," Kelly replied quickly, reaching out and laying a hand on Juanita's arm. "Please, I...I don't want them to be worried about that right now. They've got a lot on their plate if three of them are going under the knife. Just test me, and if I'm a match, then keep it in your pocket unless it's absolutely necessary. Please?"

Juanita gave her a look that said she knew there was something more to the request, but Kelly kept herself as calm and reasonable-looking as possible. The last thing she needed was for anyone to find out she'd passed herself off as a fourth cousin to a family whose last name she'd only just found out.

"Well, all right. Of course, everyone's results are confidential, normally. Unless, of course, you're the Tracys. Apparently they want no secrets from each other. Dr. Acton's in there delivering the news about the matches to the whole group of them at once as we speak." She smiled and shook her head as she brought up a file on the microcomputer in her lap. "I wouldn't even be discussing this with you if they weren't so hell-bent on all family members knowing the score at all times. They're an interesting bunch, I'll give them that. I guess when you're rich and you own the largest corporate entity in the world, you have every right to be different than most people."

Kelly sat back in her chair, her mind whirling. She really didn't care who International Rescue was; all she cared about was the guy who'd saved hers and Mari's lives not dying because of it. But here she was being told that Scott's, and therefore Virgil's, last names were 'Tracy,' and that there were at least two more brothers beyond that, and that the family owned the biggest company in the world.

"Okay, we might as well do the interview right here and now, and then I'll have a transplant coordinator get all your basic information like your identification and social security number. After, we'll schedule you for the medical tests and the psychological evaluation."

"Okay," Kelly said, half her mind still on the question of a rich family named Tracy.

Because while she didn't travel in the circles of the wealthy, other than by sometimes helping them with huge cash withdrawals or deposits made at her teller window at the bank where she'd worked for five years, you'd have to have been living in a cave your whole life not to know how the name 'Tracy' equated to the largest company in existence.

Could it be? She wondered, as Juanita fiddled with her microcomputer. All the facts pointed in that direction, but...was it really possible that International Rescue was actually comprised of the family members of...Jeff Tracy?

Virgil felt like he was in the midst of a fog, only this was some kind of physical, rather than water-in-the-air fog. It had his body all wrapped up in its envelope as much as normal fog did to your vision. On some level, he was fully aware of the fact that it was a familiar sensation; that he'd been through this exact thing before. Only thing was, he couldn't quite place when, where or how.

It was strange, feeling like you were swimming and yet knowing you weren't in any body of water. Images flitted through his consciousness, things he couldn't quite grasp, was unable to hold onto for more than a nanosecond, and yet felt familiar. All at once the scenes that had been slipping by so rapidly stopped and coalesced for him. It took a moment – through that fog, of course – for the picture to make any sense.

The picture, as it turned out, was a person. And before he could even see her features clearly, the color of her hair told him exactly who she was.

"Virgil?"

"Kelly," he rasped, tried to swallow, found his throat dry.

He blinked a few times and finally was able to see her properly. "Hi," she said, then turned to look over her shoulder.

"Thirsty," was his reply.

"There's nothing here to give you, I'm sorry. I...I just slipped in. I have to go, but I wanted to say I'm glad you guys were able to help Scott like you did."

Yes, he was conscious now. But her words were spoken too fast; he couldn't figure out what the hell she was on about.

"I got tested, too, in case Scott needed more help than what you and your brothers could give him."

"Oh," Virgil said, and knew that something buried there in her words should be concerning him, but couldn't make himself figure it out. "Good of you."

"I gotta go," she whispered hurriedly, looking over her shoulder again. "Thank you for saving Mari's life, and mine. I'll never forget you."

Virgil felt something warm press to his lips, barely registering before the warmth – and Kelly – were gone. Only he didn't want either to be gone. "Kelly?" He blinked a few more times, turned his head left, saw a hospital bed containing a sound asleep Gordon. Looked to his right, saw another bed containing a sound asleep John. "Kelly?" he repeated, lifting his head.

Someone walked in the door, a little bit out of focus for him. "Hey, shhh, just relax," a soft female voice said.

"Where's Kelly?"

"Who's Kelly?" A cool hand on his forehead gently pushed his head back onto the thin pillow. This woman, she wasn't the one he was looking for. She was dressed in pale blue scrubs, had short, blonde hair, blue eyes. "You're waking up from the anesthesia. Do you know your name?"

"Virgil Tracy," he replied, everything suddenly coming back to him. Of course. He, Gordon and John had just finished donating various bits and pieces of organs for "Scott?"

She smiled. "He's in a separate ICU Recovery Room. Doing well, from what I hear."

"John? Gordon?"

"Their vitals are good. You're the first to wake up," she replied. "My name's Glenda. Can you tell me what day it is?"

Virgil's eyelids drifted closed. "The day my brother got a second chance to live," he replied, relief spreading through him as that truth settled into his being.

"That's right," Glenda replied softly, and he could hear the smile in her voice. "As soon as your brothers are awake, we'll be moving the three of you to private rooms for a few days, make sure everything keeps working properly before we spring you."

Nodding, but unable to muster up enough energy to speak, Virgil allowed himself to slip into darkness.

Scott was going to live.

Kelly chewed on her thumbnail, then the nail of her index finger as Cleveland flew by the windows of the cab. She'd pretty much emptied her bank account buying a plane ticket back to Miami, figuring there was no reason to hang around now that Scott was out of danger thanks to his brothers. Not that she knew what the hell she'd been doing there to begin with. With that many brothers, who needed some weirdo from Miami to 'help'?

Brothers.

The family of Jeff Tracy.

Confirmed once and for all when, as she'd walked past the room Scott had been in prior to going under the knife tonight, she'd seen the man himself accompanied by an older woman, an exotic-looking man about Jeff's age and a younger porcelain-skinned woman. The darker-skinned man had looked right at her, held her eyes for a few moments, and then given her a small smile. She'd nodded and kept going, because she was not supposed to know what she knew and didn't want to get caught out by the man who was harboring the biggest secret the world had ever known.

She wondered if International Rescue was comprised only of the five sons she knew Jeff Tracy had, or if there were more people involved. She wondered if the older woman was maybe Jeff's mother. She had no idea who the two other people could be.

Hours later, not too long after her organ match psych evaluation was finished, Kelly had managed to find out from Juanita that the brothers who'd donated to Scott had just been moved to the transplant wing's surgical recovery ward.

So she'd taken a chance, remembering that when her own mother had undergone surgery many years ago, they'd kept her alone in a recovery room until she was fully awake and deemed okay to be moved. They hadn't let Kelly or her father in to see her until she'd been taken to her room. And Kelly's chance had paid off, as she sneaked into the room where the two other men she recognized from the vault rescue flanked Virgil, all three still unconscious.

She felt bad about having woken him, but she so desperately wanted to thank him, since she was certain there was no way she'd get in to see Scott. The thing that made her blush to her toes now, though, was that she'd kissed Virgil on the lips. On the lips, like what the hell, right? God, she was an idiot.

Whether her visit with Scott earlier in the day had done the man any good, Kelly would never know. But the fact that Virgil had allowed it, and had been comfortable enough with her presence to fall asleep while she was telling Scott another story, had filled her with a sweet warmth. Everyone in the world knew that International Rescue was manic about secrecy. So either Virgil was simply too exhausted to be vigilant, which she doubted given that he was used to be ultra-careful, or he didn't feel like she was a threat.

She preferred to think it was the latter, and that made her feel good.

So good she'd kissed the man.

God.

She did a literal facepalm as the cab pulled into the airport and headed for her terminal. Best to get out of Ohio now, go back to her life, find out if she still had a job - considering the building she'd worked in was flattened.

Her dad was okay in his nursing home; that'd been the first thing she'd checked after the ER had given her a clean bill of health in the aftermath of her rescue. The nursing home was damaged, but the residents had been moved to a local hospital for care until the home could be fixed. She wondered briefly how the cemetery where her mother was buried had fared. She wondered if earthquakes did strange things to graves, to headstones. Maybe she'd go check, just to see for herself. Undoubtedly, her father would want to know.

And then she would just go on living her life. But Kelly knew that every single time she heard International Rescue mentioned on the news, she would picture Scott. She would picture Virgil. She would picture Gordon and the blond brother whose name she didn't know. And she would picture Jeff and the three people she'd seen him with, and thank God every single day that somehow, he'd managed to create an organization which had saved her life.

"How are you feeling, Virgil?"

"Good, Tin-Tin. They must have me on some pretty decent painkillers."

She laughed softly.

"Where are Gordon and John?"

"They're in the next two rooms down from yours."

"And Scott?"

"Still in ICU," Tin-Tin replied.

Virgil felt a tinge of worry seep into him. "He okay?"

"The last I was told, yes, he's fine. They will most likely keep him there for another two or three days before returning him to the room he was in before. They've allowed Mr. Tracy and your grandma in, but no one else."

Virgil nodded, saying, "Thanks," when Tin-Tin handed him a plastic cup of water. He sucked the contents down in one long, continuous suck on the straw, then handed it back to her. "How long they figure Scott's got to stay here before we can take him home?"

"That I don't know," Tin-Tin replied. "But I believe your father wants Alan, my father and I to return to Tracy Island fairly quickly, because Brains has been alone there now for four days."

"And he's afraid he might've blown up the island?"

Tin-Tin laughed out loud. "Quite possibly."

Looking beyond Tin-Tin to the open room door, Virgil saw nothing save the occasional nurse or doctor walking down the hall. He couldn't help but be disappointed.

"What is it, Virgil?" Tin-Tin asked.

"Hm? Oh. Nothing," he replied. "You, uh...you didn't happen to see red-haired woman out there anywhere, did you?"

"Red-haired woman? No, I don't believe s—oh, wait. I do recall that shortly after Scott was removed from his room to be prepped for surgery, a red-haired woman passed us in the corridor. I wasn't really paying attention, though."

Virgil nodded and yes, he was definitely disappointed. He really hoped Kelly would be along at some point, though he also knew she was aware that she needed to keep her distance from anyone but him. What with his dad, Kyrano, Tin-Tin and Alan - not to mention Grandma - going back and forth among the three rooms and Scott in ICU, she probably didn't have an opening to sneak in even if she was still around.

"Why do you ask?"

"What?" Virgil looked at her, then recalled what the last thing she'd said was. "No reason," he replied, leaning back against the raised back of the bed.

"Well, I think I'll go see how the others are doing, unless you'd prefer I remain. They've been sleeping a lot more than you have!"

"Thanks, but I'm good. Go wake John and Gordo. Tell them to buck up and stop being so lazy."

She shook her head. "You boys. You never quit ribbing each other, do you?"

"Nope," he replied cheekily. She waved at the threshold of the door, and he gave her a little wave back, then turned his head to the right and looked out the wall of windows. The city of Cleveland was out there; a place he'd never visited until Scott's injuries had forced him to. He looked at the buildings, then at the blue, cloudless sky as seen through darkly tinted windows to cut down on the glare.

His head rolled a little on the pillow, eyes falling on the wall clock opposite the bed. It was four-twenty in the afternoon. The transplant surgery had been over for about twelve hours now, and so far, so good.

Deciding it was best to just get some sleep, in spite of wanting to give his brothers crap for doing the same, Virg closed his eyes. As he drifted lazily on the last dose of painkillers he'd received, he felt the ghost of a kiss on his lips. His fingertips moved slowly to touch them. It'd been so quick, but she'd definitely kissed him. He had to admit, it'd been a long time - the rescue business was busy stuff. But it had probably, he now thought, been nothing more than a kiss good-bye anyway.

He wondered if he would ever see Kelly McInerny again.

Scott was not happy.

Well, he was, but he wasn't.

Because while he was still standing in the middle of a vast prairieland that went as far in every direction as the eye could see, he was alone.

Well, not exactly alone.

King was to one side of him and Julie was to the other side of him, both happily munching on the tender tops of the grass that had gone to seed. He and Kelly had been having such fun, both of them eating huge red apples from the tree she'd beaten him to as the horses had enjoyed the really ripe ones that had fallen to the ground already. They were sweet and juicy, the apples, reminding Scott of a simpler time. Of carefree days at his grandparents' farm, when all had still been right in his world.

He and Kelly had talked of many things. From various humorous childhood moments to the fact that both of their mothers were dead – although from different causes. They'd spoken of things they were both afraid of – for Kelly it was heights and she didn't know why. For Scott it was scorpions, because he'd been stung once in the desert during his active duty in the Air Force. They'd talked about their fathers, about how Kelly's was in a nursing home due to early onset Parkinson's, a disease the world still hadn't been able to eradicate, and about Jeff and the highlights of his career as first an astronaut, and then a businessman.

Scott had felt so free with her, so open. Like he could share anything, tell her anything, and he wouldn't be judged. He didn't have to worry about telling her too much or not enough. Didn't have to worry about an aftermath, where any single word he said might come around to bite him in the ass later thanks to the highly secretive life he led. They'd laughed, they'd had moments of somber silence as they recalled not-so-pleasant events. And she'd kept pulling him back to remembering International Rescue, and Florida, and his family. Kept telling him he'd been hurt, that he needed new organs.

She told him that enough times that he finally still remembered most of it now, even though she was nowhere to be seen, wasn't there reminding him every ten minutes like she was afraid he'd forget. As before, Kelly had simply vanished right in front of his eyes, this time from where she'd been sitting astride Julie. Scott had galloped and galloped on King, searching high and low, but hadn't been able to find a single trace of her.

So while he was glad to still be here in this bright, happy place, he was not glad she was gone.

He patted King's neck, shook his head and asked, "What happened to her, boy?" King whinnied, but that was all Scott was going to get from him as he returned to detassling the grass.

Then something unusual caught his eye. He looked up and over King's back to the eastern horizon, where it seemed that the sky was literally opening up. Robin's egg blue was split in two by a long, jagged smoke-colored bolt of...of something. Scott moved around King's head and took a few more steps toward the east, eyes never leaving whatever the hell it was he was seeing.

"What the—?"

For the dark, gray, jagged 'thing' seemed to hit the grassland like a bolt of lightning, tearing the very fabric of his world in half. Smoke rose from the prairie as though it was on fire. He watched as blue, blue sky continued turning gray, darker, darker still, until the entire eastern sky was filled with the most ominous black he'd ever seen.

Without warning, the smoky black lightning struck again...only this time, the end of it stayed on the ground, cutting through the grass and heading straight for him. He was frozen in place, watching in horror as the thing made a beeline for his exact position. It was coming at him way too fast for him to be able to outrun it, even on King.

When it was only about a hundred yards away, Scott dove to his right, tucked and rolled, and tried to look up to see what was happening. But then he was hit with a vicious jolt of energy that knocked all the wind out of him, made him feel like he wanted to puke, and had his vision so blurred and his head spinning so much he couldn't figure out which way was up and which was down.

He heard himself cry out in pain, heard King and Julie's frightened, screaming neighs, and felt his back hit the ground hard. It knocked the wind out of him. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't breathe!

Scott began to panic, knowing he shouldn't, but oxygen, he needed air, he couldn't breathe and he knew somehow if Kelly was there he would be okay because she could stop this. But she wasn't, she wasn't, he was going to die, he was...he was...

His air was gone.

Darkness closed in on his field of vision.

All he saw in his mind's eye, as he floated away from being able to see or hear anything on the prairie, was the image of the red-haired woman he somehow knew was his only chance...

Virgil jolted awake, the feel of someone shaking his shoulder turning into seeing that it was his youngest brother doing so. "What? Alan?" he asked, eyes widening when he saw the look of fear on his little brother's face.

"It's Scott!" Alan practically yelled, voice way higher-pitched than normal.

"Scott? What's happened?" Alan was panting like he'd just run a mile. "Alan, talk to me!" Virg demanded.

"I don't know, he—I was in with Gordon, and suddenly Dad came running in, told us they'd called a Code on Scott and ran off again!"

"I gotta get to the ICU!" Virgil said, struggling to sit up and being painfully reminded why that was not a good idea by the pain along his left side and the IV line tugging on his arm as he flailed.

"Are you crazy? Stay here! I just wanted to tell you and make sure you had your phone on you. I'll get down there, see what's going on, text you. Here." Alan handed Virgil his cell phone. "I made sure Gordon had his, going to make sure John does, too."

With that, Alan turned and ran out of the room. Virgil wanted to get out of that damn bed so bad, so bad, but shit, he was hooked up to an IV and a heart monitor, and he'd had just had major surgery to remove a lobe of his lung, he couldn't get out of bed!

"Dammit!" he whispered, slamming his hand down on the mattress next to his hip. He lifted his phone and checked the messages. There were a handful from close friends who knew that Virgil and his brothers had donated lung lobes and part of a liver to Scott. Ken, Jasper and Nareet all wanted to know how the brothers were faring. Childhood friends who'd always kept in touch, though mostly by text messages and emails these days. He couldn't answer them now.

Not now.

"Scott," Virgil breathed, leaning his head back against the pillow as a lump formed in his throat. "God, please..." He couldn't even finish the words.

He had to be okay. His brother had to be okay.

"Please," he whispered.

Kelly sighed as she got back into her car. She hated coming to the cemetery, period, but on top of that she was exhausted. She'd only just been back in Miami for an hour, and had come straight here from the airport. The graveyard seemed undamaged, for the most part. Her mother's headstone was intact, and that was all she cared about.

She'd already phoned the hospital where her dad had been moved to, been told he was fine, resting comfortably. It was just after six-thirty in the evening, so she told the duty nurse that she'd be by in the morning, since now was her dad's mealtime and she didn't want to disturb him while he was trying to eat. It was difficult enough for him to manage as it was.

So now it was back home, to the place she'd lived in her whole life. The house hadn't been damaged in the quake, any more than the ones surrounding it in her neighborhood, but the power had been out when she'd left for the airport. She wondered how spoiled the food in her fridge was by now and wrinkled her nose at the idea of having to find out for herself in about fifteen minutes.

She'd only had to take two planes to get back home from Cleveland on such short notice, but even though she was totally spent, and even though she'd had a four-hour layover in Atlanta, Kelly felt too damn wired to sleep.

As she made her way onto 2nd Avenue, she heard her stomach rumble, but strangely didn't feel like eating. She didn't honestly know when she'd eaten last, unless you counted the bag of pretzels they'd given her on the first of the two flights she'd taken home. Pretzels. She snorted. That's what you got for only being able to afford the cheapest airline ticket in existence.

As she drove, Kelly admitted to herself that she didn't feel right - off-kilter, maybe, or out-of-place, somehow. But she chalked it up to having done what she'd done in going to Cleveland on a whim; on the fact that she'd been interacting with the very people who'd saved her life. A family who'd risked their lives for her when she'd been more scared than ever before. As a building had crumbled all around and on top of her, she'd somehow known she would live, courtesy of the brave brother named Scott. And courtesy of the other brave brothers who'd come in after them all, she had.

Maybe her not feeling right was just her body needing sleep, needing nourishment. Or maybe she'd started caring a little bit too much for members of a family who were keeping a really, really big secret. Maybe she was just driving herself batshit insane still trying to reason out why she'd gone to the Clinic to begin with; what the hell she even thought she was doing there, talking to Scott while he was unconscious; dreaming or day-dreaming - or whatever it had been - that she was actually having full-blown conversations with him.

It was stupid. That was all it was, plain and simple. As regular people, the Tracys were folks she would never have run into in person, not in a million years. People that rich didn't walk into a small bank in the middle of Miami, Florida to talk to a lowly bank teller.

But International Rescue personnel, they did walk into a small bank in the middle of Miami, Florida...only not to talk to a teller, but to save her life.

Kelly wondered if all the people those men rescued felt like this in the aftermath. Grateful for having been saved, for the organization existing at all. And yet somehow bereft that they couldn't get to know the men who'd risked their necks for them.

Well, Kelly had gotten an opportunity that she guessed other people hadn't, and she knew she had to be happy with it. She'd been able to be with them again after the fact, even if only for three short hours. She'd discovered who they really were, and it was a secret she'd sworn to herself that she would take to her grave, because she wasn't going to put them in jeopardy by telling anyone, not even her ailing father.

She took a right onto 35th Street and then a left into her narrow driveway, surrounded on both sides by lush, green hedges and bushes. She pulled her small old electric car all the way into the carport and pushed the button on the dashboard to shut it down.

Heaving another huge sigh, Kelly finally got herself and her duffel bag out of the car and around to the front door of her home. She opened the screen door and keyed in the combination to unlock the inside door. It was quiet in the house. Stale-smelling. Yet the electricity was obviously back on, the air conditioner humming and the light she'd left switched on in the dining room shining in the gathering gloom.

She decided that she would just order a pizza, sit down on the couch, and worry about all her spoiled food later. They were sure to be in for a doozy of the storm tonight, if the look of the clouds outside were any indication, and rain always made her sleepy. Even when accompanied by thunder and lightning.

Ten minutes later, food order placed, she plopped down onto the old, dark green couch that her parents had had since she was ten. She looked up at the TV embedded in the living room wall, wondering where the heck she'd left the remote control pad. The only thing was, even though she hadn't turned the television on...the screen wasn't blank.

Kelly slowly rose to her feet, unable to believe what she was seeing.

Because what she was seeing was Scott Tracy, lying in a hospital bed, surrounded by doctors and nurses who were moving at a frenetic pace.

There was no sound, only the picture.

But Kelly could very clearly make out the heart monitor to the right and just behind the bed Scott was in. The straight, pale blue line against a black background, said it all.

She moved forward, hand outstretched. The screen was cool when her fingertips touched it, but as soon as they did, the picture disappeared.

"Scott?" she breathed, feeling fear envelop her. "Oh my God, no..."

Virgil looked at the television screen in front of him, flipping through something like one thousand channels without really paying any attention to what was on one before he was going to the next. He didn't give a shit what was on the TV anyway. It was just something to do in an attempt to keep himself from going insane.

Two hours ago, he'd received a text message from Alan saying Scott's body had almost immediately rejected all the organs his brothers had donated. An hour later, Jeff had visited each of his bed-bound sons to explain that the doctors had upped the doses and changed the types of immunosuppressant drugs that were standard for all organ recipients, but in the end Scott's body had won the battle and successfully kicked John's liver and the lung lobes from Gordon and Virgil, out.

Which meant that right now, Scott had two-thirds of his right lung and an external machine functioning as his liver, while the doctors tried to stabilize him enough to accept either a second set of transplants through UNOS, or for mechanical organs, if UNOS didn't come through within forty-eight hours. Apparently they could also try to put the Gordon-and-Virgil-donated lung back in, since it didn't seem that Scott's immune system had actually rejected it, per se, but from there on in, it got a little too medically complicated for Virgil to sort through in his mind.

Tap-tap-tap-tap

Virgil kept cycling through the channels.

Tap-tap-tap-tap

If no matching donors surfaced within two days, Scott would get fake organs.

Tap-tap-tap-tap

It would relegate him to desk duty for the rest of his life.

Tap-tap-tap-tap

Yes, he would be alive. And right now, Jeff had said, that was the most important thing.

Tap-tap-tap

Virgil's finger stopped midway to the fourth tap as his eyes caught words scrolling across the bottom of the screen on NTBS's news-only channel. They read MIAMI HIT AGAIN. He frowned, upped the volume, and listened as the always-recognizable voice of Ned Cook explained.

"...hard to believe, but I'm flying over the once proud and beautiful city of Miami, Florida as we speak, bringing you this live feed from our expert eye in the sky on NTBS Helijet One. Miami has been rocked by a second earthquake that registered an unheard-of seven-point-nine on the Richter scale, Ladies and Gentlemen, and the devastation is almost more than I can bear to see."

"Oh, my God," Virgil breathed. He noticed that someone entered his room, but couldn't tear his eyes from what he was witnessing.

Miami was, in essence, no more. There wasn't a single structure standing more than one story off the ground, and everywhere the cameraman panned showed the precise devastation Ned was describing. While Virgil and his brothers often gave Ned a hard time for being melodramatic, the truth was that his melodrama was, in this case, fully warranted.

Homes along the water? Gone. Skyscrapers downtown? Gone. There didn't seem to be a single road open to vehicles anywhere, and even if there was, Virgil didn't see a single vehicle moving, when he could get eyes on one at all. He sat up straighter in his bed, ignoring the twinge from his incision, jaw dropped in disbelief.

In their eight years operating as International Rescue, Virgil and his family had seen an awful lot of disasters, but this...never had he seen an entire city decimated.

"Of the few human beings we're seeing milling around the flattened buildings of this broken town, many appear injured or disoriented. Local firefighters and other rescue personnel have been hit just as hard. I'm told by the mayor's aide, who managed to get through to NTBS using a satellite phone, that not only is Mayor Leona Caceres unaccounted for, but they've been unable to contact any of Miami's rescue teams, firehouses or hospitals. All phone lines are down, with only a handful of satellite calls getting through. International Rescue, if ever humanity needed you, it's today."

The TV went off, and Virgil looked to his left to see his father, who'd hit the power button on the remote control pad Virg was holding, standing next to the bed. "No need to hear that right now," Jeff said, jaw set.

"Dad," Virgil managed to say, but couldn't think of a single other thing to say, because...Kelly. Kelly lived there, didn't she? That's where she was working, that's how Scott had gotten hurt to begin with, the rescue in Miami.

"Son?"

Virg met his dad's eyes.

"I feel the same way. But we're down four. Even if Alan, Tin-Tin and I high-tail it back to Base..." Jeff turned away, scrubbed a hand down his face.

He felt useless, Virgil thought. His father felt as useless as he did. He'd created International Rescue specifically for cases like these, to get in there and help when the locals couldn't do the job themselves. Ned's words had been like a knife stabbing into Virgil's gut, and Jeff had felt it just as keenly.

Scott would hate this. Hate this, if he was awake.

"Mr. Tracy?"

Jeff and Virgil looked toward the door. "Yes, Dr. Acton," Jeff said.

"Scott's awake."

"Awake?" Virgil said, making to slide his legs off the bed. "I have to talk to him. I have to!"

"Virgil, stay in bed!" Jeff barked.

"No, Dad, I have to, you don't understand!" Virgil protested, looking up at where the IV tube into his left forearm connected to the bag containing antibiotics and, Virg guessed, some painkillers. He quickly clamped the line shut and disconnected the tube from the IV stand and then the bag. Of course his dad didn't understand. Virgil himself didn't understand why he felt so compelled to talk to Scott, other than wanting to see for himself that his brother was still in one piece...so to speak, of course.

Jeff shot him a disapproving look even as Acton entered the room. "Virgil, you really need to stay in bed, we—"

"No," Virgil said. "I'll damn well check myself out AMA if I have to, but I'm going down there to see my brother."

He didn't care whether his father gave him shit later, and knew from the nurse who'd been in three hours earlier to check his incision that the sealant they'd used was holding together just fine. It wasn't like the old days where stitches were used, and skin could be torn away from them by simply moving wrong. And Virgil wasn't heading out on a rescue, he was just going to see his brother.

"Fine," Jeff growled, "but in a hover chair, at least."

"I'll get a nurse in here with one pronto," Acton said. "Your other sons?"

"Get them, too, they'll want to see him just as much," Jeff replied with a sigh.

Acton nodded and ran out of the room.

"Wait for the goddamn chair," Jeff said, pointing a finger at Virgil, who was now standing next to the bed.

"I will," Virg nodded because yeah, while he wanted to see Scott, he was also well aware that he wasn't at one hundred percent, if the way the room spun a little was any indication.

He watched as his father darted out into the hall. Three minutes later, and yes, Virg had been watching the clock, a male nurse with a nametag that read JAMES entered the room with a hover chair. "All aboard," James said, bringing the chair to a halt and lowering its legs to stabilize it so Virg could sit down.

Ouch, crap, all right, that hurt, the whole sitting-down-in-a-medical-hover-chair thing. But he managed to make it with a hand from James, mindful of the fact that he wasn't wearing any damn underwear under the hospital gown, and keeping his knees pressed together to prevent embarrassment.

He heard the four sturdy legs retract as the hover engine whirred to life. James expertly steered him out of his hospital room. Practically every cell in Virgil's body was vibrating with anticipation. Still being on a respiratory compensation device, Scott wouldn't be able to speak. But Virgil didn't care. Because all he wanted to do was see Scott awake and alive, and tell him they were all there for him no matter what happened.

Even if whatever happened in the next two days meant Scott would never command them in the field again.

Kelly groaned. It felt like the entire house had fallen on her. She wasn't sure how long she'd been out, but the world around her was eerily silent. She expected to hear sirens, voices – anything but silence.

Not five minutes after seeing something she'd begun convincing herself she couldn't possibly have seen in her television screen, the floor beneath her feet had trembled. She'd turned to run to the small crawlspace beneath the staircase, but the ground had lurched underfoot and she'd been thrown half onto the couch and half onto the coffee table instead.

The only thing she could do then, as the second earthquake violently shook her world, as the house began falling apart around her, was roll under the coffee table. Some part of her brain had known that wouldn't be enough to protect her if the entire roof caved in, but there was no way she could keep her balance standing upright to get anywhere else.

So she'd tucked herself up into as tight a ball as she could get her arms, legs and head into, and prayed. There'd been a loud CRACK and then something had hit her head.

Now, as she came to, she realized the coffee table legs nearest her head had broken, sending the edge of the table down onto her head. Which, she thought, explained why she'd been knocked out. The rest of her seemed fine, as far as she could tell, but she couldn't really move that much.

Guess the coffee table was stronger than I thought.

Her thoughts first flew to her father, to Mercy Hospital, where he and other residents of his nursing home had been taken. She prayed they were all okay.

Then her mind went to the cemetery she'd been at just hours before, and she found herself hoping her mother's final resting place hadn't been disturbed.

But then, as the table shifted enough to where she could hear something heavy scraping along its surface for a couple of seconds, her thoughts went to Scott. What the hell had she seen on her TV? Had that actually been something that was happening and if so, how? How could she possibly be getting a live feed, on her turned-off television, of Scott's room at Cleveland Clinic? And if it wasn't something based on technology, not something being fed through satellites or some other such thing, then what?

Kelly straightened her body, surprised that she was able to do so completely head-to-toe. No, five-foot-four wasn't that tall, but still. She wondered where her cell phone was. In the duffel bag still, probably. She'd stuffed her wallet and everything in there, and hadn't so much as opened it since she'd walked in the door.

And the duffel bag was on the floor by said door. At least, that's where she'd dropped it. She peered around; it was pitch black. She couldn't even see her hand in front of her face. Literally. Great. So. No lights, nighttime and no clue how stuck she was or wasn't.

Then, as though the Heavens had heard her thoughts and were trying to help, lightning flashed. In that one second of light, she realized the way she was facing – toward her couch – was completely blocked by what appeared to be busted-up wood. She counted seven seconds until the accompanying rumble of thunder.

Quick math in her head...one-point-four miles away.

Not that she necessarily needed to know that. But growing up in a state with more thunderstorm activity than any other part of the nation, you sort of automatically learned to do these things.

Another flash of lightning. Kelly looked up above her head. That side of the table, of course, was at a forty-five degree angle to her head; she'd felt it resting along her hair and the top of her skull. She hoped it would stay that way, rather than crash down and crush her head.

The next flash, she looked down around her feet. All covered as well. By the time the next flash came, she'd turned over...and found herself not staring at a wall of rubble. In fact...she was staring at nothing at all.

Literally.

She'd seen sinkholes before. One had even opened up on the other side of Airport Expressway, right under the Earlington Heights Elementary School. She and her parents had gone with many of their neighbors to check it out. Needless to say, the school had been unusable after that.

But this...this gaping maw of nothingness that started where half her house had fallen away not two feet from her body? This was like nothing she'd ever seen before. When the next flash of lightning came, it confirmed for her that the hole was deep enough that she couldn't exactly tell where it stopped. Then another flash of lightning, this one much closer, and she saw that the Morales' house right next door was completely gone, as was the one after that, where old Millie Colvin lived. Beyond that, it looked like the Lindsey house was still intact, though teetering as precariously on the edge as Kelly was.

She couldn't believe her eyes. As the storm drew nearer and the lightning grew more frequent, she began to panic. There she was on the edge of a giant abyss, trapped by debris under a half-broken coffee table that might buckle under the weight of whatever had covered it, at any moment.

And she happened to know for a fact that at least four members of International Rescue were down for the count. Whether that left only Jeff Tracy's fifth son, or whether there was more to the organization's complement than family, she didn't know. But if there wasn't...that meant her life wasn't going to be saved again.

As the first drops of rain fell, Kelly began to tremble. Getting caught in the bathroom at work during the first one while trying to take a leak, with water starting to shoot up through sinks and toilets even as the ceiling tiles were falling on her, had been frightening. This situation she now found herself in was downright terrifying.

What the hell was she going to do?

In spite of the fact that it was nothing short of miraculous that Scott Tracy was awake and, seemingly, fully aware, the Transplant Unit staff wouldn't let any more than two family members in to see him at a time. When James, escorting Virgil in his hover chair, arrived at Scott's ICU room, Tin-Tin and Alan were already at Scott's bedside.

Two minutes later, Virgil watched them exit. Alan managed to look like he was both defeated and pissed off beyond belief, while Tin-Tin had tears in her eyes as she both tried to control her own emotions, and comfort Alan.

Turning at the sound of more hover chairs arriving, Virgil found John and Gordon arriving, one's chair being pushed by Juanita, the other by Dr. Acton himself. "Okay, who's next?" Jeff asked, and Virgil looked away from his brothers, who seemed healthy enough, all things considered, but under the circumstances were understandably grim.

"They can go," Virg said. "I need to talk to Scott alone."

"Boys?"

John nodded. Gordon waved Dr. Acton forward. The two were pushed into Scott's room, left one on either side of his bed, and then Juanita and Acton rejoined the group outside.

"I want to know why his body rejected all our organs," Virgil said, looking up at Dr. Acton. "How could it reject what we gave him, all of what we gave him?"

"The technology we use now to fuse donated organs into the bodies of recipients is called Mesh Suture. It literally is a mesh made from a combination of a titanium-steel hybrid and Scott's own primary bronchi tissue. Rather than sealing the connections between the donated lobes and his bronchi using old-fashioned stitches or synthesoft, which is what we were using just two years ago, and hoping the cut has healed on its own by the time those fall away, the Mesh Suture seals and strengthens the connection, encouraging the tissue to grow around it and keep the bond intact for the remainder of the patient's life."

"And what, it didn't work?" Virgil asked.

"Because we didn't have a partial primary bronchi to attach the lung we made from yours and Gordon's lower lobes to Scott's primary bronchi, we had to clip in close to his trachea. The best we can tell is that it was this closeness to his main windpipe that prompted his body's severe reaction."

"You mean you don't really know?" Alan asked. "Two of my brothers lost parts of their lungs, and you don't know why it's all been for nothing?"

Virgil looked away, because while Alan had a reputation as a bit of a hothead sometimes, and while it was true that he didn't always think before he spoke, the fact of the matter was that Virg had been thinking the same thing.

"Not all for nothing, Alan," Acton said gently. "We managed to remove the lung we created from your brothers' donations, and have it stored in a Bubble in our Life Storage System. The Lung Bubble is a machine that keeps lungs viable for up to a week." He looked at Jeff, then down at Virgil. "Which means we could try again, only this time I'd have to build Scott a more prominent bronchi, to avoid the tracheal abuse. On the flip side, we could actually put your lobes back into you and your brother so your lungs are once again whole."

Jeff cleared his throat. "What about the liver? Why did he reject that?"

"You've got me on that one," Acton said with a shake of his head. "As far as we've come with organ transplants over the last twenty years, Mr. Tracy, the fact is that only half of it is human know-how. The other half is something else entirely. Call it God, call it Fate, or call it simply the things we still don't know about the human body, whatever you will. But tests showed that instead of regenerating inside his body, the liver was in the process of shutting down while he was on the operating table. So we removed it. We're running tests on it now to see why it began to shut down, in addition to determining if it can function properly outside Scott's body, or if the organ itself is irreparably damaged."

"Are you storing that somewhere, too?" Alan asked, a nasty edge to his voice.

But Acton wasn't fazed. "Yes, we are. We are able to store liver, lung and pancreas donations successfully right now. We still can't store hearts, eyes or any of the other things people can donate, however. But John won't need this part of his liver back; his will regenerate within two months' time and be whole again."

Virgil leaned his head back against the high-backed hover chair, still hovering and still being held in place by James. A couple minutes of silence had Virgil nearly ready to jump out of the chair and break Scott's room door down, but then John turned and signaled to them, and Virg watched through the glass wall as Acton and Juanita went in and pushed his two brothers back out into the hall.

"He can't talk because of the vent tube," Gordon said. "Best he can do is blink his eyes."

"He in pain?" Virgil asked.

"We got him to do one blink for yes and two for no," John replied. "He gave us two when Gordon asked." John stopped and looked...really looked...at his older brother. "You all right, man?"

"Yeah, fine," Virgil replied. He waved a hand at James behind him. "Let's go."

James pushed him into the room, stopped him up near Scott's head where the men could at least see each other's eyes, extended the four support legs and shut down the hover engine. "I'll be just outside," James said.

"No need to wait, I'm sure you've got other patients," Virgil said, giving the man a smile. He figured it was the least he could do.

"All right," James replied. And with that, he left the room.

At first, Virgil couldn't look at his brother, so he focused on Scott's left hand, lying still on the bed next to his thigh. Scott's index finger moved, and he made a groaning sound. Virg looked up at his eyes. Scott's hand was still moving, all fingers now, and Virgil did the only thing he could think to: he grabbed hold of it.

"You okay?" he asked.

Scott blinked twice.

"But you told John and Gordon you weren't in any pain," Virgil protested, then remembered, only 'yes' or 'no' things. "Did you lie to them?"

Two blinks, accompanied by Scott squeezing his hand...although for Scott, that was an awfully weak grip.

"You worried about International Rescue?" Virgil asked next.

Two blinks.

"About us? For undergoing the donation surgeries?"

Two blinks.

Well, Virgil was running out of things. If Scott wasn't in pain, wasn't worried about work and wasn't worried about his brothers, then what the hell?

"You gotta help me out here, Scott. I'm not sure what questions to ask to find out what's on your mind. Are you...worried about yourself? About recovering?"

One blink.

Ah.

"Did Dr. Anderson tell you what's happened since we brought you out of the vault in Miami?"

One blink.

"So you know about Gordon's and my lung lobes, about John donating part of his liver."

One blink.

"And you know that the lung that they made out of the two lobes is being kept alive right now by their Life Storage System."

One blink.

"As for the liver, well, I was the other match for that, so I can try to give you part of mine if they can figure out—" Scott squeezed his hand harder than he had yet, and Virgil looked down at their joined hands, then back up at Scott's eyes. "You don't want a piece of my liver?"

Nothing. No blinking, no hand-squeezing.

"Okay. Do you want to talk about something else?"

One blink and a squeeze.

"Great, we're getting somewhere," Virgil said, scrubbing his unheld hand down his face. Gads, he was tired, and had no idea why. Oh, yeah. Maybe being out of the bed the day after fairly major surgery had something to do with it. He sighed. "All right, Scott. I honestly don't know what you're concerned about, what it is you want to say. What is it, that you love me?"

That got an eye roll.

Virgil couldn't help but chuckle. "Hey, at least you still have a sense of humor, even minus a few nuts and bolts." He let his chuckle fade out, then looked at Scott's eyes. He knew them better than he knew his own. He'd been looking at them his whole entire life...first up at them, and then evenly across at them.

He'd seen them cry – probably the only adult Tracy to have done so, he reasoned. He'd seen them twinkle when Scott was happy, and he'd seen them almost look as though they were turning inward when he was dead-set on solving a problem.

Right now, though, those familiar eyes weren't doing any of those things. In fact, Scott was almost looking at him the same way he did when...well, when they had lost someone on a rescue, was the last time he could remember seeing this particular one. But...why would he be looking at Virg that way? He didn't think Scott knew about the second quake in Miami, which would probably be getting this look right now if he did. There was a TV in Scott's room, but it wasn't on. And Virg doubted Gordon or John had mentioned something to their older brother that they know would've upset him, not being able to do anything about it.

"You're worried about something," Virgil said. "But nothing having to do with yourself, or us, or IR. Is that right?"

One blink.

"You know, you're really making me work for this. I came in here to talk to you about...hell, I don't know what about," Virgil said, running a hand through his hair and shaking his head. This was so goddamn frustrating. He suddenly had a new appreciation for people who couldn't talk, period, whether because they were paralyzed, or from disease, or whatever the cause. Thinking of them made him realize that with Scott, this was only temporary. So he should be grateful, not getting annoyed.

"Scott, is what you're worried about a thing, like an object or a situation, or is it a person, or group of people? One blink for object or situation, two blinks for person or people."

Two blinks.

"Good," Virgil smiled, squeezing his hand. Scott's eyes never left his as he continued. "Now, one blink if it's one person you're concerned about, and two blinks if it's more than one person."

One blink.

"So you're worried about a person."

One blink.

"Is it someone I know?"

Nothing.

"Do you know this person?"

One blink.

"All right. And...what, you're not sure if I know this person, is that right?"

One blink.

Virgil frowned. Huh. Maybe someone from Scott's Air Force or college days that Virgil hadn't met? Or that Scott wasn't sure Virgil had met? Or maybe Scott was a little loopy given his current condition, and that accounted for the apparent confusion.

"Is the person a male or a female? One for male."

Two blinks.

"All right, so this is a woman?"

One blink.

"Christ, this is tough," Virgil said, leaning back in his chair, but keeping his eyes on Scott's. "It's a woman I may or may not know. Is she from when we were kids?" He wasn't sure why Scott would be worried about a childhood acquaintance but hell, he figured if he started from Square One he might actually make it to the end of the maze that this conversation was turning into.

Two blinks.

"Okay, your college days?"

Two.

"Air Force."

Two.

"Damn. Um...Tracy Corp?"

Scott rolled his eyes, then blinked twice.

"Well, excuse me for living, it's not like I have a damn clue what's going on in your head!" Virgil replied, but there was no heat in it. He took a deep breath. He was going to get to the bottom of this if it killed him. Which it might, at this rate. "Is it a nurse here at the hospital? Or a doctor?"

Two blinks.

"Nobody here at the hospital?"

Nothing.

"You're not sure. It's not Tin-Tin, or Grandma, that you're thinking of."

Two blinks.

"All right. A woman. You're not sure if I know her. You're not sure if she's been here to the—" Virgil blinked. He leaned forward, made damn sure he had Scott's eyes front and center. "Scott, is she from Miami?"

One blink and a squeeze harder than any other had been yet.

"No freakin' way. You're worried about those girls from the rescue with the shape you're in?"

Two blinks.

Then one blink.

"You're worried about one of the girls."

One blink.

"You're worried about Kelly."

One blink, and even more hand-squeezing. Hell, it actually hurt now.

"Well, she's...she was here," Virgil said, looking quickly over his shoulder to make sure no one else had entered the room. "But she was only here for a few hours. She talked to you, told you a story, like she was doing when we broke through into the vault."

Scott's hand loosened around his, then squeezed hard, then loosened again.

"Do you...you know she was here?"

Two blinks but still the squeezing. Hard, release. Hard, relase.

"Scott, what is it? I don't...are you wanting to see her?"

One blink, a hard squeeze.

"Well, I don't where she is, I..." Virgil shook his head. "I fell asleep when she was talking to you. Six hours later, Dad's waking me up and she's gone."

More hard squeeze, release, hard squeeze, release.

"Scott, I can get someone to locate her, is that what you want?"

Two blinks.

All right. Now Virgil really was frustrated, and not really caring that it showed. "I don't get it, Scott."

Scott let go of his brother's hand and made a motion in the air like he was writing.

"You want to write something?"

One blink.

"Okay, okay, hang on." Virgil turned around and waved at his father, who was watching through the window. Jeff nodded and came in, Dr. Acton and Juanita close behind. "Dad, I need something for Scott to write with."

"Here," Juanita said, tapping a couple of things on the screen of the computer pad she'd been holding, then handing it and the stylus to Virgil. "He can use this stylus and write on this like it was paper."

"Thanks," Virgil said, taking it from her. Then he realized he couldn't easily move around the bed. "Dad, put this under his right hand, will you? Give him the pen?"

"What's going on?" Jeff asked, taking the pad and stylus and moving around to the opposite side of the bed.

"I don't know, but it's something that's got him worked up," Virgil replied, hoping like hell he wasn't about to have to explain that he'd let a stranger in to see Scott, and that Gordon had gotten Jeff out of the room on purpose in order to make it happen.

Jeff got the pad in the right place and positioned the stylus in Scott's hand. Scott's eyes closed, and he began to write.

The rain was pounding down as so often it did in Florida. Kelly heard nothing but it beating against the rubble above and surrounding three sides of her. It was splashing up from the edge of the broken floor, now probably about three feet from where she lay. She'd shoved herself back against the wall of debris under the coffee table as far as she dared, not wanting to dislodge it in any way.

But you didn't need to be a professor of physics to be aware of a few facts that each passing second forced Kelly to face. First, heavy rain like this tended to move things that weren't tightly held down. Second, she had a who-knew-how-high mountain of debris covering her little bubble of life; debris that wasn't tightly held down by anything but gravity at this point. And third, there was a gigantic hole way too close to her, where at this very moment that pounding rain was eroding more and more dirt, sand and whatever else comprised the sides of the hole, away.

So either the debris would become soaked, and therefore heavy, and break the coffee table – crushing Kelly in the process – or the sinkhole would edge nearer and nearer to the part of her house's foundation still standing, and welcome it – and Kelly – into its dark and deadly embrace.

Neither scenario boded well for her survival.

She was starting to get cold, and her head was just one massive ache. No throbbing, at least, but that didn't mean it didn't hurt like a bitch.

For the past half-hour, Kelly's mind had tried to figure herself a way out of this. She thought maybe she could scoot to the edge of the coffee table – the edge of the floor of the house – and peek up and over to see just how high the debris above her was. If the entire second floor had collapsed, there could either be a mountain, way too tall and unstable for her to climb, or a good amount of it could've already tumbled into the sinkhole.

Which may have left very little for her to climb over. Maybe she could make it if that was the case. Only probably was, she was too damn scared to move toward the precipice. Too afraid that if she did, her weight would be the tipping point that would send her and that section of the floor, careening into the abyss.

Or even if she did work up the nerve to have a look, and decided she could try to climb up and over to get away from the immediate danger, what if her hands and feet dislodged bits of rubble on the way up, sending her falling to her death anyway?

If only she had her cell phone with her. Then at least she could try to call for help. Hell, she'd even try for International Rescue, because there was still some slim chance that they were operating even with four of them in the hospital.

Of all the luck, to be caught in two earthquakes inside a week, and to need rescuing both times. She thought she must've done something a little wrong in a previous life to find herself in such a situation. The thing she didn't understand – because she had remembered this much from her high school and college science classes – was how there'd been earthquakes in Miami at all. She knew that earthquakes had been felt in Florida before, but not since 2006 when one had hit in the Gulf of Mexico. And that was twenty-eight years ago!

What in the world would make the passive side of the North American tectonic plate move so violently as to cause this sort of damage? The fact that this chasm had opened up next to her home seemed to support there being something wildly wrong underground, but without the ability to see how far down the hole went, or what might be at the bottom of it, there was no way to even speculate whether it truly was a sinkhole, or whether it was Mother Earth actually cracking at the seams.

It sure felt like the latter to Kelly.

But that was where her geology knowledge ended, and it was making her head hurt speculating about it anyway. The ache seemed to be getting worse, and while it was dark and the rain made even the lightning-illuminated world outside her bubble fuzzy, she also felt like her vision itself wasn't quite right.

Maybe if she just stayed still where she was, and closed her eyes for a little bit, someone would show up to help her. She had no idea how much of Miami was in the same boat as her own house. Maybe not many others had been affected. Maybe firefighters just couldn't get into her neighborhood because of the hole, or fallen homes or something. They'd come. Someone would.

So Kelly let her eyes drift shut, and tried to stop thinking about how badly her head was hurting now.

God, it hurt so much.

How she wished she was back in that beautiful prairie with King, Julie and Scott, talking about everything and nothing, without a thing wrong...with no headache...with no impending death.

She sighed, and let herself float away on the image of herself and Scott whole...uninjured...and happy.

"What's it say?" Virgil asked when Jeff lifted the pad away from the bed after Scott's hand stopped moving.

Scott reopened his eyes, which were now trained on his father, as Jeff brokenly read the messy scrawl out loud. "Virg...Kelly in danger...have to save her...I won't l...wait, what does this say? L...live? Live...without her."

"Kelly's in danger?" Virgil repeated.

Scott's eyes snapped to his, then he blinked once.

"How do you know?"

No reaction.

"Who's Kelly?" Jeff asked.

Virgil looked up at their father. "She's one of the two women Scott was trapped in the bank vault with," he replied carefully, remembering there were two people in the room who didn't know they were International Rescue.

"And he thinks she's in danger?" Jeff asked. "Didn't International Rescue get her out of there along with Scott?"

Of course, as a 'regular' person, Virgil wouldn't know the answer to that, so for the benefit of Nurse Juanita and Dr. Acton, he just shrugged one shoulder, hoping his eyes conveyed to Jeff that yes, they had indeed brought Kelly to safety.

Jeff frowned when Scott gestured toward the pad, waving it in as though he wanted to write more. So Jeff swiped his hand across the screen to erase what Scott had already written, and placed the pad under his hand on the bed again.

"I don't get it, though. If she was rescued along with Scott, then why does Scott think-?" Jeff stopped, sharing a look with Virgil.

He knew his dad had just put two and two together. Kelly: a rescued victim in Miami. Miami: they'd just seen on NTBS not half-an-hour earlier, that it'd been flattened by a second quake.

"Kelly," Juanita said, and everyone turned to look at her but Scott, who had begun to write on the pad again. "Funny, I interviewed a cousin of yours by that name as a potential donor for Scott."

Virgil felt his eyes get big and round.

"Cousin?" Jeff asked. "There isn't a Tracy cousin named Kelly that I'm aware of."

Juanita frowned. "She said she was a fourth cousin of Scott's. Said she didn't want the family to be told she was being tested, because it was only for a 'just in case' since Scott's brothers had already been found to be organ matches."

"Redhead?" Virgil managed to squeak out, realizing this was rapidly going downhill. Pretty soon he'd have to fess up to Jeff about breaking one of IR's sacred rules. Then he froze. Brothers. Kelly had been talking to him as he was coming out of anesthesia. She'd called John and Gordon his brothers.

Oh, my God. She knew. He forced himself to remain calm as Juanita nodded. "Yeah, five-four, red hair, porcelain complexion. Very nice, soft-spoken."

"Are you telling me that someone—" Jeff cut himself off. He couldn't rant about someone they'd rescued following them to the Cleveland Clinic. Not with Acton and Juanita standing right there.

"Do you know if she's still here?" Virgil asked the nurse.

"No, I honestly don't. Although, when I tried to find her to let her know the results of her tests, Dr. Gimball, the psychologist you both met who performs the psych analysis for potential donors, said she mentioned she'd be returning home as soon as the tests were over. When I tried her cell phone, it went to voice mail. She hasn't called back yet."

"She went back to Miami," Virgil breathed, and then yelped when Scott grabbed his forearm in a vice-like grip. "What the hell?"

Scott was holding up the pad, waving it around. When Jeff took it from him, Scott dropped the stylus, which clattered to the floor.

"What's it say, Dad?"

Reading again, squinting a little to try and make out the badly-written words, Jeff replied, "Kelly dying. If...she die...dies, then...I die. Save her...save me."

Virgil felt like all the blood had drained out of his body. A chill swept over him. "Is this about her talking to you when you were hurt in the vault?" he asked, leaning as close to Scott as he could from his seated position. Because honestly, he couldn't think of what the hell else Scott would be on about where she was concerned.

One blink confirmed it.

"How can she save you?" Jeff asked. "Do you mean through organ donation?" He looked across at Juanita. "Was she a match for anything he needs?"

Juanita's mouth opened...closed...opened again. "I'm sorry, Mr. Tracy, but if she's not actually part of your family, I...I can't disclose her results."

"She's right," Dr. Acton said. "If you're telling us this woman's not related, then her results are completely confidential to her."

Scott squeezed Virgil's arm and gave two blinks.

"It's not about the organs, is it," Virgil said, and it wasn't a question, but Scott answered anyway.

Two blinks.

"Then what is it about?" Jeff asked.

Scott's eyes flitted to Acton and Juanita. Jeff followed the look. "Could you please give us a moment?"

"I don't know, I think you need to leave. His BP is rising," Acton replied, looking at the monitor next to Jeff near the head of the bed.

"Please, Doctor," Virgil said when Scott's nails dug into his forearm. "Just a few minutes, and then we'll go."

Acton sighed. "All right, but I'm watching that monitor from the other side of the glass, and if his BP goes up any more, I'm kicking you out."

"Understood," Jeff replied.

They waited until Juanita and Acton were gone, the door shut behind them.

"Scott, we got Kelly out of the vault. The other woman scrambled out as soon as we broke through, and Gordon took Kelly to the paramedics. She only had some bumps and scrapes," Virgil explained. "By the time we extracted you and got you to Two, both of them had already been taken away in an ambulance to be checked out at a local hospital."

Scott managed to shake his head 'no,' even though the movement was minute.

"How do you know she's in danger?" Virgil asked, feeling his father's eyes boring holes into his skull.

Scott's hand waved in the air again like he was writing. Jeff stooped, picked the stylus up off the floor and swiped the previous writing off the face of the pad. He gave Scott the stylus and placed the pad on the bed again.

"Virgil, what the hell is going on here?" Jeff asked, voice held calm and even. But Virgil knew that tone. "Who is this Kelly and why was she here, being tested to donate organs to Scott, under the pretense of being his cousin?"

Swallowing and closing his eyes briefly as Scott started writing again, Virgil decided he had to come clean. "When we broke through into the vault, we found Kelly curled up directly in front of Scott, holding his hand, with their foreheads plastered together. Scott was barely alive, and Kelly was speaking to him, whispering, telling him some sort of story about...I don't know, riding horses or something."

Jeff looked at him like he was insane.

"When she realized we were there, she got up and moved away, but didn't want to let go of his hand. We told her she had to get out of there or we wouldn't be able to extract Scott from the rebar stuck in his side." Now Virgil met his father's eyes. "Next thing I know, I'm standing out front here getting some air, and up pulls a cab with her in it. Kelly said she'd felt compelled to come here and see Scott. She didn't even know why, but begged me to let her talk to him again. She'd traveled all night to make it."

"How the hell did she even know Scott was here?" Jeff bellowed as much as he could at a whispered volume. "Do you realize that she probably knows who he is? Who we all are?"

Virg bit his lip and looked down at Scott, who'd stopped writing and was looking right at him. "I don't know how she knew Scott was here," he lied, because above all, Virgil Tracy had never been a snitch, and wasn't about to rat Gordon out for having been the one who told her. "But I made sure you were nowhere around when I let her in to see Scott."

"That's why Gordon was so insistent that I leave his room that night, wasn't it?" Jeff growled, and Virgil chanced a look up at him. "He was in on this with you, squirreling that woman into Scott's room, getting me out of there so I wouldn't know! What the hell are you playing at? What is our cardinal rule, Virgil, what the hell were you thinking?" And yeah, Jeff was pretty much yelling now.

"I didn't ask for Gordon's help getting you out of there so you wouldn't find out, Dad," Virgil whispered fiercely. "I asked for you to be gotten away from Scott so Kelly wouldn't figure out our identities! Dammit, Scott improved after Kelly spent time with him; he was able to go for surgery after that!"

"And you were asleep when I came down to tell you the doctors wanted to speak to us in the conference room, so how the hell do you know what she did or didn't discover about us? I have to find out what Juanita and the doctors told her. She may very well know something she shouldn't. She could be out there right now telling the world who we are!" He finished by raising his arm and pointing off into the ether.

"She could just as well be dead," Virgil replied quietly, and Scott flinched, his breathing starting to sound ragged.

"Son?" Jeff said, all concern now directed down at the man on the bed. "I'm sorry, Scott, calm down. I didn't mean to upset you."

"What'd he write?" Virgil asked.

Jeff spared his second eldest a glare, but dutifully picked the pad up off the bed. "He wrote, let's see...he wrote, 'she's going to die, she's hurt...IR save...bring her here...or I'll die.' That's all it says."

"Why, Scott?" Virgil asked, pulling his arm out of Scott's weakening grip and grabbing hold of his hand tightly. "How is it that if she dies, you'll die? We don't understand."

Scott's hold on his hand grew weaker by the second. Virg glanced up at the monitor. "Shit, his blood pressure's going up." He looked back down into Scott's eyes, getting out of the chair and onto his feet so he could lean right over him, be directly above him, force Scott to look at nothing but him. "I know you can't speak and you're hurting, but you need to relax so you don't flatline on me again, bro, okay? Listen to me: International Rescue isn't operating right now. We can't with four of us down. There's no way we can go to Miami to try and find Kelly or any other people who need help."

Scott blinked rapidly. To try and calm him, Virgil placed his right hand along the side of Scott's face. "Listen to me. If you need new organs, and Kelly's a viable donor, the hospital will call her. They have her contact info since she registered as a donor for you. She'll be able to give you organs if need be."

Scott blinked twice, head shaking 'no,' only this time more violently, which had to be wreaking havoc with his throat thanks to the wide ventilator tube down it. Virgil couldn't imagine how much that movement had hurt, raked up Scott's trachea.

Scott waved his right hand and Jeff swiped the words off the pad again, this time not even having time to place the pad on the bed before Scott was scribbling like mad with the stylus. Virgil could see the pad as Scott wrote, and with each subsequent barely-legible word, he felt his stomach tie itself into tighter and tighter knots.

Lifeline

Jeff was craning his neck around to see the face of the computer pad as well, a scowl firmly embedded on his face.

Kelly in danger

Scott's left hand squeezed Virgil's with what appeared to be all the strength he had left as the stylus faltered in the middle of him writing:

I know I will die

And when the last words came, it sealed within Virgil's mind what he was going to do...whether his doctors, his father or anyone else approved, or not.

If you don't save K...

With that, the stylus dropped from Scott's hand as it fell back to the bed. His eyes rolled back into his head and alarms started going off all around them. He went completely slack, hand no longer holding Virgil's at all.

"Okay, that's it, out!" Dr. Acton exclaimed as he, Juanita and Dr. Anderson rushed into the room. "Now, please, or you'll kill him!"

Virgil turned, skirted around the hover chair and shuffled as fast as he could through the room door. Jeff was right behind him, computer pad still in-hand. Everyone in the hall, every single member of their family, watched helplessly through the glass wall as the doctors and nurse, and two more nurses who charged in, struggled to lower Scott's blood pressure and stabilize him.

Leaning heavily on the wall, his right hand against its smooth surface the only thing that was keeping him standing, Virgil turned to look at Jeff. "I'm going to Miami," he said. "I have to find her."

"Are you crazy?" Jeff countered. "Look at him, he's barely alive! You can't tell me that trying to find some woman he rescued there before is going to keep him alive better than the best surgeons in the country can!"

Virgil felt woozy. So woozy. He watched as Kyrano approached, stopping when he was standing in between the men. "Jeff," Kyrano said softly. "What's going on?"

But Jeff clamped his mouth shut, folded his arms over his chest and looked back to watch what the medical staff was doing to his son, rather than answer his old friend.

"One of the women whose life Scott saved came here to see him," Virgil replied, and Kyrano turned to face him. "Now he's saying she's in danger, and that if she dies, he'll die."

Virgil forgot for a moment how Not Right he was feeling when Kyrano's face changed from curiosity to comprehension. "That must be the woman I saw not far from his room."

"What?" Jeff asked, moving around so he was next to Virgil, in Kyrano's line of sight. "You saw her? You knew who she was?"

"No," Kyrano replied, shaking his head. "I didn't know who she was, exactly, but...I recognized her on some level, I think. Recognized...something within her, something in her eyes. I felt she was important, though in that moment we were so concerned about Scott, I didn't have time to dwell on it." He looked at Virgil carefully. "She had red hair, and green eyes."

"Yes," Virg nodded. "That's her. That's Kelly."

Kyrano looked thoughtfully at him for a few seconds more, then back to Jeff. "I know you have always had difficulty believing in the things I believe in," he said softly, "but perhaps there is something to what Scott believes."

The look on Jeff's face told anyone watching precisely what he thought about that particular idea.

"Whether it's true or not," Tin-Tin said as she and Ruth drew nearer, "if Scott became that agitated over the matter," and here, she indicated where the doctors were only just managing to get Scott's BP closer to normal with a nod of her head, "then whether it's true that this Kelly can save him or not is irrelevant."

"That's right," Kyrano added. "Because if Scott believes she's the only way he'll live, then it may become true whether it actually is true or not."

"You're not making any sense, Kyrano," Jeff growled, arms defensively back in place over his chest. "None of you are."

"Dad," Virgil said, trying to stand a little more upright, but being reminded rather urgently by his body that the painkillers were wearing off really fast, "Kelly works in Miami, she lives in Miami. And they just had a second earthquake that flattened the damn city. If she went back home like she told the psychologist she was going to, that means she might've been there when it struck."

"Which means she could already be dead," John observed from his hover chair, "if not injured."

Jeff turned to look at him. "Don't tell me you of all people are buying this hocus-pocus."

John shrugged. "What's it hurt to bring her back here? If Scott thinks she can make him better, then all she can do is make him better, whether it has any basis in actual fact or not."

"That's not the point!" Jeff whispered fiercely, trying like hell to keep from being overheard. "If she knows our identities, then our entire operation has been compromised! And if she doesn't already know, by some miracle, then bringing her back here to see all of us is a risk we cannot take!"

Virgil swallowed hard, wondering if his next question might get him a fist to the jaw in spite of his post-surgical state. He looked Jeff in the eye and asked anyway. "Are you willing to let Scott die just to keep International Rescue alive?"

And you could have heard a pin drop.

But the answer, when it came from his father, wasn't in the form of a punch or even a glare.

Instead, Jeff's shoulders slumped forward, like the weight of everything had finally caught up to him and was crushing him. Virgil pulled away from the glass wall and placed his hand on Jeff's shoulder. He saw Gordon and John carefully getting to their feet behind their dad. They shuffled forward, and Jeff turned his head to look at them.

"Dad, you know, I'm not sure I buy that Kelly could save Scott's life medically or in any other way," Gordon said. "But I'm the one who let it slip where we were taking Scott. It's my fault she knew he'd be here, so it's my fault if IR's been compromised. But quite honestly, if Scott dies?" Gordon shrugged, shook his head, looked away. "If he dies, I don't know that I'd want to do this anymore anyway."

Jeff closed his eyes, looked back at where the nurses and doctors were moving much more slowly now, not so frantically. The Life Sign monitor at Scott's bedside showed numbers and rhythms that seemed steady enough, and once more, Scott appeared to be asleep.

"Dad," Alan said, speaking up on the matter for the first time, "I think we should try to find her for Scott. She's important to him." He swallowed hard and took Tin-Tin's hand. "I know the feeling."

Tin-Tin turned a surprised face Alan's way as he blushed.

Virgil couldn't fathom what was going through his dad's mind right now. He also didn't really know how he felt about Scott's insistence that Kelly's life needed to be saved. How would Scott even know she was in danger? The only possibility there, something that Virgil couldn't quite bring himself to buy, let alone figure out, was some sort of psychic connection, like Kyrano had once said he somehow shared with his half-brother. Only that way could a man lying near death in Cleveland, Ohio, possibly know that a relative stranger in Miami, Florida, was in danger.

And if that was the case...if there was some sort of connection between Kelly and Scott for whatever reason, whether pre-ordained or because of whatever Kelly had done to keep him alive in that vault until his brothers had gotten there...then maybe Scott had been right. Maybe he did need Kelly alive in order to keep himself alive.

The only thing now was whether Jeff could put aside his lifelong disbelief of anything he couldn't explain with science or see with his own eyes. If he could make himself believe just enough to make the impossible happen. To make sure Kelly stayed alive.

The alternative of Scott dying – whether because there was a true need for Kelly's presence, or whether Scott just believed that in his mind – was simply not an option.

As Virgil watched Jeff work through his own thoughts, emotions clearly on display via his facial expressions, he thought he saw their father coming to the exact same conclusion.

Scott's world was destroyed.

Sure, there was still land for him to stand on, but the tall prairie grasses were gone, looking as though they'd been burnt away as far as his eyes could see. The large, gnarled apple trees filled with ripe, juicy, sweet apples that he and Kelly had so enjoyed, were either completely gone, or left as nothing more than burned-through bits of wood littering the ground.

There was no sign of his beautiful Arabian horse King, nor of King's companion, the equally beautiful Julie. But most starkly felt by Scott, as he surveyed the barren wasteland all around him, was the absence of Kelly.

He could feel her somehow, as though she was hovering just out of his reach. He looked up, scanning the dark gray sky. It wasn't covered in clouds, but was simply that solid color horizon to horizon. There was no sign of Kelly.

Scott didn't really understand why he felt so strongly that she was as important to him as he'd conveyed to his father and brother. And yes, he remembered that, remembered being awake, feeling the tube lodged painfully in his throat. Being unable to speak, unable to express his fear, his surety of the belief that Kelly was essential to his survival, with more than blinking eyelids and scrawled handwriting.

Yet he felt detached from all that now, as he began to walk with no idea of where he was headed, or why. It was like that had happened to him, and yet that it had all been a dream. A dream that was, even now, fading in its intensity. He likened it to waking up after a nightmare. At first you're sweating, your heart is racing and you're panting like you've just come off a one thousand yard sprint.

But then as you realign your realities, as you come to understand that it was only dream and that you are no longer in that dream, you begin to calm down and, with luck, the nightmare begins to fade. The feelings never faded; at least, not for Scott. Dreaming about losing one of his brothers on a rescue, or about the night he watched his mother die, those left feelings behind that he knew he'd never be rid of.

And just like those, he knew the feeling of fear he'd seen in his brother's eyes would stay with him. The feeling of his own fear that his dad and Virgil wouldn't believe him about Kelly, wouldn't listen to his pleas. Wouldn't do everything they could to get to her and save her life. And in some strange way, while he desperately wanted them to do so, he also felt resigned to the fact that they might not. What he knew should be worrying him, was that he didn't feel so bad about that possibility.

It meant he would die.

But he wasn't afraid to die. Not for himself, personally. And not for the family he would leave behind. Because they would be fine, after all was said and done, after the initial shock of his death had passed. They would either choose to continue International Rescue or not. If they didn't, they all had specialties, things they could do with their lives. And if they continued, he figured John might pick up field commander duties. Or maybe even Alan, who knew? He did know for sure that Virgil didn't want the job. Never had.

Scott was logically cognizant of the fact that normally he would be a lot more upset about leaving his father, grandmother, brothers and friends behind. But here in this world, even in the state it was currently in, those problems, worries and cares seemed so far away. So very far away. And the more Scott walked, the further away the world of a hospital bed, monitors, a ventilator, his family and International Rescue seemed to get.

He figured if he walked far enough, long enough...it wouldn't matter at all anymore.

And maybe that was okay.

In the interest of keeping as much secrecy as possible in place, Jeff had asked everyone to return to the conference room that had been set aside for his family, rather than have this discussion in the hallway. Virgil knew, as James was pushing his hover chair along the hall behind two other nurses who'd been commandeered to push John's and Gordon's, that their father had come to some sort of decision about Kelly.

Virg felt like crap, even with the injection of painkillers Dr. Anderson had authorized for him, John and Gordon having been administered already, but he was fully prepared to check himself out of Cleveland Clinic AMA if it came down to that. He knew at least one of his family members would help him if he did so. All that was left to determine, was which would be the most likely to.

The only fit brother was Alan. Would he?

Virgil guessed Tin-Tin would, after what she'd said. Maybe both of them would help him get down to Miami to find Kelly. The hospital had her address on-file. Virgil knew John could hack into their system and get it if he really wanted to, or that he or Alan could simply use Thunderbird Five's remote interface to find it. That'd be a starting place, aside from trying her cell phone. But Juanita had said Kelly hadn't answered, nor returned, the hospital's call about her test results. Which made Virg think maybe Scott was right: maybe Kelly's life was in danger.

Again.

Only this time, it was about a lot more than IR saving human lives simply because that's what they'd sworn to do, at any cost. This time, it was about saving one human life so 'at any cost' didn't suddenly equate to the loss of their field commander.

The family filed into the conference room, with the three nurses stabilizing the hover chairs holding their patients before leaving. All the mobile members of the group took their seats, with Jeff at the head of the table this time, just like he always was back on Tracy Island.

First thing Jeff did was raise his wrist communicator to his face. "Jeff calling Lady Penelope. Come in, Penelope," he said.

Gordon was half-asleep on his meds, and John was fighting to stay awake himself. Virgil wasn't sure why he found it so easy to battle sleepiness right now, other than maybe the conviction that he might have to do something that would piss his father off to no end.

"I'm here, Jeff," came Penelope's lilting accent through the airwaves.

"All right," Jeff said, removing his watch and placing it on the table face-up where he could look at Penny as much as he could everyone who was there in person. "Penny, I need you to do a thorough background check. Virgil, do you know this Kelly's last name?"

"Yes, Father," Virgil nodded. "McInerny, is how she introduced herself back when we came in to rescue her, her coworker and Scott."

"All right. You got that, Penny?"

"Got it, Jeff. Anything special you wish for me to concentrate my efforts on?"

"I want the same type of check you'd do on a prospective agent," Jeff replied. Virgil's eyes widened. Did that mean Jeff was conceding the fact that Kelly was important enough to be brought into their circle, even just a little way? "She lives and works in Miami; she was one of the victims caught in the bank vault with Scott. I'll have Alan send you details. Also, you could find out from Cleveland Clinic's systems what her cell phone number and home address are, possibly her home phone number as well, if you're unable to locate them easily through your regular channels."

"Understood. Have we a specific time frame for completion?"

"ASAP, Penny. She may already know our identities, so I need to be fully aware of who it is we're dealing with here."

"I'll get on it straightaway and report back to you within the hour. Lady Penelope out."

With that, Jeff fastened his watch back onto his wrist. "Okay, everyone, listen to me and listen good. You've probably already guessed with that call I made to Penny, that I'm willing to go on a little faith here, even if it makes no sense to me." He looked pointedly at Kyrano, and Virg saw the corners of Kyrano's mouth lift into a small smile. "But that doesn't mean I'm willing to compromise our organization. Scott wouldn't want us to do that, not even to save his life." This time, Jeff's words were directed at Virgil. "He's been the commander of the team since the very beginning. No one is more adamant about our security than Scott is. He's gone through hell and back at times to keep our secrets safe, and we all know it."

From his father's words, Virgil couldn't be sure whether Jeff was actually going to work out a way to go after Kelly or not.

"How or why Kelly came to be at Cleveland Clinic is water under the bridge, and there won't be another word about it," Jeff stated. That caught sleepy Gordon's attention enough for his eyes to open to more than half-mast. "The fact is that my oldest boy has apparently convinced himself that this Kelly is key to him making it through this situation he's now in. I don't know if it's possible for something like this to be true or not. As has been made clear to me, however, the fact is that Scott believes he needs her to live. And whether it's true or not, if he believes it, then there is nothing I won't do to make sure she's brought to his side."

Virgil considered that there wasn't normally much his dad or anyone else could do to surprise him. But that? That surprised him. He'd been (not) looking forward to having to fight like hell to convince his father to do this, to try to find Kelly, save her from whatever danger she was in, and get her back here. But he didn't have to, and he could hardly believe it.

"Here's my plan," Jeff stated, and Virgil's eyes were riveted to his father's face. "We have two International Rescue agents in Florida. One is down in the Keys, the other is located in Orlando. I will get on the horn to Number Seventeen in Orlando, and have him get as close to Miami as he can." Jeff's eyes moved from scanning each face around the table, to looking directly at Tin-Tin. "I want Alan, Kyrano and Tin-Tin to return to Tracy Island, where Tin-Tin will take the helijet she and Brains have been working on for use by International Rescue, down to meet Agent Seventeen wherever it is he winds up being able to get to."

"Dad, why would you send her alone?" Alan asked. "I should go with her; we don't know what she'll find down there."

"I need you back at Base, Alan, in case whatever Tin-Tin runs into requires more than just manpower to get Kelly out of wherever she is. We won't know that unless we're able to establish contact with her, or until Tin-Tin and Seventeen get eyes on her location. From the shots NTBS was showing, Miami is leveled, and I mean literally. There didn't look to be any roads clear into the city, and the helijet only has room for the pilot, a co-pilot and four passengers. If Kelly's not alone, if there are other people with her who need to be pulled out, Tin-Tin will need all the room in the helijet's passenger section that she can get."

"But—"

"Alan," Tin-Tin said softly, laying a hand over his where it rested on the top of the conference table. "With Seventeen, I'll have someone to pilot for me, or if the situation requires muscle, I can pilot while he goes after Kelly. Your father's right. If we need additional rescue equipment, it won't be my father piloting Thunderbird Two out to us, and while Brains could easily do it, I suspect your father has additional work for him to perform."

"That's right, Tin-Tin," Jeff replied, "I do. I'm going to have Brains and Penelope working on what the hell's going on in Florida to have caused two massive earthquakes in less than a week, where there've been none before in recorded history. International Rescue may not be operating as a rescue organization right now, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stand by and let this keep happening until the damn state is obliterated."

Virgil was staring at his father in disbelief. Not only was Jeff on-board with finding Kelly, but he was going all the way here, acting like IR was still going strong in spite of its field commander being down and out. And Virgil himself wouldn't have to put his own life in jeopardy by trying to go out in the field with his body still healing from surgery.

As usual, their father had looked at all angles, and come up with the most comprehensive, logical and do-able plan available to them.

"The only reason I'm not sending Thunderbird Two right off the bat, just so you all understand, is that right now we simply don't have the manpower to operate our equipment effectively in any danger zone and she'd have to land far outside the city with the state it's in. While we can insert one or two people ad hoc, like we're doing with Tin-Tin, if the people see International Rescue, and we make no effort to help anyone but this one woman, well...I don't think I have to tell you what the sentiment toward us will become very quickly."

"I wish like hell we could all be out there," John whispered.

"I know, son. We all do," Jeff replied, and Virgil could see the sadness over the situation very clearly in his father's blue-gray eyes. But then Jeff cleared his throat, and the sadness was gone, replaced by 'getting down to business.' "Now, Tin-Tin, I'll be talking to Seventeen after we're through here, but I want you, Alan and Kyrano taking off for home right away."

"Yes, Mr. Tracy," Tin-Tin acknowledged, nodding.

"Kyrano?"

Kyrano looked directly at Jeff.

"You have any problem with this?"

"Only that I believe the family...more specifically, Scott...might be better served by me remaining here in Cleveland, rather than returning to Tracy Island with my daughter and your son. Unless, of course, you have something specific in mind for me to do there."

Jeff eyed his friend, and Virgil wondered if there wasn't some sort of silent communication going on between the two men. For all that Jeff said he didn't believe in things like psychic connections, he and Kyrano sure had their moments just like this one often enough.

"I was thinking about your need for solitude, surrounded by the comforts of your meditation room," was how Jeff responded, and Virgil was once again taken aback. Because his father was implying that Kyrano, with his mystical and mysterious ways, might somehow be able to help Scott or Kelly or any of them through this, using methods that had nothing at all to do with science or medicine.

Kyrano obviously realized this too, if the smile on his face was any indication. "I will ask Juanita if there's a small room I may use for solitude. Perhaps a consultation room, where I won't be disturbed. I require no props for meditation; they're simply rituals I observe, not necessitites."

"All right, then, it's settled. Alan and Tin-Tin, leave now, best speed."

"Yes, sir!" Tin-Tin and Alan replied in unison, getting to their feet and heading for the conference room door.

"And both of you, be careful," Jeff added.

They turned as one and nodded. "We will," Alan replied.

As the door closed behind him, Jeff turned to those left at the table. "Mother, I think you're due up for a rest."

Ruth opened her mouth to protest, but Virgil could see she looked tired. Kyrano spoke up. "I'll see that she returns to her room in the lodgings building," he said. "Then I will ask Juanita for a place where I can be physically near Scott, and not disturbed."

"Good," Jeff replied as Kyrano and Ruth got to their feet. "Boys, you are all going back to your rooms, getting hooked back up to your IVs and monitors, and resting, am I clear?"

Gordon, really groggy now, and John, still fighting to keep his eyes open, just nodded. "I'd like to have a word with you first, Dad," Virgil said.

"That's fine. Kyrano, on your way out, please find someone to escort John and Gordon back to their rooms."

"Will do," Kyrano replied, then he and Ruth left the room.

"Well?" Jeff said, looking at Virgil expectantly.

Virg eyed his two brothers, figured it didn't really matter one way or the other that they heard this, and looked Jeff straight in the eye. "I was fully prepared to check myself out against medical advice and fly down to Miami whether you wanted me to or not."

"I figured as much," Jeff said to him. "I'm not happy about the situation, and I still don't really believe this Kelly can help Scott more than Dr. Anderson and his team. But I'm not willing to lose Scott over something as simple as bringing one person into his life, and with what Penny digs up on Kelly, I'll know going into it just how much she can or can't be trusted."

"I'm sorry, Dad," Virgil said, and he truly was. "I'm sorry I had Gordo help me get you out of Scott's room so I could let her in. I just..." Virgil leaned back in his hover chair as everything began catching up to him. "I was worried about Scott, and Kelly...it just felt right at the time, is all. I don't know," he finished with a flap of his hand in the air.

Then he looked up to find that Jeff was suddenly standing right next to him. His dad leaned down, made sure he caught Virgil's eyes, and smiled. "I know. I'm sorry I lost my temper. Right now we need to stick together, not fall apart at the seams over something that isn't making a lot of sense. But we also have to protect ourselves. So I'm doing both."

Virgil nodded. The conference room door opened, and James, along with the same two nurses that had wheeled his brothers into the room, walked in and went to their respective patients. "Thank you," Jeff said, looking at each nurse in turn. All three either nodded or said, "You're welcome, Mr. Tracy," as they flipped on the hover engines and retracted the stabilization legs.

"We'll get them all hooked back up properly, and Dr. Anderson will be around within half an hour to check their vitals," James advised.

"I'd like to speak to Anderson after he's through with them," Jeff told him, "if you'll let him know. I want him to put these boys' lung lobes back into Scott, and I want to know our options on the liver."

"I'll go back under the knife to give him mine if he needs it," Virgil said.

"I know you will, son." Jeff squeezed Virgil's shoulder, and then Virgil and James were on their way back to his room.

Virg felt tired. Oh, so tired.

But he also felt good.

Because Tin-Tin and Agent Seventeen would find Kelly McInerny. They'd find her, they'd save her, Scott would get his brothers' organs put back into his body – differently this time, to hopefully avoid the problems of before – and Scott would live.

Right now, that was all that mattered.

Provided it wasn't already too late for Kelly, wherever she was...

Kelly had no clue where she was.

She looked across the wide-open space and up to the sky. Everything was gray in varying shades, with some black dotting the landscape. It appeared to be someplace that had been burnt to ashes. Not far to her right she could make out some charred wood, like what you might see left over in a bonfire pit long after the flames had died away.

But other than that, there was nothing to see at all. She got the idea that she should be aware of where she was, but it didn't look familiar in any way. "Hello?" she called out. Only silence answered.

That's when she noticed her body. She remembered being wet and cold, and recalled that her head hurt really badly. Yet right now, not only was she as dry as a bone, but she felt perfectly comfortable temperature-wise and her head didn't hurt at all. She frowned. I was under the coffee table at home, she thought. After another earthquake. There was a big hole next to me.

But she wasn't there now, in her ruined house, that was for sure. But then where? Where could she be?

The first sound she'd heard since arriving in this place made her look up. In the distance, barely visible, something was moving. She took a few steps toward it, straining her eyes in the gloom to try and figure out what she was seeing. Whatever it was, it seemed to be drawing nearer, but all she could make out was a black shape.

A black shaped that appeared human.

"Hello?" she called out, hands cupped either side of her mouth.

Then another sound like the one that'd caught her attention. She realized it was the sound of a human voice. Maybe whoever it was could tell her where she was! With that thought in mind, Kelly started walking quickly, then eased into a jog, and finally was sprinting toward the shape.

Nearer and nearer she came to the shape.

"Hey!" she yelled, waving a hand in the air. "Hello!"

Still, she couldn't see who it was. Only that by shape, it appeared to be a man.

She kept on running.

And then she realized he was running toward her, as well.

"Is that you?" she heard being faintly called out.

Is that me? Who is this person? Does he know me? Questions circled around inside her head as she ran and ran and ran.

Finally the distance between them had closed enough, that she could start to make out the man's features.

Dark, wavy hair.

Tall.

Muscular.

I know him.

Closer.

"Kelly?" the man hollered.

Her eyes widened.

She knew that voice.

And the closer they got to each other, the more she realized the face was very, very familiar.

Suddenly his features became totally clear.

"Oh, my God," she breathed. "Scott?"

"Kelly!" he yelled again, and she couldn't believe it! It was him!

They crashed into each other, nearly falling to the ground, laughing, wrapping their arms around each other. He felt so good to Kelly, so alive!

"You're here," Scott said, laughing no more, face buried in the crook of her neck, partially covered by her hair. "I found you."

"Where are we?" she asked.

"Our place," Scott replied, pulling back just enough to look at her. Kelly lifted her head at the same moment as Scott. Both looked around in wonder. Because everything surrounding them was changing.

The sky slowly lightened, and changed from gray to robin's egg blue.

The land around them sprouted grass, which grew rapidly until at last it reached their knees, and some of it tasseled on top.

Trees grew from tiny little sprouts to saplings to huge monstrosities with many branches, full leaves and large, red apples hanging heavily among them.

The last thing, the thing that made Kelly want to weep with joy, were the neighs that came from behind them. She and Scott let go of each other, and turned to find King and Julie galloping up to them.

When the horses reached them, they reared back, legs pawing the air, and then nuzzled the two humans over and over again, nearly knocking them down. Kelly and Scott hugged and patted them, laughing their hellos to the beautiful creatures, who seemed beside themselves to see them, what with their head-tossing and hooves pawing the ground, and their constant bumping into Scott's and Kelly's backs and arms with their noses.

"What happened?" Kelly asked. "If this is our prairie, what happened to it?"

"You disappeared again," Scott said. "I looked for you, but...there was gray, smoky lightning bolts. They tore his world apart. The horses sounded like they were screaming. I felt like I got electrocuted." Scott shook his head, thumb rubbing gently against King's soft muzzle. "With you gone, this place doesn't exist, I guess."

"But...what happened to you when this place was destroyed?" she asked, looking at him with concern.

"I woke up," Scott replied. "I was in the hospital with a tube down my throat, I think. It's kind of...fuzzy now."

"You woke up?" Kelly asked. "That's great!"

"No, it's not," Scott said, shaking his head and looking at her with wide, frightened eyes. "I'm not doing good out there, Kelly. And something's wrong with you."

"Wrong with me?" she repeated, and then thought as hard as she could about what he could mean.

Rain.

Wet.

Cold.

Sinkhole.

Earthquake.

Miami.

"Oh, my God," she breathed. "I've never come here to see you unless I've purposely started tell you the story. But I'm here right now, and out there in the real world, I'm nowhere near you." She looked at Julie, whose attention was now on trying to grab a low-hanging apple from the nearby tree. Then she looked back at Scott, her heart in her throat. "I'm here because I'm dying, aren't I?"

But Scott didn't need to answer. The look on his face said it all.

Virgil had fallen asleep almost before his head hit the pillow. He didn't even remember James hooking his IV line back in, or Dr. Anderson visiting, or anything else that had happened after unceremoniously plopping himself back into his bed, with a hand from James.

As he blinked his eyelids slowly open, he was surprised to hear Tin-Tin's voice coming from not very far away at all. Isn't she supposed to be going to Miami? he wondered dully as he struggled toward full consciousness.

"Virgil?"

Another voice he knew, this time belonging to Grandma, coming from his left. He managed to pry his eyelids open and look at her.

"Ah, there you are," she said with a smile and a pat of her hand to his. "Look, Jeff made certain you boys could be along for the ride," she continued, gesturing to something slightly over Virgil's hips.

He turned to look, then pushed himself partially upright.

"Now, now, let me adjust the bed for you so you're not straining your side," Ruth admonished. And within moments, she'd taken control of the bed, the top half of which began rising to keep Virgil supported.

There on one of those rolling hospital bed tables, right over top of his thighs, now, as his position changed with the bed's movement, was a laptop. And on that laptop was what appeared to be a live feed coming from the International Rescue helijet which hadn't yet been put into use on a rescue. Well, until now, that was.

"How long have I been out?" Virgil asked.

"Nearly five hours," Ruth replied. "Your father thought you, John and Gordon might want to be awake to see what Tin-Tin finds on-scene in Miami. He's in with John, and they've wheeled Gordon into John's room as well. Jeff could only get his hands on two laptops with the innards he needed."

Virgil quirked a smile at his grandmother. Innards, indeed. Her grasp of technology wasn't half-bad for a woman her age, thanks to living on Tracy Island, but sometimes she just cracked him up when knowledge failed her and old-fashioned terminology kicked in.

"Is everyone reading me?" Tin-Tin asked.

Virgil looked back at the screen. "Five-by-five, Tin-Tin," he replied, then heard his father do the same over the airwaves.

"Good. Now, as Mr. Tracy is already aware, repeated attempts to phone Ms. McInerny on her land line and cell phone have gone nowhere. Penelope is still attempting these forms of contact. We have, however, with Brains' help, been able to utilize Thunderbird Five to pinpoint the location of the cell phone. Brains only just sent the information to me, and it appears the cell phone is at the same address listed as her home address in Cleveland Clinic's records."

Virgil turned to his grandmother, noting that the room door was closed. "Isn't Dad worried about staff coming in while this is going on?" he asked.

"No," Ruth whispered. "He told Dr. Acton that we needed time alone with you boys, and that we're not to be disturbed for an hour." Then she gave him a sly grin. "I locked your door just in case."

Her hand found his and he gently wrapped his fingers around it. Her touch had always been soothing, from the time he was an infant. At thirty-three years of age, Virgil found it no less so.

"And how's Scott?"

"He's going in to surgery in a couple hours' time," Ruth informed him as the whine of the helijet's engines drowned out whatever it was Tin-Tin was speaking to the pilot – presumably Agent Seventeen – about. "Jeff's told Anderson to put the lung back in, only this time to account for the shortened tube from the trachea to the new lung to see if we can't avoid a repeat of the tracheal spasms Scott had before."

"And his liver? Does he need mine?"

"Well, that's the strange thing," Ruth said, eyes still on the laptop screen. "The doctors couldn't find a thing wrong with the portion of John's liver they had originally implanted and then removed because it'd shut down."

"What? You mean it's functioning properly?" Virgil asked, surprised.

"Apparently so, from all the tests they've run. They say they've never seen anything like it."

Virgil looked back at the laptop. Could it be? Could the fact that they were doing what Scott had asked, that Tin-Tin was on her way to save Kelly's life, could that somehow be changing the tide for Scott and the donated organs from them all? "What are his chances this time?"

"Dr. Anderson is very optimistic," Ruth replied. "Oh, look. They've just gotten over Miami." She pointed at the screen. "Dear God."

'Dear God' was an understatement, in Virgil's opinion. Miami was, literally, gone. Here and there a structure might've gone a little higher than one story still somewhat intact, but for the most part, the piles of rubble from ruined skyscrapers, apartment buildings and other taller structures out-sized anything left standing by far.

But the biggest and most unbelievable thing they were seeing, was a series of five perfectly-spaced gigantic holes. They looked like sinkholes, but seemed deeper than most of those usually got, as far as Virgil knew. And they were in a pattern much like you'd find on the number five face of a die. A perfect square of holes with one larger hole in the center of them all, looking pretty much equidistant.

As though it had been planned.

As though these holes weren't naturally occurring at all.

"Holy shit," Virgil breathed. "Tin-Tin, do those holes look as big in person as they do on-screen?"

"Bigger, Virgil," Tin-Tin replied grimly. "I'm controlling the camera mounted on the bottom of the helijet from here, and I'm seeing what you're seeing...as well as what I can see with my own eyes out the cockpit windows. I've never seen anything like these. Brains, what do you make of them?"

"Well, ah, Tin-Tin, the, uh, the relative size of them, roughly one hundred kilometers in diameter, i-if my calculations are correct, means they're not the, uh, largest in recorded history. The, uh...the Quattra Depression in Egypt measured one hundred a-and twenty kilometers in width. However, the depth is phenomenal. I-In Guatemala City, a sinkhole fell more than, uh, thirty stories in an instant, however, so this sort of o-occurrence is not unheard of. Ah, Tin-Tin, ha-have Agent Seventeen move directly over the largest one. In the, uh, center, there."

Virgil watched as the pilot maneuvered the helijet until it was hovering some two hundred feet above the sinkhole in question. "Does it even have a bottom?" he asked, not trusting his eyes, which were telling him it didn't.

"A-apparently not a, uh, visible one, ah, Virgil," Brains responded. "I'm using Thunderbird Five's, ah, sensors to obtain projections as to depth, but, I, uh...I'm not so sure even she can calculate it."

"It's...an abyss, like the ones Gordon maps on the sea floor, only...a circular one," Virgil observed. "Tin-Tin, how close is Kelly's house to this hole?"

"I'm afraid, Virgil, that according to the satellite maps we're working with online, her home is either on the very edge of that hole, or..."

"Or already in it," Virgil whispered, heart sinking. "Damn it."

"Brains, Alan, I want you both hitting things hard with respect to these five sinkholes and the subsequent earthquakes," Jeff said from his end of the connection. "I'm no geologist, but those are man-made or my name's not Jeff Tracy."

"Uh...yes, sir, we-we're on it as we speak," Brains replied.

It was Alan who spoke next. "Dad, Penny's found out some information from her contacts in South Africa about some major underground drilling machines not unlike the Mole that were constructed for a black market sale by local foundries and machineries. We're following that as well as what could possibly be gained by this precise placement of holes, and by the destruction of the city."

"Good," Jeff said. "Keep me informed. In the meantime, Tin-Tin, have your cameras been able to locate the specific house that belongs to Kelly?"

"I believe...I may have something here," Tin-Tin said, and Virgil perked up. Maybe, by some miracle, Kelly's house hadn't been one to go into the massive hole. "Yes, I—I'm seeing some indication that this home, I'm focusing the camera on it now, may be hers. It's difficult to be certain with everything leveled as it is."

"God, that place is half-gone," Virgil observed as the picture on the screen zoomed in to a house half-fallen into the chasm already.

"Wait just a moment!" Tin-Tin said excitedly, then turned and said something to her pilot. The camera moved quickly as the helijet lowered.

"Be careful over that hole, Tin-Tin. We don't know if there's anything under there liable to shoot right up at you." Virgil had to smile. Alan. His little brother so worried about his woman...and he had an idea that maybe both Alan and Tin-Tin had finally gotten their acts together and realized she was his woman after six long years of flirting, and denying all involvement with each other 'til they were blue in the face.

"Thunderbird Five's scanners show no, ah, seismic activity a-anywhere within a, uh, fifty-mile radius," Brains reported. "However, I-I am seeing severe erosion from the, uh, thunderstorm that passed through this a-area last night."

"Is the rest of the house in danger of falling into the pit?" Virgil asked, leaning forward like somehow he could do something just by getting a better look at the scene.

"I-I'm afraid so, Virgil. In fact, it, ah, it could go a-at any moment."

Once again, Virgil's heart sank.

"I'm going to harness up and have Jason lower me for a closer look," Tin-Tin said. "I'll be back with you shortly."

"Who's Jason?" Virgil asked. "Agent Seventeen?"

"Yes, Virgil," Jeff replied. "Tin-Tin, be careful. I'm not about to tell your father I lost you in some lunatic-created abyss."

Tin-Tin's soft laughter came through the air. "Honestly, Mr. Tracy, this is what I'm trained for, and you know I can do it or you wouldn't have sent me here."

"Yeah, well," Jeff grumbled and Virgil had to chuckle. Leave it to Tin-Tin to be the only person other than Grandma who could give Jeff Tracy shit and get away with it.

"All right, Mr. Tracy, camera control is now at your command."

"I've got it, Tin-Tin. John's handling it."

"Jason, begin winching me down. Everyone, I'm headed straight for the very edge of the crater," Tin-Tin announced, and Virgil watched as the camera moved to focus on her for the descent. "There is a mountain of debris which appears extremely unstable, but beneath it is what may have been a table of some sort, and helijet scanners are giving me a heat source beneath that."

"Kelly," Virgil breathed, suddenly finding himself willing it to be true with every cell in his being. If it was a heat source, then that meant whoever it was, was still alive. "Come on, come on," he gritted out through his teeth.

Even his grandmother's hand in his wasn't soothing enough to edge his nervous anticipation down even one notch, let alone altogether.

"Nearly there," Tin-Tin reported.

"Dad, we've got something big here," Alan interrupted. "I'm sending the information through to your cell on coded channel."

"What is it?" Virgil asked.

"Penny's contacts have given us just enough information for me to believe that those two earthquakes, and the formation of the giant holes that seem to have caused them, were no accident, nor from Nature's hand."

"Oh, my God," Jeff breathed, and Virgil felt his entire body go cold. His father never sounded like this. Not unless—"It's the Hood."

"What?" Virgil asked. "How do you know?"

"Penny got a team of local law enforcement to raid a warehouse where one of these drilling machines was supposedly built," Jeff replied. "Inside, on a small miniature of the machine, a model of some sort, was hanging one of those face masks the Hood leaves behind."

"When he wants everyone to know it's him," Virgil stated. "The amount of lives lost because of this, what...what the hell is he doing? Why?" He was so furious he was shaking.

Jeff didn't sound any less angry when he replied, "I don't know, but I'm bringing in the big guns to stop him once and for all."

Anyone who knew Jeff Tracy, knew that tone of voice meant he wasn't going to rest until his words became reality.

Tin-Tin's sudden "I see something!" from the laptop screen made Virgil lean forward even further, eyes now so close to it he wondered if his grandmother could see any part of the picture at all around his head.

"Tell me it's her," Virgil said quietly.

And then the camera zoomed down to just below Tin-Tin's boot-clad feet, and Virgil got eyes on exactly what she saw. It was a human hand, pale-colored, opened palm-up and not moving. He grabbed the laptop and dragged it off the table, then lifted it and held it up to his face. It made his grandma have to stand and maneuver to where she was nearly behind the bed in order to see it.

"Please be alive," Virgil pleaded.

"Definitely female," Tin-Tin told them. But the camera couldn't angle itself to see anything beyond Tin-Tin hanging from the cables and the person on the floor's arm up to the elbow. "All right, shining my wrist-light in, hold on, boys."

Virgil held his breath. He was ready to bet the rest of them were holding their breaths, too.

"She's unconscious. Movement of the chest indicates she's breathing. And she does have red hair," Tin-Tin confirmed.

Virgil's breath left him in one giant whoosh of air. "Oh, thank God." He felt Ruth's hand come to rest on his shoulder.

"What's it look like for getting her out of there?" Gordon asked. It was the first time he'd spoken.

"I could simply pull her out horizontally, but without any leverage beneath me, I'd rather secure her to the line first, before attempting to return to the helijet," Tin-Tin replied.

"That debris looks awfully unstable," Alan said.

"And the, uh...the side of the sinkhole is mud, ah, Tin-Tin," Brains advised. "I-It may give way at any, ah, moment."

"I know, I know. Need the Peanut Gallery to die down a little, please. Let the lady work, boys."

Virgil grinned. Cheeky woman. And all Tin-Tin. She always loved going out on rescues, and had become just as good as any one of them at operating a lot of the equipment. Plus, her smaller frame helped out a lot in situations where all of them were simply too bulky to fit into tight spaces. From the small area that was clear under the table, Virg knew this would be just such a space.

"Jason, give me a foot of slack, but be ready to haul me away in an instant."

"F.A.B.," Jason replied. Also the first time Virgil had heard his voice clearly.

Virg watched carefully, noting that Tin-Tin was doing absolutely everything by-the-book perfect, from avoiding the haphazardly-strewn debris above and surrounding the table to touching only the broken-off bit of floor sticking out over the edge of the gigantic hole. From using her cables to full advantage by swinging upside-down and hooking one ankle around one of them, to tying the extra harness she'd brought with her to her own torso after securing the clamps to the same hooks her own harness was clipped into.

There was no denying what this woman did for a living. Not after seeing her in action like this. Usually he was too busy piloting Thunderbird Two or handling one of their big machines to really stop and watch how Tin-Tin operated. But now he had a whole new appreciation for her abilities. The one difference between her and the Tracy sons in the field? Every move she made was graceful, like she was doing a mid-air life-and-death ballet.

Virg thought maybe, once they'd all come through this, he might paint her doing just that. She'd probably love it.

"All right, all secure. Jason, lower me two feet, then reel me out another foot for slack."

"F.A.B., lowering now."

Tin-Tin got lower, and then lightning-quick the entire upper half of her body disappeared into the hole beneath the coffee table.

"We're monitoring the debris above you, Tin-Tin," John said. Virgil had begun to wonder if his younger brother was asleep. "We've got a few pieces to the north side of you shifting."

"Understood," Tin-Tin responded, and Virg could hear the strain in her voice. She was trying to secure Kelly with hardly any space at all to move around. That couldn't be easy. Virg had been in some spots like that far too frequently for his liking, with victims both unconscious like Kelly was, and those who preferred panicking over holding still long enough to be saved.

It seemed like an eternity passed, but when Virg glanced up at the wall clock to find it read three forty-four in the afternoon, he knew it hadn't been long at all. At last came the words he'd been waiting to hear.

"She's as secure as she's going to get. I'm going to maneuver her out. Stand by to winch up, Jason."

"Standing by."

Tin-Tin slowly pulled herself away from the opening, the movement of her body automatically bringing Kelly with her. And it was, indeed, Kelly...because the first thing to come out was her head, and Virgil would know that face and that fiery red hair anywhere. He breathed a sigh of relief, then nearly choked on it when Alan yelled, "Debris falling! Tin-Tin, look out!"

A large chunk of earth beneath the edge of Kelly's house fell away into the pit. The movement sent debris clattering down its own mountain, some flying off the pile into the vast abyss, and some falling directly toward Tin-Tin and Kelly.

"No," Virg ground out, fists clenched. Then Tin-Tin executed a maneuver Virg didn't think any of his brothers could've done: she yanked Kelly out hard, using the momentum of Kelly's weight to swing away from the debris even as she – with Kelly attached to her waist, and held tightly in her arms – leg go of the cable with her ankle and somersaulted herself upright, simultaneously turning her back toward the house.

The house which was now teetering precariously on the edge of that hole.

"Winch up, high-speed!" Tin-Tin barked into her microphone, breath coming in short puffs. "God, I hope I didn't just permanently injure her," she whispered as she and Kelly swung back the other way.

Jason had started the winch going fast as he could, Virgil could tell, because while the women weren't completely clear of the debris, they were higher than they'd been just a few seconds ago. Tin-Tin's boot slammed into a large chunk of roof as they swung wildly over the house, and that one extra push was all the house needed to give in to the forces of gravity.

As Tin-Tin and Kelly were winched upward to safety, even as the helijet, too, rose a little higher to get them further away, what was left of Kelly's house and all its contents tipped up, wood ripping from the concrete slab that served as its foundation.

It hung there at a forty-five degree angle almost comically, Virgil thought, like it was suspended indefinitely in place by guiding wires or something. And then with a mighty groan and the sound of glass, concrete and wood grinding and scraping against each other as a cacophony in the background, the house slid right into the sinkhole and disappeared from sight.

Virgil fell back against the raised portion of his bed, dropping the computer to his lap in the process. He felt like he'd just effected the rescue. It took him a minute to catch his breath. When he did, he looked back at the screen. All the camera was showing now, was the empty lot where Kelly's house used to be, and all the crumbled homes around it.

"Tin-Tin, report," Jeff said.

"Jason's almost got us up to the helijet, Mr. Tracy, but I think there's a reason Kelly's unconscious. I'll have to examine her more closely once we're aboard."

"Well, Scott did tell us she was hurt," Virgil observed.

"That's right, he did," Jeff replied. "Tin-Tin?"

"Jason, get us to Cleveland Clinic and step on it."

"What is it, Tin-Tin?" That from Alan. "Is she hurt?"

"I see no visible injuries, neither lacerations nor any apparent broken bones. However, her pupils are not responding to stimuli, and...hang on, trying eye-openers."

Virgil knew if Kelly was okay underneath it all, the eye-openers would wake her up but quick. Brains had invented them as an alternative to smelling salts, used only by International Rescue, and they were tough to get out of your nostrils once you'd inhaled their fumes, God. Sometimes he wished he didn't volunteer to be Brains' guinea pig so much. You'd think he would've learned by now.

"She's not responding to the eye-openers at all. Not even a flinch."

"Should she got to a closer hospital?" John asked.

"Cleveland is just over one thousand miles north. Present speed we can make the Clinic in..."

Jason's voice came through. "I've engaged the additional jet-pack configuration on the tail of the helijet," he informed them. "Instruments are telling me we're there in forty minutes, tops."

There was a moment of silence, and then Jeff spoke. "Fine. Bring her here. In the meantime, Tin-Tin, perform standard field medic procedure. I'll go speak with Dr. Acton and have that ER ready for your arrival."

"F.A.B. Tin-Tin out."

With that, the camera feed went black. Virgil closed the laptop and watched his grandmother pick it up, put it back on the rolling table, and then wheel the table back out of the way.

"She'll be all right, Virgil," Ruth said quietly. "You've got to believe she will."

He nodded, but wouldn't look at her. Still didn't when she went to the door, unlocked it and walked out into the hallway. Another sound, the door opening again, and still he didn't look up...just plucked at the blanket covering his legs.

"Tin-Tin's damn good."

Finally Virg raised his head and saw his dad standing a couple feet from the bed. "Yeah. She's one of us through and through," he replied.

What if everything they'd done, though, was for naught? What if they'd busted their asses to find Kelly, and Tin-Tin had completed a difficult rescue, and all of it was for nothing because Kelly was so injured somewhere inside her body that she wouldn't survive?

Would Scott actually die, regardless of getting the organs put back in him tonight?

Virg guessed everything he was thinking must be showing plain as day on his face, because his father came up to him, laid a hand on his shoulder and said quietly, "How about we go see him?"

He looked up, searching his father's face...saw that his dad was just as worried. Hell, even if this hadn't been someone Scott so adamantly insisted was crucial to his own survival, it was still a person. A person who'd gotten themselves tested just in case they could help Scott. A person who'd been saved from one earthquake, only to nearly be killed in a second one.

And all because the Hood was up to something none of them could even begin to fathom.

"Son?" Jeff said, squeezing his shoulder again.

"Yeah, Dad, I do want to go see him, I think."

"They've started prepping him for surgery," Jeff said. "But right now they're just keeping him stable in his room until it's time to move him to the OR. I don't think you'll be in the way."

"Thanks," Virgil said.

He knew what he was going to tell Scott. He was going to tell him they'd found Kelly alive. The only thing was, he didn't know what to tell him about whether or not she'd stay that way.

"Something's off," Kelly commented as she and Scott slowed their horses to a walk.

"Yeah, I feel it, too," Scott replied. "But the prairie looks fine. No dark skies, no fires."

Kelly looked all around them, twisting her body to get eyes on where they'd come from, but could see nothing out of the ordinary. "Do you think this means something's happening to one or both of us out there in the real world?" she asked, waving her hand vaguely toward the blue sky, where puffy white clouds sailed lazily by.

"Maybe. I know when this world was destroyed, I woke up in the hospital. Maybe one of us is going to wake up again?"

Kelly was perplexed, because very, very slowly her head began to hurt. Just a tiny headache, but the fact that she had one at all here in a place where she and Scott had always both been in perfect health, was unsettling.

"What is it?" Scott asked, bringing King to a full stop. Julie followed suit of her own accord. The horses were standing close enough that Scott's and Kelly's legs were brushing against each other.

She looked Scott in the eyes. "My head hurts a little."

"Is that what hurt out there?" Scott asked, also waving vaguely at the sky.

"I...think so," she replied. "It's hard to remember, but...my head hurt, yes, and I was cold. And wet. It...I think it was raining." She looked down at Julie's reins held in her hands. "Do you really think I'm dying out there?"

"I'm not sure how we'd tell. Would you stay here after you died, if you did?"

Kelly shrugged.

"Well, you made this world, Kelly," he stated matter-of-factly. "Doesn't that mean you make the rules of it?"

"Scott, I have no idea," she said, dismounting and giving Julie a pat on the flank so she'd walk away. Scott dismounted as Kelly began to pace, trying to understand this whole thing and failing miserably. "The only reason I started telling you the story my grandmother used to tell is because I just wanted to talk to you, and telling a story seemed the best way to do it. You were unconscious, but I've always heard that unconscious people can still hear others talking to them, like when they're in a coma or whatever. So I just got as close to you as I could, to physically try to let you know someone was there with you, and started telling her tale."

"And when you did that, we wound up here," Scott observed, and Kelly nodded. "You know, Kyrano always talks about some place called the Void."

"The Void?" Kelly repeated. "What's that?"

Scott's face scrunched up. "It's fuzzy...everything having to do with 'out there' is...but if I remember right, he said it's a place you can reach with your mind, and you can make anything happen there that you want."

Kelly frowned. "You mean like...what, like a psychic place or something?"

Shrugging, Scott looked apologetic as he replied, "I'm not sure. I'm afraid I never paid that much attention to it. I'm like my dad – never really put much stock in all that stuff Kyrano talks about." He shook his head. "I really wish he was here to help us out, because if anyone could shine a light on what's going on, it's him."

"Who is he, anyway?"

"I guess you could say he's Dad's best friend. He lives on Tracy Island with us, him and his daughter Tin-Tin. They're from Malaysia. He's actually a botanist, does a lot of research with new kinds of plants for being grown underwater and in space colonies. Tin-Tin is part of International Rescue."

"Wait, Malaysian? Is he about your dad's age and height? And does she have really porcelain-like skin, green eyes?"

"Yes. Wait, do you know them?" he asked.

"Not really, but...well, I think I've seen them with your dad. And an older woman, looked to be in her nineties, maybe."

"That's Grandma!" Scott told her with a grin. "She helped raise us after our mom died. Did you see them in the hospital?"

As Kelly tried to pinpoint when and where she'd laid eyes on these people, the pain in her skull increased to the point where she groaned and touched the top of her head, squeezing her eyes shut. Instantly, Scott was in front of her, hands on her biceps.

"What is it?"

"My head," she whispered. "It's really starting to hurt."

Scott looked all around, and Kelly saw his eyes widen as his head stopped moving, pointed toward her right. She looked in that direction as well, and saw a lone figure walking its way across the prairie.

"Who is that?" Kelly asked. "There's never been anyone but us here before."

"I don't know," Scott replied. "You stay here. I'll go find out."

"No," Kelly said, grabbing hold of Scott's arm as he began to pull away. "Don't leave me alone, I...I'm scared."

Scott nodded, put his arm around her shoulders and stood his ground. The figure came nearer and nearer, and Kelly could tell it was a man, but the pain in her head was getting worse. She sagged into Scott, who tried holding her up for a moment, then slowly lowered her to the ground, flattening the tall grass as he helped her lay down and sat with her, pillowing her head on his criss-crossed legs.

Kelly was having trouble tracking what was going on. All she knew was that her head hurt like a bitch, and that Scott was talking softly to her, trying to soothe her with words and touches to her head, her arms. But no matter what he did, it wasn't stopping the pain.

And then a shadow fell over them. When Kelly looked up to see what had caused it, she found the sun to be directly behind a man's head, making it seem like he was glowing. Some sort of angel? Some beautiful otherworldly being?

"Kyrano?" Scott said, and she could hear the disbelief in his high-pitched voice. "What are you doing here?"

"You wished for my presence, did you not?" Kyrano asked, and Kelly instantly felt more relaxed for reasons she couldn't fathom.

"Yes, but...can you help her? Something's wrong, Kyrano. She can't die. You can't let her die."

"I can only help here in this place, not out in the world of our physical bodies," Kyrano replied. "But I will do all I can."

"You believe me? That if she dies, I will, too?"

"I believe that something larger than all of us is at work here," was Kyrano's response.

The next thing Kelly felt were two hands on either side of her head. Their touch was feather-light, but the effect was immediate. Warmth. Light. Purity. Things she could only name by the sensations they caused to permeate her from head to toe.

And the pain was gone.

"Be strong," Kyrano said, and she opened her eyes to find two dark brown ones that appeared to be made of crystal and had no end to their depth whatsoever, in her direct line of sight. "Hold on, Kelly. For your sake. And for Scott's."

She swallowed hard, and kept her eyes on his. Somehow, she had an idea that if she so much as blinked, it would be the end of everything.

"Scott, I have no idea if you can hear me," Virgil said quietly as he seated himself on the edge of Scott's bed. He lifted his brother's lax hand in his, sandwiching it between his own. "I want you to know that we found Kelly. She was in Miami, and Tin-Tin rescued her. They're on their way here right now."

There was no reaction. Virg didn't know what he'd been expecting, but something would've been nice to show Scott had heard him. He sighed, shaking his head.

"They're going to put the lung they made out of Gordon's lobe and my lobe back into you in about fifteen minutes," Virgil continued. "And they're going to try the piece of John's liver again, too. You have to let these organs work, Scott. You can't fight them this time. They said it wasn't your immune system rejecting them. They don't even understand why the liver was shutting down." He squeezed his brother's hand. "So if I'm to take a page out of Kyrano's book, I'd have to guess that something else made you not want those organs to work. And dammit, Scott, that is unacceptable!"

Virg knew his voice was rising in volume, but didn't give a crap. At times throughout the years, the only way he'd ever been able to get through to Scott was by yelling or even hauling off and giving him a good punch to get him to stop whatever the hell he was doing at the time. Scott had a habit of beating himself up over shit he had no control over, whether on rescues or in their everyday lives, and Virg had somehow taken on the role of snapping him out of these funks whenever they hit. It wasn't easy, by any means, but what the hell else was he going to do? Just let Scott beat himself up instead?

"You know, you are such an asshole," Virgil continued, much more loudly now. "Here we are, going under the knife, giving you parts of our bodies so you'll survive, and what do you do? You say no. I mean, what, my lung lobe isn't good enough for you, huh? Gordon's? John's liver? We're your brothers. We'd do this over and over again, hell, any of us would give you anything you needed, even if it meant we'd never work International Rescue again, and this is how you repay us? But refusing the help, kicking the organs out, almost dying on us? That's some hell of a thanks, Scott."

He watched Scott's face closely, willing there to be some sign of life beneath the ventilator tube, the closed eyelids, the far-too-still facial features.

"I don't know what the hell all this is about Kelly, but you've got us, Scott, your family, and whether there's some weird metaphysical thing going on between the two of you or not, the fact is you're my brother, and I need you, okay? I need you to live, no matter what you end up doing with your life afterwards. We all need you. Do you know what it'll do to Dad to lose you? What it'll do to all of us? We love you, you idiot. We're doing everything we can with ourselves and with Kelly to keep you around, but you have to want to stay around. You hear me? What, you're giving up, is that it?"

He'd worked himself into a tizzy by this point and he knew it, but there was no one else in the room, so he didn't care how he looked or sounded. He needed to vent sometimes too, dammit, and right now he was so worried he didn't know what else to do.

"International Rescue's motto nothing more than words to you when it counts, Scott, is that the case? Huh? Never give up at any cost just means throwing yourself into danger to save the lives of strangers? It doesn't mean fighting to live, it doesn't mean fighting to stay around for the people who need you to survive? Goddammit, Scott, answer me. Anything. Show me you give a rat's ass about staying here where you belong!"

Virg was breathing heavily by this time, frustrated and pissed at himself for losing his temper and yelling at a guy who had half his goddamn organs missing and was being kept alive by frickin' machines and...he gasped.

He'd felt movement between his hands.

He searched Scott's face, but there was nothing.

Then he looked down at their joined hands, lifting his left one away, leaving Scott's left hand palm-flat against his own right hand.

"Fight for it, Scott. For your life, for Kelly, if that's what you need to do. But fight for us, too," he begged. "Please."

Scott's hand moved ever-so-slightly, barely a move at all, but with his thumb and the tips of his fingers, he squeezed Virgil's hand.

The backs of Virgil's eyes stung. "Okay," he whispered, covering Scott's hand with his other one again and squeezing back. "Okay."

Scott was fighting.

Virgil had gotten through.

As the door to Scott's room opened to admit two nurses done up in full scrubs complete with face masks, Virgil held on to that truth.

The nurses gently urged him away from the bed. Virgil stood aside and watched as they moved all the equipment keeping Scott alive, and then were joined by a third nurse who wheeled the ventilator machine, while the first nurse wheeled the external liver replacement and the second nurse got behind the head of the bed to push Scott through the halls.

Virg didn't think he'd ever spoken that many words at once in his entire life. But if it made any kind of difference at all to Scott, then he didn't care. There was nothing more he could do at this point, anyway. It was up to Scott to make good on the promise that the small squeeze he'd given Virgil's hand had been.

It was up to Scott to live.

"Oh, God," Scott breathed.

Kelly's eyes snapped open as Kyrano's hands moved away from her head. There was still some residual aching, but she didn't feel nearly as bad as she had before.

"What is it, Scott?" Kyrano asked.

"I...don't know. I felt like I...winked out there for a minute. I heard Virgil. He was talking to me. He sounded angry."

Kyrano closed his eyes as Kelly sat up and turned to face Scott, who looked more than just a little shaky.

"I believe you are being taken for your second transplant surgery now," Kyrano stated as he reopened his eyes. "Perhaps Virgil was speaking with you before they took you to the Operating Room."

"He wants me to live," Scott said, as though in a trance. "He said they need me."

"They do," Kyrano replied. "We all do. The world needs you, Scott. Without you, I don't know whether your brothers and father would wish to continue the work of International Rescue. It would be a terrible blow to all of us, to lose you."

Scott looked at Kyrano, eyes filled with pain. Kelly didn't know what to say or do. She really knew nothing of these men, other than their last names...at least, in the case of the Tracys. And all she knew about Tracys was that they were recluses who were very wealthy. At least now she understood the recluse part...and understood a lot about the type of people they were to sacrifice everything for the sake of saving lives.

"I don't want to let them down," Scott said, looking to the softly swaying grasses that swished against his right thigh and knee. "I don't want to leave them."

"But it has to be more than that, Scott," Kyrano said gently, and Kelly looked at him as he spoke. "You have to want to live for yourself, as much as for them, or for the people whose lives you'll help save if you survive to run International Rescue."

"You saved mine," Kelly said. "And Mari's. And so many thousands of people in the six years you've been around. You've got to be pretty damn special to dedicate yourself to something you'll never get publicly acknowledged for."

Scott looked up at her, a small smile gracing his face. "I'm not any more special than anyone else. I just happen to have been born into a life where I can do good. So I'm doing it." Then his smile vanished. "But what about you? Will you live?"

Kelly swallowed hard, the idea of dying not something she even wanted to entertain. "I don't know if I will. But even if I don't, Scott, you touched me in a way no other human being ever has. Just knowing you, even so briefly, and even if mostly in this dream world, it's had a huge impact on me." She laughed self-consciously. "Do you know that I kissed your brother on the lips before I left the hospital to return to Miami?"

Scott's face registered surprise and amusement. "Who, Virgil?" When Kelly nodded, he asked, "You like him, huh?"

She shrugged. "It was the only way I could think of to convey my thanks quickly. He was kind of out of it at the time. I don't know if he even knows I did it. Kind of embarrassing, actually. Please don't tell him."

Scott grinned. "Virg will never turn away a pretty lady's kiss," he quipped with a wink, and Kelly felt her face get hot. Then he looked back at Kyrano, serious once more. "If they're operating on me again, they must think that this time I won't reject the organs."

"Your doctors are optimistic. Your father made the decision for them to try once again with your brothers' donated organs." Kyrano looked all around them at the peaceful prairie, the swaying grasses, the apple trees, the horses nibbling on fallen apples not far away. "This place is beautiful and peaceful. Once we find such a place within ourselves, it's difficult to want to return to what can sometimes be an ugly and unforgiving world, full of pain and suffering. Sometimes we have to endure. And sometimes, it hurts too much to want to."

"But I need to return, don't I," Scott stated. "No matter how much it hurts."

"That's a decision only you can make," Kyrano replied, looking at him once again. "And it's a decision Kelly must make as well."

Kelly shook her head. "But if I'm injured enough that it's affecting me even in here, then what if I physically can't survive?"

"I believe," Kyrano said, sitting back and criss-crossing his legs, "that our souls decide when it is our time. Only after all the lessons we chose to learn in this life we entered have been learned; only when all the karma we promised to pay back from previous lives with others has been repaid; and only when we feel we have accomplished all we can or wish to accomplish in the life we're currently living, will our souls determine that it's time to go. Thus, strange accidents occur which seem random, but are truly the way the soul wishes it to happen. The lives saved by International Rescue are those which are meant to be saved. Those who still perish, perish because they felt at their higher level of existence, that it was time to go."

"Like Fate?" Kelly asked, trying to wrap her pain-fogged mind around his words.

"Something like that, only individually decided by us before we choose a life to be born into," Kyrano replied with a small nod. He captured and held her gaze. "I am no expert in these matters, but I have a feeling your soul has not yet completed all it intended to, Kelly McInerny." Then he looked back at Scott. "And I know that yours has not."

Kelly bit her lip. Then she looked at Scott when he took her hand and squeezed it. "We can do this, Kelly. Maybe we need each other to get through it. And if we do, well...we're here together, and we've got Kyrano to help us. What do you say?"

"I say," Kelly said, feeling the resolve build within her, "that I was drawn to fly a thousand miles just so I could be near you, and talk to you. And while I don't understand it, and I'm not exactly sure what Kyrano's trying to explain to us, I'll do anything to keep you where you need to be. And as much as I've loved being here in this place with you," she continued, looking all around at their beautiful surroundings, "I think we both need to go back to our real lives."

Scott swallowed hard. "This is going to hurt like a sonofabitch," he said.

Kelly couldn't help but bark out a laugh. "I'm kind of getting that notion," she replied.

Kyrano scooted across the grass so that his left knee was touching Scott's right one, and Kyrano's right knee was touching Kelly's left one. He took their free hands, one in each of his, and closed his eyes. "I'll help you prepare to return as best I can," he said softly, squeezing their hands. "But most of this work will have to come from you...no matter how much it hurts."

Scott and Kelly shared one last look. One last smile. Kelly watched Scott's eyelids drift closed. She looked at him a few seconds more, then at Kyrano's placid features, and then closed her own eyes.

And as the ache in her head grew worse, she tried as best as she could to steel herself for the pain she knew was to come.

She would do this. She felt Scott's hand squeeze hers tightly. They both would.

Virgil watched as Kelly was wheeled into the Emergency Room, her gurney flanked by Dr. Acton himself, another doctor, this one a woman, Tin-Tin and a man Virgil figured must be Agent Seventeen aka Jason. Standing just to Virgil's right was Jeff, muscles as tensed as Virgil's were.

"Shouldn't you be in bed?" Jeff whispered, eyes not leaving Kelly as they pushed her into an ER bay. One nurse began taking her vitals while Tin-Tin relayed to the doctors everything she knew about Kelly's condition. Which was, basically, that her pupils weren't responding to stimuli and she hadn't able to wake her.

"Not while this is going on," Virgil replied.

"Hey," came Gordon's voice from Virg's left. He looked to find both Gordon and John standing next to him. "Alan and Brains are on their way here."

"Leaving the island unmanned?" Jeff asked. "Why wasn't I consulted about this?"

Gordon shrugged and shook his head with an 'I don't know' look at his father, before he turned back to the flurry of activity before them. "Kelly. I recognize the hair."

Virgil nodded, but said no more.

"I'll be right back," Jeff stated, and Virg knew he was about to call Alan and ask what the ever-loving fuck he was doing leaving Tracy Island without even one person to defend her.

Virg wouldn't want to be Al right about now.

He also wouldn't want to be Kelly, when he started hearing phrases like 'cerebral hemorrhage' and 'pressure release' being used to describe her condition.

"Jesus, are they going to drill a hole in her head?" John asked, watching as a portable CT scanner was wheeled into the bay.

Tin-Tin moved to join them. "They believe she has bleeding in her brain. The CT is meant to confirm or refute that," she explained.

"You kicked ass today, Tin-Tin," Gordon stated with a smile. "That was some fancy rescuing."

She grinned. "I can hold my own well enough. How's Scott?"

"They just took him into the OR about twenty minutes ago now," Virgil replied, after a glance at his wristwatch. "They're looking at a good two to three hours of having him opened up between the lung and the liver, so we won't know much for another two, at least."

"Well, I'll go watch the operation from the observation deck," she told them, sparing one last look back at Kelly still unconscious on the gurney. "Keep me updated on her condition, will you?"

"Sure thing," Virg replied with a nod. "Do the same for us?"

"You bet."

"Thank you."

She answered by flashing him a smile.

Gordon piped up, right hand ticking the air like he was at an auction house. "I'll come with you." The two of them moved quickly in the direction of the elevators.

John shuffled sideways until he was standing shoulder-to-shoulder with his brother. "You really believe she needs to live in order for Scott to live?"

"I don't know what to believe," Virgil replied, watching as the CT image that was being taken blinked into existence on the imager's attached screen. "But either way, I sure hope she doesn't die."

"We've got an acute subdural hematoma in the posterior cranial fossa," Dr. Acton informed his colleagues as he examined the CT image. "In order to release the pressure, we're going to have to vacate the region, roughly...here," he concluded, pointing at a spot that looked to Virgil like it was near the back of Kelly's head. "And we've got to do this here and now; the image is showing the bleeding is spreading to the middle fossa." He turned and looked at one of the nurses. "Prep OR2, I've got to repair that broken vertebral artery as soon as I've got the excess blood draining out."

"Yes, Doctor!" the nurse acknowledged, then jogged away.

"Jesus," Virgil breathed. "They are going to drill a hole in her head."

Acton turned Kelly's head to the right, showed a section about two inches above the left part of her hairline to another nurse, and then stepped away. The buzz of a clipper coming on could be heard, and Virgil watched as a two inch-by-two inch patch of her long, red hair was shaved away. Kelly was filthy and wet, but appeared completely unscathed in every way except what showed on the CT scanner.

"Come on, Kelly, you can do it," Virgil whispered. "Come on..."

One hour later, Virgil and John stood together at the viewing window over Operating Room 2 as Dr. Acton was finishing surgery to repair the compromised artery in Kelly's brain. Through the two-way speaker system, he'd let them know it was only a nick, and bleeding slowly, which was the only reason she was still alive. At the OR next door, Jeff, Gordon and Tin-Tin were watching Dr. Anderson and his team put Scott's brothers' organs back into his body.

Or at least, Virgil thought that was where Jeff was, until he looked up and saw his dad standing a couple feet away to his right.

"How is she?" Jeff asked, nodding down at the operating theater where a piece of Kelly's skull was being fused back into place.

"All I can say is, I haven't seen anyone panic," Virgil replied. "I was about to head over to check on Scott."

"No need," Jeff told him. "They're done. Just sewing him back up."

"Already?" Virgil asked incredulously.

"Wow," John chimed in. "They work fast."

Jeff joined Virgil and John at the window. "Anderson said it was easier than falling off a log. He said the suturing, the connections, the reconstructed airway branch, everything went like it was meant to be the model surgery every transplant surgeon hopes for."

Virgil and John exchanged a look. "I'll go watch 'em sew Scott up," John stated, and turned to leave.

"Gordon and Tin-Tin are still there," Jeff advised. John acknowledged with a nod and left the viewing area.

"You think Scott's surgery went that well because she's here, don't you?" Jeff asked with a nod toward Kelly, whose scalp was now being gelled into place.

"Couldn't say," is how Virgil chose to answer that one.

"But you believe it."

Virg looked up at his dad, who was still focused on Kelly. "If it keeps Scott alive, brings him back to one hundred percent? I'll believe anything."

The men were silent for a few minutes while the finishing touches were put on Kelly, including antiseptic, a bandage and easing her off the anesthesia.

"So, what's the story with Brains and Alan both coming here?"

"Well, I have news for you: Penny's on her way here, too."

"What? All of us in Cleveland at the same time?"

Jeff nodded. "Only for a short while. Alan, Brains, Penny, Parker and Tin-Tin are going off on a little mission to Florida."

Virg's eyes widened. "Florida? But why?"

"A two-fold mission, son," Jeff replied, looking Virg in the eye. "First and foremost, there's some investigating to be done with local and Federal authorities based on a hypothesis Brains has developed as to why the Hood's so interested in destroying Miami."

"Which is?"

"Gold, if you can believe it."

"What?"

Jeff turned to face his son fully. "The two largest gold mining companies in Florida, G&G and Beeston Enterprises, were bought out six months ago by a supposed investment firm out of South Africa. A couple of Penny's contacts were able to trace the origin of the funds used for both purchases to a bank in Indonesia and a bank in Kuala Lumpur."

"Malaysia," Virgil realized. "The Hood."

"Bingo," Jeff nodded. "And to top it all off, a camera that was lowered into the hole right next to Kelly's house by the local USGS field team revealed a vein of gold some sixty stories into the earth directly below Miami."

"I get it," Virgil said with a shake of his head. "If he destroyed enough of Miami, he could come in, buy up all the land, set up shop as one or both of these mining companies and wind up with the largest gold strike since the California Gold Rush."

"Just like that," Jeff confirmed. "And he killed so many people for his greed. I'm not stopping until he's caught, so that's part of why we've got a group heading down there."

Virgil watched as Kelly was bundled up and her bed pushed out of OR2 to Recovery. "And the other part?"

"Humanitarian as a joint op between Tracy Corporation and the newly-founded Creighton-Ward World Relief Agency," Jeff replied. "I've got a dozen people organizing food, supplies and money to help locals with rescuing trapped victims, and to care for them once they do. It'll be a big one, but since we can't help with International Rescue right now, we're going to do the next best thing. Penny insists on matching me dollar for dollar."

That was his dad: never settle for 'nope, sorry, can't do it,' because where there was a will, there was a way. IR was going to be out of commission for a while. But they would still be helping to save lives, and in this case, would also be proactively trying to put the Hood out of commission once and for all. A very good way to save a lot of lives, in the long run.

"What say we see how Scott's doing in Recovery?" Jeff asked.

"Lead the way," Virgil said with a grand sweep of his hand.

"No. Invalids first."

"I am not an invalid!"

Jeff chuckled. "Come on," he said, opening and holding the door for his boy. "Let's see about getting your brother back in command."

There was no way Virgil could argue with that.

Kelly was groggy as hell as her eyelids slowly opened, then closed, then opened and finally stayed that way. The first thing she saw was the white ceiling above. For a moment she was confused. Why couldn't she see blue sky and white clouds? Or hear the horses? Where was Scott? The grass? The apple trees? How about that other man, the one Scott called—

"You're awake." A soft voice. A gentle voice. A voice she knew.

She turned her head to the left. "Kyrano?" she croaked.

He smiled at her and nodded. "Indeed. How do you feel?"

Kelly worked her tongue around her mouth. It felt and tasted like cardboard. "Thirsty."

"Your doctor will be in soon."

"Scott?" she asked, hand reaching out like she could grab the truth he gave and hold on to it.

"Well on his way to recovery," was the truth she was given, along with a warm hand that held hers in a very familiar way.

Kelly smiled at the fading memory of holding Scott's and Kyrano's hands while seated in a small circle on the ground.

She missed the prairie.

The sun.

The scents of Nature.

The warmth.

She missed Julie and King.

But most of all, she missed the long conversations about everything under the sun, with a totally healthy Scott.

It was all starting to seem like it'd been nothing more than a dream.

Maybe, she thought, as she drifted back to sleep, that's all it had been.

Virgil was right there an hour later when Scott woke up. Without a ventilator tube in his mouth.

Virg smiled down at his brother, who blinked a few times, seemed to have to talk himself into where exactly he was, and then smiled back.

"Kelly?" was the first word out of Scott's mouth.

"Doing great, asking about you, too, from what I hear," Virg told him. "Something I should know about you two?"

"What?" Scott asked, voice so rough that he didn't even sound like himself. His hand moved over his throat.

"Your throat's pretty badly scratched up. You shouldn't talk," Virgil informed him as Dr. Anderson and Juanita entered the room. "Your patient's done being lazy," he said to them.

They both laughed while Scott scowled.

Juanita checked some readings on nearby monitors. Anderson took a look at Scott's incisions. Ten minutes later, both stood at the foot of Scott's bed. Jeff walked into the room just in time to hear Anderson report, "You're doing amazingly well, Scott. Everything is functioning like you'd expect your own organs to function." Virg saw the look of relief on his dad's face, and felt the sentiment echoed in his own mind. "Your liver will be whole in two months or less, and so far the lung and brachii we made for you out of your own tissue and the lobes from Gordon and Virgil here, is showing capacity equal to your own lung."

"You're being called a miracle," Juanita said, a genuine, wide smile on her face as she patted Scott's foot.

"It wasn't a miracle," Virgil protested, then shot his brother a look. "It was Kelly."

"Yes, well, either way, the fact is that unless something unforeseen occurs, you, Scott Tracy, will be able to return home in a week."

"Thanks, Doctor," Scott ground out. Juanita handed him a bottle of water with a straw built in to the top, used only there in the hospital for patients. "Thank you," he said to her.

"Nah, don't thank me," Juanita said. She threw a wink in Virgil's direction as she continued, "Thank Kelly."

Juanita and Anderson left the room chuckling. Scott took a few sips of water as Jeff moved the back of his bed up to support him at about a forty-five degree angle.

"All right, someone want to tell me what this is about Kelly?"

Virgil and Jeff exchanged glances. "You don't know who she is?" Jeff asked.

"Of course I do. She was one of the women I got into the vault. The other was Mari."

Giving his brother a strange look, Virgil said...very slowly..., "So you don't remember saying you would die if she died."

"Do what?" Scott asked, voice rising even though it still sounded he was trying to talk over broken glass.

Jeff leaned over his son so he could look him in the eye. "Scott, you nearly tore your throat apart trying to convince Virgil and me that we had to rescue Kelly, and save her life, because you needed her alive or you would die."

They watched as color slowly crept up Scott's neck...up over his jaw...up his cheeks...all the way to his hairline. "I said no such thing," he insisted.

Virgil shook his head in disbelief. Scott didn't remember?No way. "You nearly killed yourself putting your blood pressure through the roof because you didn't think we were taking you seriously!"

"You want to see her?" Jeff asked. "I can have a nurse wheel her in here."

"No," Scott replied. "I can barely talk."

"That's okay, Scott, I'll keep her company," Virgil assured him with a sly grin and a wink because...really? Scott didn't remember?

Scott narrowed his eyes. "What's going on?"

"Nothing," Virgil replied. "What, you want to me to stick around here with you instead?"

"Sure," his brother nodded.

Jeff just shook his head as Virgil slowly moved a nearby chair closer to Scott's bed. "I can't believe you don't remember any of that. We sent Tin-Tin down to Miami, she pulled off a damn fine rescue, and we did it because you insisted!"

"All I remember," Scott whispered, leaning his head back against the pillow, "are blue skies, clouds. Horses. Grass." He sighed happily, a small smile on his face. "Kelly was there." Then he shook his head. "Just a dream, though."

"Uh-huh. Same dream she had, from the sounds of it."

"I have no idea what you two are talking about. What'd Tin-Tin do in Miami? What's all this about Kelly?"

Jeff patted Virgil's shoulder. "Think I'll leave this one to you. I have a meeting with Dr. Acton in five minutes, anyway."

"Gee, thanks," Virgil groaned. Then he looked down at the bed when he felt Scott poke his arm. "What?"

"What the hell, Virgil?"

Virgil sighed. "Okay, Scott, you've got a lot of catching up to do," he began, settling back into the fairly comfortable chair. "So let me tell you the story of you...a redheaded lady named Kelly...a city called Miami...and a little bit of metaphysics thrown in for Wow Factor, mm?"

The completely confused look on Scott's face, combined with the projection of 'my brother's crazy' coming from his eyes, made Virg decide he was going to enjoy telling this story very, very much. Of course, there'd be no galloping horses or prairies, but when all was said and done and he'd tired Scott out, there'd be a really pretty woman with a small patch of fiery red hair missing, that was still there in the hospital for a few more days while the artery inside her head healed. And he kind of liked her.

Especially after Jeff had confessed he did, too. After finding out everything there was to know about Kelly McInerny, Jeff assured his family he wasn't as worried about her knowing their identities as he had been at first. He would, however, be offering her a job of some sort.

Hey. There was something to be said for a woman who saved your brother's life...whether she actually did or not, both Jeff and Virgil had seen Scott go from rejecting all organs and on his death bed, to picture-perfect after Kelly's life had been saved. So there you had it.

And, Virgil thought as he started telling Scott what had happened after he lost consciousness in the bank vault, there was something to be said for pretty Irish girls who had no idea you remembered them kissing you on the lips...

One Year Later...

"Go ahead, John."

"We've got a big one, Father. It's at the new one hundred-floor triple tower they're building in Miami."

"Miami?" Jeff questioned.

"Yep. The one they're putting right on top of where we had that rescue last year that wound up requiring half my liver."

Virgil looked at his dad, then at Scott, who was stopped halfway between the hallway and the wall that would take him to Thunderbird One's hangar.

"Well, this is kind of fitting, then, I guess," Jeff said as he looked up and met Scott's eyes. "Your first official rescue in a year, Scott. On your way, and make it a good one."

"Yes, sir!" Scott replied happily with a smart salute that was wholly unnecessary, but very much appreciated from one military man to another. Scott winked at Virgil as his wall began to turn, ferrying him to his beloved 'bird...into which he'd put a ridiculous amount of flight time over the past two months...and Virg grinned.

"What kind of rescue are we looking at, John?" Jeff asked.

"Floors fifty through eighty have workers trapped in hurricane-force winds," John replied. "Locals aren't allowed fly in that breeze. But the Miami Regional Weather office tells me that the eye of Hurricane Ephraim will be directly overhead in approximately two hours' time."

"So Two's got to do some fancy flying," Virgil guessed, then turned to look back at his dad.

"That she does, son. On your way." Jeff looked up to Alan, Gordon and Tin-Tin. "All of you, Thunderbird Two on the double."

"On our way!" Gordon replied, and the three of them headed for the elevator in the hall as Virgil backed up against his rocket painting.

"Oh, and Virgil," Jeff called over to him, prompting Virg to step away from the painting.

"Yeah, Dad?"

"Assuming you all make it through this one without winding up having to take a trip to Cleveland Clinic, do me two favors."

"Sure thing."

"One, I want visual confirmation that the Hood's still behind bars in Orlando."

Virgil nodded. "My pleasure. And the other?"

Jeff looked back down at the computer monitor on his desk. "Tell Kelly I expect that five-year forecast tomorrow."

Virgil smiled so wide it almost hurt. "Do I have to?" he asked, trying for petulant.

Jeff flapped at hand at him. "Get out of here," he growled, but Virgil could see the smile he was trying to hide.

"Yes, sir," he replied, backing up against the painting once more. As it tipped him backward into his chute, he couldn't help that the grin stayed plastered to his face.

Metaphysics aside, Tracy Corporation's remote Cloud Banking Specialist – a position Jeff had created for her after she'd healed, found out her father had survived, and was determined to help the survivors of the Hood's dastardly plans rebuild Miami and take care of her father until the end of his days – was someone Virgil never minded seeing. Not at all.

Even though it'd only been two days since he had last.

He thought he heard his father's laughter follow him on his way to save more lives.

It was what they did.

It was what they all loved.

And now, Scott was back in action. Back in command. Right where he belonged.

When the chute deposited Virgil into place in the cockpit of Thunderbird Two, his 'bird's speakers crackled to life.

"Hurry it up, Virgil, there's no time to waste!" came the disembodied voice of his older brother.

Alan snickered.

Gordon snorted.

Tin-Tin smiled.

Virgil just shook his head as he flipped open the line. "Yes, Commander Scott, sir. Right away, sir," he smirked.

A moment of silence and then Scott burst out laughing. "It's good to be back, guys."

Virgil laughed. "Good to have you back. Now shut up so I can launch!"

"You got it. Thunderbird One out."

Yeah. All things being equal, it was good to have Scott back and in one piece.

Relatively speaking.

Nowadays, even their father agreed that sometimes, there was something to be said for breaking the rules.

Sometimes.

Author's Note: Thank you everyone for sticking with me through this! For those who aren't fans of Alex O'Loughlin and/or "Hawaii Five-0," and therefore probably wouldn't guess, this story was inspired by my viewing of all 13 episodes of Alex's short-lived CBS series "Three Rivers," which was all about a world-famous fictional transplant hospital and the doctors and nurses that performed those operations.