It hadn't been used much since being crowned Thunderbird 6. Hadn't been used in a rescue capacity at all, really. It was impractical as hell in the normal routine of International Rescue's need for sophisticated equipment to save lives. He knew the name bestowed upon his beloved Tiger Moth was tantamount to an honorary doctorate from a well-known university.

Just as he knew every inch of Tin-Tin.

He could visualize every nook and cranny of the bi-plane even when it was nowhere in sight.

Just as he could now close his eyes and recall every dip and curve of Tin-Tin's body.

The Tiger Moth was cool to the touch.

Tin-Tin was warm.

Tiger Moth, hard and unyielding.

Tin-Tin, soft and inviting.

The Tiger Moth was still here on Tracy Island.

Tin-Tin, however, was not.

Alan laid a hand on the lower left-side wing, closed his eyes and sighed. They had made love for the first time last night. And then they had said good-bye.

When he opened his eyes, they were wet with unshed tears. She had to follow her heart. Had to choose her own destiny. Find out if what she really and truly wanted for herself was International Rescue.

Was Alan.

He couldn't begrudge her this. Tin-Tin's beauty was unparalleled. She had connections the world 'round thanks to all the moving she and her father had done during her youth, as well as her friendships with Lady Penelope and the Tracy family. She was smart as a whip and had the wit and charm to go with it. A high-class education and worldly knowledge made her a highly sought-after engineer around the globe.

She could go anywhere.

But who wouldn't want to work for Jeff Tracy?

She could do anything.

But who wouldn't want to help save countless lives as part of International Rescue?

She could have anyone.

But who wouldn't want Alan Tracy?

He turned away from the Tiger Moth.

Who wouldn't want him?

Maybe, he thought…maybe the one person who wouldn't want him was the one he wanted so much he felt like only half a man now that she was gone.

He spared another look at the little bi-plane sitting quietly waiting for its pilot to make it go. Maybe taking it out would help him get Tin-Tin Kyrano out of his system. Maybe it would just help him wallow in his memories. Either way, he wanted to go.

A little more resolve filled each step as he made his way to the elevator that would ferry him to the villa. Only those who truly knew him would see that each step was still muffled by the song of sadness his heart mournfully sang.

Endless miles of pristine jungle canopy. The city of Jakarta. Then more jungle. Villages. Singapore. Then Malaysia was right there.

It was right there.

Where Tin-Tin was. He swallowed hard, wrestling with his thoughts. Looked at the time. Calculated the amount of fuel he had. He wanted to stop there, to see her…if only briefly. And yet she'd not asked him to. Not invited him. She was with her father; she didn't want or need him there by her side. No communications from her in all these months had made that crystal cl—

The first shot went directly between the two wings to his right. He frantically tried to open a channel to Tracy Island but couldn't get more than a high-pitched whine no matter which frequency he punched in. The second shot grazed the top wing of the bi-plane, too close to the right side of the co-pilot's seat for his liking.

He looked down at the ground from 7,400 feet in the air. He hadn't made it near enough to Kuala Lumpur to make him want to try for it amidst the laser fire he was taking. One good hit to the wings or fuselage and he'd crash land in the tangle of jungle down there.

A hard turn nearly stalled the Tiger's engine as he banked to avoid yet another volley of red laser shots. Whoever it was had some sophisticated firepower, that much was certain. But who the hell would shoot at a harmless bi-plane?

Now water was below him, and then Al knew would come the part of Indonesia directly below Southern Malaysia. Damn not having the radar he was used to in the other Thunderbirds. He couldn't tell if the shots were coming from the ground or the air. He saw no other aircraft but when yet another shot swept along his right wings and he had to make a slight turn to avoid it, he realized he was being herded.

Like a goddamn air sheep?

He scrambled to activate the SOS on his watch – his brothers could get here fast in their craft. Removing his right glove with his teeth, he pressed the tiny button on the side of the watch that would alert his family to the trouble.

But nothing happened.

Another shot.

A look of disbelief at his watch.

Another shot.

He was nearing the Indonesia/Malaysia border now.

The next laser beam was directly over his head.

He was being forced lower to the ground and there was nothing but damn jungle beneath him.

Alan steeled himself for a crash landing and wondered if the Tiger Moth would ever forgive him for doing this to her twice. Well, if someone wanted him on the ground, they'd get him – along with his sidearm, his emergency transmitter and his special brand of attitude.

The tops of the trees scraped along the Tiger Moth's wheels. He gritted his teeth.

"What's going on, Father?"

"Scott, we've lost contact with Alan and are unable to locate the Tiger Moth via satellite."

Scott turned and looked at the radar image being shown from where John's portrait usually looked back at them. There wasn't a single blip to be seen and the scan was showing well over 10 frames per half-second.

"John tried contacting Alan when he was five minutes late for his Sri Lanka check-in."

Scott's own portrait was replaced by John's live face from Thunderbird 5, Brains hovering nervously behind him. "That's right, and repeated attempts to contact both his mobile headset and his watch have failed over the past fifteen minutes." John pressed a few buttons on the console in front of him, and Alan's portrait disappeared to reveal yet another satellite image showing Sri Lanka in the middle. "Thunderbird 5 isn't able to locate the GPS in Alan's watch either, and I've had her scan not only the entire Earth, but also the Moon colony and a one thousand kilometer radius around the planet."

"And the Tiger Moth's tracker?" Scott asked, a frown creasing his forehead. He felt his heart beating so fast it almost wasn't beating at all, but rather vibrating high in his throat. That familiar cold-ish feeling that always washed over him when someone he loved was in peril was in full effect. It was only his own steely resolve that kept him from actually breaking out in a sweat.

He tore his eyes from the satellite image to look at John as he replied, "Nothing, Scott. I can't find any trace of Alan or his plane."

Suddenly the eyes of Gordon's portrait flashed on and off in rapid succession. Jeff opened the line but before he could greet his son in any way, Gordon's overly worried face appeared and he was speaking so fast Scott could barely keep up.

"I had an idea once John told me he couldn't find Alan, so I put in a call to Kyrano but he's gone, Dad, and so's Tin-Tin! I've used the remote interface with Thunderbird 5, I'm on my way back home, ETA seven minutes, Dad, they've all disappeared!"

Quick flicks of the wrist across a console and the grim look on John's face confirmed Gordon's claim without a word. He looked sideways at Brains, and for a moment some silent communication seemed to be happening between the two. Brains scurried away and some interesting sounds could be heard off-camera as John turned back to face Scott, Jeff and now Virgil and Grandma, who'd taken a few minutes extra to get there from the other end of the island.

John's voice was quiet. "Gordon's right, Dad. Kyrano's and Tin-Tin's GPS signals are either offline or simply not registering, same as Alan's. Tin-Tin's plane isn't showing up in its hangar either, where it's been since she and Kyrano arrived in Sarawak."

"They were guests of the Raja, correct?" Scott asked.

Jeff nodded. "I'm going to my study to make some calls and the first one is to his palace." He rose to his feet. "Scott, I want you out there in Thunderbird 1 pronto."

Scott nodded and was flipping around on his special wall before Jeff even began giving Virgil orders.

"Virgil, you wait in 2's cockpit for Gordon's return. Gordon," he continued, looking up at his fourth son whose face was white as a sheet, "I can hear your jets now. Get Tracy Four into the hangar and board Thunderbird 2 immediately." Gordon nodded and Jeff's eyes moved back to Virgil. "You will not launch until Scott has reconnoitered the situation, is that understood?"

"Yes, sir," Virgil nodded, moving quickly to the rocket painting which would upend him into the chute that led to Thunderbird 2's cockpit.

"Jeff, what's happening?" Ruth Tracy asked, knowing something was terribly wrong but having no idea what.

"Come with me, Mother, while I make some calls. I'll explain on the way." Jeff stopped after taking two steps away from his desk. "John, what've you got Brains up to?"

"He's looking for anything that might be blocking the GPS and IR trackers from our sensors."

Jeff stared at his son for a moment, then nodded curtly and took his mother's hand. "John, keep me informed. Base out."

John's face continued to appear in Scott's portrait frame as the two satellite feeds winked out in Alan's portrait and then his own.

"Johnny?"

John couldn't see his brother Gordon, but he could hear him calling out from his own portrait frame.

"Yeah, Gordo."

Seconds of silence. "Find him," Gordon said, voice nearly breaking on the second word. And then John heard the sounds of Tracy Four landing on 2's runway. Thunderbird 5's systems told him Gordon had cut the transmission. John's finger moved to do the same to his own.

"I will, Gordon. God help me, if I can, I will."

John's feed blinked out.

Five smiling, handsome young men stared out from five portraits over an empty office.

All the sophisticated equipment at International Rescue's disposal, and three of their people were nowhere to be found.

"Father, I've been scanning on all frequencies since takeoff and I can't find anything. I'm not just talking about Alan, the Tiger Moth and Tin-Tin. I'm talking about any signals at all."

"Specify region," John interrupted.

Scott studied the readout on his scan image. It showed a void over an area that seemed far too perfect to be random. "Western border is at 1° 31' N / 110° 20' E. Eastern border, 2° 39' N / 114° 12' E. Roughly Kuching to Belaga, Malaysia."

"Northern and Southern?" Jeff asked, concentrating on what John was working on live from Thunderbird 5 and transmitting to multiple screens at the villa.

"It seems to stop parallel with Matu, north of Sibu, and goes as far south as Song. Father, it's like a perfect rectangle two hundred and seventy-five miles by ninety-five."

"Most of that is jungle," John reported as Scott allowed the feed from 5 to replace his own scans on the console in front of him. "Sibu's really the largest city but we don't have any agents within those parameters."

"Which explains why we didn't realize there was a blackout," Jeff concluded. "Scott, how are you tracking it?"

"Well, Father, it's the strangest thing," Scott replied, reverting back to his own radar. "I can't explain exactly how I'm tracking the borders other than to say there's some sort of distortion that my Thunderbird is picking up as a spatial disturbance. Once I focused on the space within the rectangle, I realized I wasn't getting anything from it, not even radio or television noise."

"He's right, Father," John confirmed. Then they heard Brains' voice, though too low to understand his words, sounding frantic with concern. "Father, Brains says there's a vortex of energy that's enveloped the region. It's not something 5's sensors are calibrated for alerting us to because it's not spatial…"

When John's voice trailed off, Scott barked, "John!"

"Spatial?" Jeff repeated.

"Guys, it's not something scientific. I mean, not something I can explain with science."

"Come again?" Scott asked as he banked right to avoid the edge of the void area. He wasn't about to accidentally get into a vortex of energy or whatever the hell it was.

"Mister, ah, Tracy," came Brains' stammering voice through the speakers, "a-all I can tell without being on-site with equipment that's back in my, ah, lab, i-is that this appears to be something like a wormhole on Earth. I-It's something I've read theories about, the, ah, most recent being published by a notable researcher in the, ah, field of Quantum Astrophysics."

"A wormhole on Earth?" Scott repeated. "But we've yet to even confirm they exist in space, let alone on Earth!"

"Are you telling me that Tin-Tin, Kyrano, Alan, and everyone in that area that looks like a void," Jeff asked, no small amount of disbelief dripping from his voice, "have been sucked into an Earth-bound wormhole?"

The silence that responded could've been confirming, denying or simply stating that nobody knew the answer.

Scott stared at the void outlined on his screen. "Jesus Christ," he whispered, because what. The. Hell.

Alan groaned. Damn the harness and all the modern technology he'd put into Tiger Moth after their last crash to keep them safer should there be another crash. Because he'd still hit his damn head on the steering yoke and what. The. Hell.

When the bluebirds had stopped flying round and round his head like a childhood cartoon flashback, one thing became immediately apparent. He held very still, peering out of the cockpit to the jungle surrounding him, and at the very tiny clearing the plane had manage to nosedive into after skimming across treetops.

There wasn't a single sound. His head throbbed and he sucked air in through his teeth…and realized he hadn't heard himself do it. He frowned, pursed his lips and whistled. He felt the air go through the little hole that should've created a whistling sound, but there was nothing.

"Oh, my God, I've gone deaf!" he cried.

And didn't hear himself cry it.

Deaf? He was deaf? But why? The bump on his head was just a scratch that was already coagulating. He hadn't done any damage to his eardrums – his ears didn't even hurt. But he couldn't hear his own blood rushing through his veins like he usually could when Tin-Tin tried to make him meditate with her.

A different tactic was in order, so he banged his fist on the fuselage of the Tiger Moth. No sound. He looked up at the jungle around him once more. Nothing. No insects buzzing, no strange bird sounds or other unidentifiable creature noises that should be here.

So for some reason, Alan Tracy had completely lost his hearing.

He checked Thunderbird 6's transmitter and was told by its digital readout that it was unable to connect to a signal. Then he looked at his watch, which seemed to have stopped altogether. The seconds weren't ticking away down like they usually were, and when he tried to speak to activate the communications device inside it, not only could he not hear his own voice, but the watch didn't respond. There was no Base, no John, no nothing in the watch face except digital numbers that were no longer moving.

He tried the SOS button on the side of the watch again, but the watch didn't vibrate in acknowledgement like it was supposed to when the emergency transmitter was activated. Confused as hell and trying to not be frightened that he really had lost his hearing, Al hoisted himself up out of the cockpit and grabbed his large backpack from the copilot's seat, then slid down the fuselage of the plane until his feet were firmly planted on the ground.

He didn't hear himself slide, nor the crunch of his boots hitting the detritus on the ground. First order of business was to get his mobile emergency transmitter out of the backpack. He unzipped the bag, reached in to the specially designed pack that contained everything a Tracy might ever need in a situation such as this, and unsnapped the band that held the ERTx in place.

It was a small device no larger than the iPhones of a decade ago, and always powered on as soon as a Tracy placed their thumb on the touch-screen that filled the entire face of it. Well, it was supposed to, anyway. Alan jabbed his thumb onto the screen. It stayed black. His frown turned into a scowl. How dare International Rescue equipment not work?

Yet it didn't. Not the headset communicator, not his watch and now, not the ERTx. He tried repeatedly with his thumb until he realized it was futile at best to keep smearing up the screen with his thumbprint. Next option was the cell phone tucked into a pocket of the bag.

No signal. Useless.

The edible transmitter was all he had left, but by now Alan was having doubts it would work either. He popped it into his mouth, chewed it just a bit and swallowed, hoping that maybe this one thing would work.

And ew, because it was grape – his least favorite of the gummy flavors.

So now it was obvious he was completely out of contact with civilization and deaf. Which he just kept thinking as a word rather than an actual state of being because something inside his brain refused to believe it was possible. Whether it was denial or there was some fact his consciousness had overlooked that his subconscious knew full well, he didn't know and didn't care about. Because even if it was true, he needed to find civilization to help him with it.

So he looked up at the Sun, remembered roughly where he'd put down in the jungle, and headed east into the thick canopy.

He'd been herded into crash-landing. All his equipment was non-functional – save the Tiger, which had functioned just fine 'til he crashed her – and he couldn't hear. All in all, just a typical day for International Rescue, right?

Yeah. Right.

"Brains and I have recalibrated 5's sensors according to some massively theoretical equations," John reported, fingers flying across the console as he spoke. "The latest in the field of Quantum Astrophysics suggests one thing, but our sensors aren't reading what Scott's getting on local, so we're tinkering with the formulas to try and fine-tune what 5's scanning."

"That wasn't English, was it?" Gordon asked from his seat just behind Virgil in the quiet cockpit of Thunderbird 2.

Virgil shook his head absentmindedly. "John's English," he said quietly in response. Then a frown creased his brow. "John, have you accounted for the fact that it may not be the equivalent of a space-born wormhole?"

John blinked and looked straight at Virg through the viewscreen. "Meaning?"

"Meaning if you've given Thunderbird 5 the capability of scanning for wormholes such as you'd find in space, and it's not able to read the void area Scott's picking up, then it's not a wormhole."

"Either that," came Scott's voice, "or your astrophysicist's calculations are way the hell off. Why don't you base it off the sonar scanner 1 is picking it up on?"

"We tried that," John replied, frustration evident in his voice. "Problem is from up here, the signals just disappear into the void and give us nothing more than the outline you're seeing, Scott. We need more data to try and determine what's happened."

"Boys, I think we need to let Brains and John keep working. Scott, is there any way you can land well enough away from the area not to be affected and so your 'Bird is in no danger?"

"I was going to suggest that next," Scott said.

"Ever the man of action," Virgil mumbled. Gordon chuckled in response.

"Brains, can 1's ionic collector grab a sample of the air inside the voided area, do you think?"

Virgil sat straight up in alarm. "You're not going in there!"

"Not planning to," Scott's calm voice responded. "I just want to know if I can reach the collector inside the area to get a sample."

"It, ah, should work, Scott," Brains confirmed. "But I want you wearing a hazard suit with, ah, full sensors activated."

"We'll monitor you every step of the way," John added.

"Then it's settled," Scott stated as he surveyed the area for a spot where he could set Thunderbird 1 down. "I'm going in."

"Be careful," Jeff said evenly.

Virgil quietly repeated the request as Scott's face winked off his screen, leaving only John looking back at him. The brothers' eyes met, grim faces a mirror of one another's, before John, too, disappeared.

Alan was sweating and was also confused as hell. He'd seen birds, he'd seen bugs and yet he wasn't hearing them. He wasn't hearing the jungle foliage slapping against his body as he pushed through. Wasn't hearing his footsteps. And then…

The first bird look like a small turkey, with red around its eyes and a thick, round body. It was soon joined by an identical bird, and when one would open its beak, presumably to sing, it would stop abruptly and look at its friend. The friend would then open its beak and do the exact same thing. After a few seconds, the two birds flew frantically into the air, circled twice and promptly smashed themselves into the hard trunks of two trees that looked as though they had to be over 200 feet tall.

Alan blinked as feathers rained down and the bodies of the birds fell to the fern-covered forest floor. His mind raced as he continued traveling East. Birds used the magnetic force of the North and South poles like a compass. So if they tried to chirp and couldn't hear themselves, it freaked them out…they flew away in fright…and smashed into trees, killing themselves.

They couldn't figure out which way to fly?

Because…

…they couldn't sense the magnetic forces from the poles?

Alan was scowling by the time he reached a clearing, and so lost in thought he didn't even register it was a clearing.

Why would the birds not be able to sense the magnetic poles here? They'd seemed to be adult birds, so they'd obviously been living in the jungle for some time with no problem…until today.

The same day Alan got shot down and deafened for seemingly no reason. The same day all communications equipment stopped working, and—what the hell?

"Tin-Tin?!" Alan cried out. Or at least, he thought he did.

In front of him was a massive stone structure shaped roughly like a pyramid with a large extension to the south that itself was the size of a palace. At its highest point, the pyramid looked like it was a good twenty stories tall, with the extension maybe at about fifteen.

But that wasn't what had him standing there with his mouth hanging open.

Running along the western edge of the pyramid, if he wasn't hallucinating, was—

"Tin-Tin!"

Her small body slammed into his. He wound his arms around her, enveloping her, holding her as tightly as she was holding him. She was back in his arms after all this time. Somehow, in spite of the clusterfuck, that made everything okay.

Until he realized her jaw was moving. He pulled away enough to see that she was talking…or at least, trying to. Tears had filled her eyes but she was fighting to keep them back. And he couldn't hear her any more than he could hear anything else.

He waved his hands at her and shook his head. Her mouth clamped shut. She shook her head and pointed to her right ear. He patted his chest, nodded and pointed to his left ear. Her shoulders slumped. His did, too.

Neither of them could hear.

Then suddenly Alan perked up. If she couldn't hear either, that meant it wasn't that Alan had gone deaf because for both of them to suddenly be deaf? No way. It had to be the area they were in. He started letting his theory spill out of his mouth, completely forgetting the whole point of "deaf" until Tin-Tin smacked his arm.

"Ow," was what he tried to say as he rubbed his bicep and glared at her.

She pointed to both her ears with a look of "duh!" on her face and Alan wondered if her face had always been this expressive and he'd just not paid attention. Writing! He could write it down!

Except he didn't have anything to write with or on. Before he could express silent indignation over having that alternative plan thwarted, he really looked at Tin-Tin. She looked like hell, no other way to put it. Her white blouse and blue jeans were ripped and torn and filthy. Some of the stains looked like dried blood. Her hair was a rat's nest trying to stay put in a single ponytail high on her head and dark circles under her eyes spoke of exhaustion. She was looking toward the pyramid so he placed a finger on her chin and turned her face back toward his.

"What happened to you?" he mouthed slowly.

"Father," she mouthed in return, then pointed at the pyramid.

"Kyrano's in there?" he asked, then growled. Damn neither of them being able to hear. He touched her shoulder so that she was turning back to look at him. He pointed at the pyramid, then held his hand level at about Kyrano's height between them.

Tin-Tin nodded, then started pantomiming frantically. At first, Alan was able to keep up. Hands on a steering wheel, so they were driving. Then a crash of some sort, and they were on foot. But then she started gesticulating like she was trying to displace the air for a square mile around them and Al hadn't a clue what she was getting at. Then her fingers were walking again, and she was jabbing her finger toward the pyramid once more.

She looked like he was screaming her next words, which left Al only slightly glad he couldn't hear it, but he also couldn't figure out what she'd screamed. She pointed to the pyramid again, then held her hands together side-by-side, palms facing inward, and opened them like doors and began shaking her head 'no' rapidly.

A-ha! She couldn't find her way into the pyramid.

Well, he was exhausted now and it wasn't from trekking through the jungle and watching birds go kamikaze. Tin-Tin grabbed his arm and began dragging him toward the shorter extension of the structure. Tin-Tin. She was here. He'd found her!

As if all the rest of his day hadn't been full of what-the-fuckery, finding Tin-Tin this easily had to be the most unexpected part of it all. And in spite of the fact that they were deaf, had no transportation, could barely communicate and were outside an impenetrable fortress where her father was, Al couldn't help but be happy, because…Tin-Tin.

He didn't bother to hide his smile and wondered if he'd gone completely insane.

Kyrano had never seen anything like it. He'd known, of course, of his brother's dark arts and penchant for biting off more than he could chew in the realm of the supernatural, but to have caused this? Well, even Kyrano hadn't figured his half-brother for that much of a fool.

Evidently he'd been mistaken.

On the top floor of the pyramid, leaving a good two stories of 45-degree angled wall overhead that tapered to an open point, there lay a deep, vast abyss. The heat that poured from it was incredible, but even moreso were the creatures that Kyrano could see and more yet than that, the immobile body of his brother suspend twenty feet in the air directly over the roiling abyss.

The creatures that surrounded Belah Gaat were more displacements of air than visually physical beings. Now and then red laser beams shot into the air seemingly at random, though Kyrano guessed the shots were anything but. And through it all Belah didn't move a muscle. He just floated there, eyes wide open, face locked in a state of shock, held up by something Kyrano couldn't see.

No sounds could be heard. And when he looked directly at the strange not-there creatures, they disappeared completely. Yet out of his peripheral he saw the movement of perhaps as many as a hundred.

He looked up at his brother. Looked around at the invisibles. Looked down into the abyss. Felt that his daughter was outside and that she at last, was no longer alone. And…didn't know what to do. Take aim at his brother, who seemed to be at the center of this? What even was this?

The beings moved. He could see – only when not looking directly at them – that they were encircling him. Then a sharp jab of pain into his skull, the feeling like his brain was exploding, and once again, nothing. He saw now. He saw the creatures when he looked directly at them. Creatures that didn't exist, yet were there.

"Null," was the word coming to mind, and so he spoke it even though he couldn't hear it. The creatures were null creatures and…that would explain the absence of every sound! Belah had opened a door between their world and the world of these Null beings! If their dimension was anything like them, it wouldn't exist even though it did – meaning it would dampen this world so that nothing could be heard! It was eating the sound!

He felt triumphant.

And then his shoulders sagged.

Because…so what?

Kyrano knew the answer to what was causing it. But he had no idea how to undo it. He looked back up at his baldheaded half-brother and wished for one moment Belah could've heard him as he muttered, "Dungu."

The last time he'd called his brother a moron was when they were kids. Funny how some things just never changed.

Their search for a way into the huge pyramid and its rectangular extension had proven futile. Given that neither of their watches were working, Al couldn't be certain how much time they'd spent looking, but the fact was, they weren't getting anywhere.

Tin-Tin looked like she was ready to spit nails and Alan was on the verge himself. But then a chance look toward the western edge of the clearing made him stop bemoaning their predicament and frown. There was some sort of…displacement in the air, he was sure he'd seen it. And yet now that he was looking directly, there was nothing.

He felt a tug at his sleeve and looked down to find Tin-Tin staring at him with large, round eyes. Then she pointed toward the same place he'd seen the displacement. So…she'd seen it, too!

They sprinted side-by-side to the area in question. Alan skidded to a halt because he was sure something had moved in his peripheral, to the right. Yet when he looked there, he saw nothing. Then something moved again to the left. He whipped his head back around. Nothing. Tin-Tin was doing the same thing.

Alan bit his lip. Things were moving, but he couldn't see them except out of his peripheral. So maybe it wasn't 'things' moving, but air. Which meant…the air was being displaced somehow. He looked down at the ground, noting the movement in both peripherals. A palm-sized rock was within reach. He bent down and picked it up, feeling its normalcy as a sort of grounding in such an ethereal moment…because left and right, all was nearly shimmering now.

Tin-Tin's pale, frightened face turned up to look at him as he resolutely moved into a pitcher's stance, took aim at the original spot of movement, and fired the rock like a fastball.

He was – and wasn't – surprised when the rock seemed to disappear mid-flight. It looked as though Tin-Tin screamed. Alan glanced down at the ground not six feet in front of them, just below where the rock had disappeared. Right before his eyes, yet another rock, this one twice the size of the first one, seemed to start dissolving into nothingness from the edge furthest away, and moving toward them.

Alan reached out and pushed Tin-Tin behind him, then took a couple steps back with her, his hand firmly gripping her bicep. Slowly…ever so slowly...more and more of the rock disappeared. Tin-Tin peeked around his arm, her left hand gripping the back of his shirt so tightly it was practically choking him.

He bit his lip again.

Whatever that wall of Something or Nothing was, could it be what was causing them to hear nothing? Could it somehow be creating a vacuum? Not of air, obviously, since they had no trouble breathing – but a vacuum of sound?

Sound waves used some sort of medium to travel – air or water. That much he knew from high school science. And things in space didn't make sounds because there were no particles for sound waves to travel on. He'd spent enough time spacewalking to know that on his own. Yet there was air here, or he and Tin-Tin – and Kyrano – would've suffocated the moment they entered this…whatever it was.

He couldn't for the life of him figure out how there could be breathable air but a complete absence of sound. So…maybe what was being affected wasn't sound waves, but their eardrums? Could something have stopped them from picking up sound without any pain, any way for them to tell? Alan shook his head. He was out of his depth on questions like that, and the large rock was halfway gone now.

He figured his brothers had to be looking for him by now, because he knew he'd missed his check-in time, having never made it to Sri Lanka to refuel the Tiger Moth. So if they were looking…

Alan quickly unclasped his watch from his wrist, turned to Tin-Tin and held his hand up to her in the universal 'stay' sign. She wrapped her arms around herself as he held his watch in his hand and crept toward the disappearing rock. He crouched and placed his watch on the part of the rock that was still there, then backed away until he was even with Tin-Tin.

He wrapped an arm around her and held her close as they watched the rock continue to disappear millimeter by millimeter.

Taking his watch with it.

Scott didn't mind the protective suit he wore too much, but the constant drone of Brains stammering the readouts into his ears was starting to get on his nerves. Around him, the jungle was so loud he could hear the birds and other sundry creatures' noises pretty clearly in spite of the fact that his ears were covered by both earphones and a helmet.

His hand-held scanner showed the same 'nothing' ahead, not more than three feet away, now. Just as he was about to take a step forward, something up and to the left moved. He whirled to face it but there wasn't anything there. He decided to brush it off as a wayward bird or monkey, but yet another movement caught his attention from the peripheral vision of his right eye. He turned toward that, but same as before…nothing.

"What the—?" he whispered.

"What is it, son?" came through his headphones.

"Could've sworn I saw—" Scott stopped when there it was again, only this time toward his left. "It's like there's…air displacement," he reported, voice tinged with the disbelief he himself was feeling. "I keep seeing things move, but only out of my peripheral. When I look straight on there's nothing th—"

This time, he cut himself off not because of something that moved, but because of something that didn't. And yet he knew for a fact that it hadn't been there moments ago.

A rock.

And one of their gold Rolex wristwatches.

"Holy shit," he breathed.

"Scott?" came John's concerned voice.

Scott knelt down, reached out and picked up the watch.

"Oh my God, I've got Alan's GPS! It's transmitting again!"

"Yeah, John," Scott replied. "Because I've got his watch." Scott looked around him as he rose to his feet.

"Where did you find it?"

Scott explained as his head kept swiveling back and forth to try and catch whatever it was that was moving, that he couldn't see, goddammit, no matter how quickly he moved his eyes to try and catch whatever it was.

Suddenly a red beam of light shot past him. He quickly stuffed Al's watch into a leg pocket on the hazard suit, simultaneously drawing his laser pistol. "I'm under attack!" he yelled, turning and diving under a large leafy plant.

When he peeked out, the air around him was filled with red laser shots, similar to what came out of his own pistol, and yet softer, somehow…more of a dark pink than a full-out red. He rose to his knees because suddenly he knew that he wasn't under attack at all.

"Scott, report!" his father barked.

"They're not shooting at me," he said, rising to his feet.

"They who?"

Scott could see the beams emanating from one direction and headed toward the spot where he'd found Al's watch on a rock, where the beams disappeared as though hitting an invisible wall.

"I don't know, Dad, I—"

The next time something moved, he lunged to try and grab it, but wound up sailing through the air and hitting his shoulder on a tree trunk.

"Scott, get the hell out of there!"

Then Scott looked down at the rock again, where he'd found Alan's watch. Just beyond it there were twigs that were placed much too precisely to be natural. He crawled forward on his hands and knees, laser fire still filling the air from about three feet off the ground and up for another ten feet.

"I don't believe it," he breathed.

"What the hell is going on?" Jeff roared.

"He's here." Scott looked up at the jungle in front of him. He could see nothing at all but jungle, and yet…he looked back down at the twigs.

Sure enough, the twigs spelled out clear as day ALAN TIN-TIN, hyphen and all.

"They're here, Father!" Scott cried as the entirety of the world around him…except for what he was looking directly at…seemed like it was all completely displacing, moving around and yet somehow staying exactly the same. "Send Thunderbird 2, send her now!"

He felt like whatever was moving, was closing in on him. And then he turned to crawl away from the rock and the twig letters, but as he did, felt something grab hold of his waist and yank hard.

And then he heard no more.

The flight to the jungles of Malaysia had been tense for Virgil and Gordon. Not to mention how strained John's voice had become over the airwaves, nor the carefully concealed fright behind their father's level tones.

But…they had a plan.

Sort of.

Because after Scott had disappeared, John and Brains noted that the area they'd been called a void, had shrunk substantially in size. And suddenly the Tiger Moth appeared on Thunderbird 5's scanners, nose-down in a tiny clearing not far as the crow flies from where Scott had found Al's watch.

Virgil was going to winch Gordon down, have him attach cables to various points on Thunderbird 6, and then they'd haul her up into the pod and begin searching her for clues.

It seemed sound. Never mind that two Kyranos and two Tracys were missing and they hadn't any more to go on than Scott saying Alan was there, and the Tiger Moth circumstantially confirming it.

Now, as Virgil stared at the viewscreen, through which he could see Gordon attaching the fourth heavy-duty cable to the Tiger's tail, Brains came over the airwaves with an idea so fantastical that it might actually be—

"Wait," Virg said, holding up a hand even though they couldn't see him at the moment. "You're telling us that seismic and hyper-radar subterranean readings are telling you this Nothing, this…Void…are emanating from beneath a point central to the area of the nothingness."

"Ah, y-yes, Virgil, that's it."

"And," Jeff's voice was next, "that it's not anything you can explain with science that's causing it."

"Precisely," John intervened. "Dad, whatever's caused this vortex of energy, this area that I'm sure the Kyranos, Scott and Alan are lost in, it's not something I've ever encountered, even in theoretical physics or quantum physics. In fact, it borders on the quantum mechanical theories but nothing in our research has ever accounted for this particular phenomena."

"He's starting to sound like Brains," Gordon quipped from his headset. Virgil snorted in response. "All set, Virg, bring me up."

"FAB, winching up now. Father, Gordon's finished securing the cables to the Tiger Moth. Once he's aboard, we'll pull her up."

"FAB, Virgil. John, Brains, I want to know where this energy signature is emanating from. I want to know why it's getting smaller, and whether Alan, Scott, Tin-Tin and Kyrano are going to get squashed to nothingness when it finally collapses altogether!"

"We're on it, Dad," John said with as much assurance as he could muster. "I'm consulting with a quantum mechanic who is a little bit more on the supernatural side of quantum science than I am."

"We're going to base decisions about our brothers' lives on a witch doctor?" Virgil asked.

"No," John said, appearing in Virgil's viewscreen as Gordon's winch-up completed. "We're going to base decisions about our brothers' lives on a witch."

It was all Virgil could do, to resist doing a literal facepalm.

Gordon, down in 2's nose, didn't bother to resist the urge at all.

Scott quickly discovered three things upon being sucked into the vortex of Nothing. One, it was downright disorienting to experience absolutely no sound. Two, he'd never been so relieved in his life as when the sucking-in knocked him into two people, and upon extracting himself from the human pileup he'd created, he discovered Alan and Tin-Tin were both very much alive. And three, he'd never seen a more modern-looking ancient building than the pyramid and its accompanying rectangular add-on in all his born days.

Hand gestures and lip-reading didn't make it very easy to find out that Kyrano was inside the pyramid, and that they couldn't find a way in to him. But what took the cake was when the ground beneath their feet vibrated and Scott looked up to find a laser beam shooting out the top of the pyramid. A laser beam that looked exactly like the ones that had been volleying around him before he got sucked into the void area.

And because Scott was a reconnaissance man by trade, he decided a jog around the entirety of the two structures was in order, in spite of Alan's protests. So the three set off at a fast clip, even though Tin-Tin looked like she might keel over from exhaustion at any moment. It took them a good, long while to make it around the rectangle, and when they got to the eastern side of the pyramid, Scott skidded to a halt, his jaw dropping.

For the impenetrable pyramid no longer was. Impenetrable, that is.

One wide staircase led up to two heavy wooden doors, and those two wooden doors were wide open. He figured from Tin-Tin's rapid and somewhat annoyed gesticulations that these doors hadn't been open the last hundred times she and Alan had checked. But they were now, and so with very careful hand signals and very slowly mouthed words, Scott made sure the others knew to be careful, and drew his weapon. Al pulled his own out of his backpack. Tin-Tin scowled because she didn't have one.

In through the double doors, crossing a room that had to be half the size of a football field, if not more, the eerie quiet gave Scott chills as their eyes darted everywhere at once. They wouldn't be able to hear if someone was waiting to ambush them, so eyesight was all they had.

Long halls stretched down what had to be the rectangular part of the build, one to the left and one to the right as they faced them. Scott decided splitting up was not an option, and his goal was to find the source of that red laser beaming out the top of the pyramid. He was sure that, having seen the same thing earlier, whatever it was, was the key to all of this.

And so they turned away from the long halls and instead made their way up a wide stone staircase against the western wall. Up they climbed, up to a second floor…which contained many doors, each of which were locked. Up the next flight, each floor getting progressively smaller as the pyramid rose, to find another set of doors, all locked.

Further and further they went until they reached what Scott knew had to be the very top floor of the pyramid. He quickly discovered three things as they stood there in awe of the spectacle before them. One, people could float, if the bald guy hanging suspended over the abyss was any indication. Two, there was a flippin' abyss. And three? Kyrano was apparently okay with all this. He didn't seem shocked at all. Oh. Yeah. Kyrano was there. So…four things, not three. Go figure.

Hugs between father and daughter, and some quickly scribbled words on a layer of dark dust covering the floor, and the truth was revealed. The man hanging suspended, unseeing and unmoving over the abyss, had opened a doorway to another place, or so Kyrano believed. And Kyrano himself was powerless to close it. There was only one way to handle this, Kyrano insisted, and that was to bomb the abyss and force the doorway to another world closed.

There wasn't enough dust for Kyrano to get into the nitty-gritty details with them, but Scott didn't care at this point…because whatever this was needed to be stopped and hell, dropping a bomb into an abyss was something they could do. They could also, as a result of bombing said abyss, cause incredible damage under the surface of the earth. They could kill every living thing within ten miles. They could, potentially, be unsuccessful and just piss the other dimension off completely, starting a massive supernatural war between the nothing place and Earth.

None of these being particularly wanted results.

But Kyrano assured him none of these would come to pass. However, the trajectory of the blast would have to be precise, and he believed he'd calculated where that was. Now all they had to do was get out of the nothing area.

Tin-Tin reasoned that if Alan's watch could just go through the barrier, then so could they. It seemed logical. All four of them agreed to it. "But what about the bald guy?" Scott mouthed to Kyrano.

If Kyrano's look said "You'd rather have this one dead, trust me," well, Scott wouldn't be telling anyone because they'd never believe him anyway. There was no way they could get up to the air over the heated abyss to grab the guy without Thunderbird 2. Maybe they could rescue him before dropping the bomb.

If his dad would go for a bomb at all.

If they got out to propose the solution.

If Kyrano was right.

If.

Scott was nothing if not in charge, even in the midst of nobody being able to hear their own breathing. Alan, however, was nothing if not stubborn and – he rightfully pointed out as Scott handed his watch back to him – he was the one who figured out using said watch that things could pass back out of the void area just as well as they could get in.

But Scott wouldn't allow his baby brother to do something that had the potential, if Kyrano was to be believed, of ripping their molecules to shreds. It wasn't a thought Scott found particularly pleasant either but a field commander's gotta do what a—well, you know.

It took the group of four only a handful of minutes to find the void 'wall.' Scott kicked at a small rock and watched it disappear as though by magic. Just as he was about to steel himself for a run through the wall into the unknown, movement to his left caught his eye. More movement to his right. He whipped around. Nothing was moving. But…Al, Tin-Tin and Kyrano were seeing the movements too. Their heads or just their eyes whipped back and forth around them all, and Scott realized he wasn't alone. He hadn't just been seeing things.

Something was out here. Something that only moved when you weren't looking at it. Something that was invisible when you tried to zero in on it. Something, most probably, from the place the baldheaded guy had opened a doorway to. Scott vowed that whatever happened, as soon as they figured out this void thing, that bald dude was seriously going down. If for no other reason than for being a complete moron for doing it to begin with.

"What are those things?" Scott mouthed to Kyrano.

"From there," Kyrano mouthed back as he pointed up to the red laser light still shooting out the top of the pyramid.

Other-dimensional beings. Creatures that were all around, invisible when looked at, and had some form of lasers at their disposal. But the lasers weren't weapons, Scott was convinced of that…or they'd all be dead already.

As though conjuring it up from his imagination, suddenly the small, scattered blasts of red laser fire began again. It was over their heads, mostly, some of it nearer Kyrano than the rest of them. Scott looked Alan in the eye. It went without saying that once Scott went through, it was Al's responsibility to see to the Kyranos' safety.

Alan's slight nod indicated he understood completely.

Alan watched as Scott disappeared through the wall they couldn't see. He turned to Tin-Tin, who nodded resolutely with a beautiful look of determination upon her face, indicating she was ready to be next. They had no way of knowing if this would work, but if Jeff did allow them to bomb or otherwise try to destroy the doorway to wherever, they couldn't risk being within the voided area and being killed by whatever happened.

And then, like the mirror of their very own family business logo, a hand appeared from thin air reaching out toward Tin-Tin. Alan recognized that arm and grinned. Tin-Tin smiled, took Scott's hand and allowed him to lead her through.

They were getting out of there. But none of them were out of the woods yet.

It took ten minutes to convince Brains, and then another ten to convince Jeff. Then it took another ten minutes to confirm the theory that Thunderbird 2 may not function correctly in the voided area…which left only one possibility for delivering the explosion required.

Virgil and Brains devised a way to rig up one of Thunderbird 2's atomic filaments to a ten-gallon tank of accelerant and a trigger device. Of course, the container they had to put the atomic filament into was so large it filled the cockpit, wires connecting it to the detonator in the co-pilot's seat. The tank of accelerant was purposely thin-skinned to allow it to break on impact. The problem was that since the job of the trigger was to pop open the end of the filament's protective tank, it couldn't be sure to succeed.

The bigger problem was aiming Thunderbird 6 precisely to the right spot that would maximize the chance of success in blasting the dimensional opening shut, while minimizing the impact to anything outside of the abyss.

John wanted more study, but Kyrano insisted the void area was so unstable it could envelop the entirety of Malaysia within seconds, without a moment's notice at that. First Malaysia and then, he predicted, the world. Which meant at the very least, all sound would cease to travel…at the worst, it would end all life on Earth.

Jeff made the executive decision to proceed with the plan, leaving only the small matter of steering the little bi-plane to the right spot.

Now that they could all hear again, those who'd been inside the void area found their hearing ultra-sensitive. Alan had told everyone a million times already to tone it down, and Scott had agreed…while Virgil and John looked at them like they were nuts because "We're talking normally, what the hell?"

"We'll explain later," Scott said, too intent on the task at hand to be bothered. "I'm going to take the Tiger Moth down and bail as it breaches the opening of the abyss."

"But I'm the expert in flying her, Scott, you know I'm the best man for the job!" Alan protested, wincing when his own voice got too loud for his ears.

"You are not going and that's that!" Scott huffed, turning toward the poor Tiger Moth who was, at the present moment, suspended in 2's pod by the very same cables that'd brought her up, nose-down, ready to be dropped.

"This propeller's not going to spin without a good three to four hours' worth of work," Tin-Tin reported, returning to the group standing near the entry back to the cockpit. She wiped her hands off on a rag as she continued. "The crash landing bent the shaft. There's no way it'll even start spinning, let alone continue spinning."

"Can it be steered without the engine being on?" Scott asked, moving toward the plane.

"If you need to ask, you're not the one to do it," Alan said, steely voice broaching no argument as Scott stopped dead in his tracks and turned to eye his younger brother. "Scott, I have studied everything there is to know about this plane and have actually done a good 95% of what I've studied. I know how to manually manipulate her without power. You don't. We don't have time to keep discussing this."

With that, Alan used a blade of the propeller to step up and grab hold of the edge of the co-pilot's cubby. "I've got this," he grunted, pulling himself up until he was in the copilot's seat. He looked down at where Scott, Kyrano, Tin-Tin, Virgil and Gordon had gathered near the propeller. Then he lifted his watch to his face. "Brains, estimate number of seconds between 2 dropping 6, and reaching the abyss."

"Well, ah, if Virgil drops the, uh, Tiger Moth from halfway through the hatch, i-it will give you more speed, a-and from the information supplied by, ah, Kyrano, I-I estimate you will require, ah, 202 seconds."

"Two-oh-two. Got it." Alan looked down at the crowd again. "Okay. Let's get to it."

"Alan—" Scott tried.

"If this works, I'll see you 203 seconds after you drop me."

With that, Al strapped himself into the co-pilot's seat, the accelerant and detonator between his legs, grabbed the spare pair of goggles in the cubby's side pocket and put them on his head. His plan was to unbuckle as soon as the g-forces were sufficient to keep him from slamming forward into the yoke. Then he'd hike himself up to bail with two seconds left, and that would be that.

Boy, was he glad his watch was working again. He was going to need it.

Tin-Tin's lip-synched "I love you" followed him as the hatch at the bottom of the pod was opened…as he and the Tiger Moth were lowered until they were hanging halfway out the pod. 2 was over ten thousand feet in the air in order to steer clear of the voided area. Below…in front of him, from his perspective…Alan could see the bright laser beam coming through an opening that was maybe only twice as large as Tiger herself.

"Like threading a needle," he muttered, steely resolve filling him, his mission making him calm and steady. "All right, girl," he said to his plane as Virgil began the countdown over his mic. "Here we go."

Alan's hand waited against his watch. The moment he heard the cables release, he started the stopwatch feature and the seconds began ticking by as Tiger began to fall. The controls were a bitch to hold. His muscles strained, hands white-knuckled on the yoke. Time seemed to stand still. He looked at the watch. The seconds were still moving along. 62 now.

"Alan, report!" Jeff yelled into his headset.

"FAB, Father," Al replied. He didn't have time for chit-chat now. He had to concentrate. He looked at his watch. "75 seconds."

This had to work. He knew everyone on the island and on 2 were gathered around a viewscreen watching. He stared hard at the laser beam. "98 seconds," he reported as the Tiger's propeller met the top of the beam.

"Keep her steady," Scott whisper-droned into his ear. Al smiled. He'd said the same thing the first time Alan had flown Thunderbird 3.

Al looked at this watch. "164 seconds," he said. It was almost time. He quickly undid the harness straps with one hand, keeping the Tiger steady with the other. Glanced at his watch. "194."

Down and down and down and…silence. Once again, he was deaf. No sound of the Tiger Moth and, he looked at his watch, no seconds countdown. Al grinned. Because he'd been counting down mentally along with the watch. So he knew that…198…it was almost time…200…to jump!

Alan vaulted out of the Tiger, tucked himself into a ball and landed on the stone floor not two feet from the abyss as the Tiger disappeared into it. There was no sign of the bald man, and that was all Al had time to think before an explosion rocked his world.

He awoke to a pair of beautiful hazel eyes looking directly at him. "Tin-Tin," he breathed, hand automatically coming up. She took it in both of hers. "We're alive…and I can hear."

Tin-Tin's eyes glistened as she nodded. "Yes…thanks to you. You saved us, Alan. The whole world, my father says."

"I love you. Don't ever leave me again. Please," Alan begged.

"I won't," she whispered, leaning down and pressing a soft kiss to his lips. "I promise."

That was all Al needed to hear to lose consciousness once again. Thunderbird 6 may have been gone, but that didn't mean he couldn't build another one…and take to the skies once more and forever with his co-pilot.

His lover.

His Tin-Tin.