I have long wondered the following: In the episode "Desperate Intruder," when Brains is buried up to his neck and roasting in the desert sand, and Tin-Tin is mesmerized in her trailer, and Professor Blakely is out cold and injured in his trailer, Jeff tries to contact them repeatedly on all frequencies after Brains misses his regular check-in, but fails to raise anyone. So who the heck was it that activated the emergency signal picked up back on Tracy Island, which was why Jeff sent Scott and Virgil to Lake Anasta?

This is my attempt to answer my own question.

Note: Written for the Tracy Island Writers Forum's 2015 "Promise" Challenge.

INTRUDER ALERT

He had promised himself so many things since he'd first discovered via his half-brother the treasure trove of technology Kyrano had managed to worm his way into the midst of. The more information he'd sucked from the mind of the weak fool, the more his eyes had glowed with excitement. It had taken Jeff Tracy and his small group of do-gooders over four years to go from planning and design to being ready to operate. And throughout those four long years, the Hood had vowed to himself that he would wring every last morsel of detail from his older sibling's brain even if it killed the man he'd hated since childhood.

While the Hood had been successful at getting enough information that he'd been able to force International Rescue to start operating by planting a bomb aboard Fireflash, what he hadn't counted on was the garish pink Rolls Royce that'd shot him off the edge of a cliff while he'd been making his getaway.

Not a mistake he would make again.

It had turned out to be a good thing that he'd not yet killed Kyrano, accidentally or on purpose, when he'd discovered through his weekly mind attack that members of International Rescue were mounting a treasure hunt at a remote desert lake called Anasta with a dimwitted professor named Blakely. He'd not cared who from the organization was going to be there. All that had filled his mind were visions of jewels and precious metals from an ancient civilization, not unlike those he'd discovered in a temple deep in the jungles of his home country. A temple he had subsequently seized to use as a base of operations while slaves that he'd acquired both through purchase and force toiled ceaselessly at uncovering all its hidden secrets.

He knew the members of International Rescue sought further glory beyond that which they already had from saving lives, and had proclaimed that they would fail and be buried at the bottom of Lake Anasta. The Hood fully intended to snag all that glory for himself by letting them lead him to the treasure and then stealing it out from under their noses while they slept. And doing them in for good measure.

But once again, they'd thrown a monkey wrench into what had seemed a foolproof plan, because one of the three people in the expedition was his very own half-niece. And the other member of International Rescue on hand was none other than the genius responsible for the technology he coveted so very badly.

As soon as he'd seen their faces, and realized what he truly had in his grasp, he'd made himself an extra promise. The first had been that he'd walk out of that desert ten times richer than he already was. This second, new promise was that he'd be taking Tin-Tin and Hackenbacker with him.

The first time Brains came to, and realized with horror the predicament he was in, his mind quickly calculated how much time he'd have until his body succumbed to the burning heat of the desert sun. It didn't look good, what with nobody answering his weak cries for help and no one around but the strange Arab-looking man who'd apparently been the one to bury him there to begin with.

He wanted to know where the treasure was, but Brains, though his mind ran on many tracks at once, could be singularly focused if he so chose. And from the moment he'd awakened his only focus was survival, which meant he needed water. It was easy to just keep asking for that rather than try to bargain with someone who apparently had knocked him out with little more than a look.

Which begged the question, of course, that if he could make him pass out with his eyes, why couldn't he simply have extracted the information from his mind? A question that one of the tracks of Brains' mind was puzzling over, in spite of the dehydration.

Yet another of the tracks of his mind was keeping exact count of the time as closely as he could calculate it by the position of the sun baking him. He knew that really, his only saving grace – the only reason he was still alive – was the fact that from his shoulders on down he was relatively cool. Still dehydrated, yes, but cool, because the sand itself was keeping him so beneath the surface where the sun couldn't reach.

It was small comfort.

That same track keeping time was concurrently estimating how much longer it'd be before his auto-SOS would kick in. Brains called out Tin-Tin's name. Called out to the professor. Received no response. He closed his eyes and his eidetic memory flashed a scene before him that now, made his heart ache.

"Ah, hi, Kyrano. What can I, ah, do for you?"

"You and my daughter leave tomorrow for Lake Anasta."

"Yes." He watched the older man hesitate, something he wasn't used to Kyrano doing. Brains frowned at him. "What is it?"

"Something feels strange to me about this journey," Kyrano finally admitted, looking him in the eyes. "Promise me you will keep my daughter safe."

In that moment, Brains felt a weight of responsibility unlike any he'd felt before, settle onto his shoulders. "I promise," he replied. "Tin-Tin will, ah, be perfectly safe with me, ah, Kyrano."

The man held his eyes for a moment longer, then nodded his head once, turned and left the lab.

Brains sighed and reopened his eyes. He'd made Tin-Tin's father a promise. And it was a promise that apparently, he'd not kept.

Even if the SOS went off in the roughly five minutes he'd calculated it would, there was no telling what shape Tin-Tin was in. Had the stranger taken her captive? Had he knocked her out, too? Had he killed her? Or done unspeakable things to her?

The what-ifs made him shiver in spite of how boiling hot he was.

The shiver led his mind to recall yet another moment shared with the head of this large family he'd been more or less adopted into.

It was colder than cold in the aptly named Cold Room, a sealed offshoot from his laboratory. Brains shivered in spite of the protective suit he was wearing, and noted the raised eyebrow from the member of the Tracy family in there helping him.

"What's the matter, Brains, isn't your suit holding up to the test?"

"Ah, well, Mr. Tracy, I, ah, it would appear that the phrase 'mind over matter' is applicable. I know it's cold in here. Therefore, ah, I am cold."

Jeff chuckled, the sound echoing round the new Extreme Weather suit's helmet. "Since we can't do much but stand here until the clock runs out," Jeff said as he leaned back against the wall and folded his arms over his chest, "how's the work on the communicator refinement coming along?"

Brains turned to face his employer...savior...and friend. "Well, ah, Mr. Tracy, after the, ah, Eiffel Tower rescue in which, ah, Virgil was unable to reach his wristwatch to contact Mobile Control, I, ah, puzzled over a solution for quite some time."

Jeff nodded in acknowledgment.

"The, ah, answer came to me one night while, ah, sleeping and I'm pretty sure it will do the, ah, trick."

"What answer is that?"

"Well, ah, essentially it will rely on each member of, ah, International Rescue's communicators being programmed with precisely what they're, ah, doing, and the, ah, amount of time it's expected to take. So for, ah, for example, on a rescue, Scott would ensure as he, ah, dispatches each member to their duty, that he, ah, inputs the information into his Mobile Control computer, which will denote when the, ah, member is expected to check in."

"Interesting," Jeff said, pushing off the wall and walking aimlessly around the small four-by-four room for a few seconds. "So let's say he sends Virgil into a basement and estimates he should check in with him ten minutes later. He inputs that into the MC computer and then what happens?"

"If, ah, Virgil doesn't check in, in the, ah, expected timeframe, Mr. Tracy, then, ah, Mobile Control will receive an alert, and, ah, Scott will try to contact him. If Virgil doesn't respond, then, ah, Scott will know he's in trouble."

"Sounds reasonable," Jeff replied. "Can we use this technology for non-rescue operations, though?"

"I, ah, don't see why not. What, ah, specifically, did you have in mind?"

"Well, if one or two of us head off-island, even for recreation, we all still have set times to check in, just so everyone knows everyone's okay."

"Ah, yes, I see where you're, ah, going with this. You want to know if any of us misses a check-in outside of a rescue, can we, ah, somehow be alerted?"

"Exactly." Jeff had stopped moving around and come to stand directly in front of him. "I need to always know we're safe, Brains. And I need to always know when one of us is in trouble, whether it's rescue-related or not."

Brains saw the depth of emotion in Jeff's eyes and nodded his head. "I'll, ah, make it happen, sir."

Jeff's serious face slowly morphed into a crooked smile. "Stop calling me sir."

"Yes, sir, ah, Mr. Tracy." Brains felt color heat his cheeks as Jeff all-out laughed.

Now it wasn't color heating his cheeks, but blazing sunshine. Cut off suddenly by a shadow and a menacing voice.

"Water," was all Brains could think of as he felt himself become drier and drier.

The man wanted information.

Brains wanted out of the sand.

He promised he'd let them all go if Brains told him where to find the treasure.

Brains didn't believe him. And he knew something that this menace did not: in thirty seconds, give or take one or two, the emergency signal would alert Base that all was not well. Because Brains had missed his promised morning check-in, and he'd given himself a fifteen-minute leeway before the auto-alert would trigger.

Yet this knowledge was small comfort to him as every track in his overly busy mind slowly started swirling together and knocking into each other, thoughts mingling and shoving and pushing and getting so mixed up that no matter how hard he tried to hold onto a single thought, the only one that would let itself be heard was "Water."

Something he obviously wasn't going to be getting anytime soon.

It was all just too much, and so consciousness slipped away.

The Hood could not for the life of him, as the veritable swarm of Thunderbirds landed at Lake Anasta, figure how in the hell International Rescue had even learned that their members were in peril.

Later, as Thunderbird Four fired upon him, damaging his little one-man sub irreparably, he knew that he was left with no choice now but to retreat. Without treasure. Without glory. Without Tin-Tin or Hackenbacker.

He had failed to keep any of the promises he'd made to himself. And so as he swam away from the sub and from the damnable do-gooders who were so close and yet outnumbered him far too much for him to be able to do anything about it, he cursed each and every one of them yet again for his misfortunes.

So this hadn't turned out as planned. There would be another time. Another place. Another chance to take them down once and for all. This time, the promise the Hood made to himself, he knew would eventually be kept: someday, International Rescue would pay dearly for the number of times they'd thwarted him.

Someday.

Everyone else on Tracy Island had long since retired for the evening after the excitement of them all returning home safe and sound. Brains had made himself scarce upon arrival for one very good reason: he was ashamed.

Not of the fact that they'd been taken by surprise by whoever that Arab man had been, but of the fact that he'd not done the one thing he'd promised a young woman's father he'd do: keep her safe.

Oh, sure, Tin-Tin was all right. In fact, she was better than Brains himself was, since she'd not been left to cook outdoors like he had. But that wasn't the point, and Brains had been beating himself up every way his mind could think of, where Tin-Tin having been mesmerized into immobility was concerned.

He was just standing there in the center of the small bedroom up the stairs from the lab, going over and over and over in his mind all the ways things could have gone so much more terribly wrong than that had, when his door chime sounded.

He looked at his watch. Who would be here to see him at this time of night?

"Come in," he called out.

The door swished open and Brains felt everything drain right out of him when he saw who it was.

"I hope I'm not disturbing you, Mr. Brains. I sensed you were awake."

"Ah, no, ah, Kyrano, you're not. Please come in."

Kyrano nodded and glided across the room in that way he had of making it seem like he was floating rather than walking. Brains sometimes wondered if he wasn't doing exactly that. When the older man stopped directly in front of him, Brains had little choice but to look right at his eyes.

"You're troubled," Kyrano stated in a matter-of-fact way that left Brains no out.

"I, ah," he stammered in response.

"Is it what happened at the lake?"

Brains nodded dumbly. How Kyrano always managed to worm things out of people, even things they wanted to hide, was beyond him. But he'd seen him do it to Jeff Tracy himself, so Brains knew he'd be little match for the man.

"Tell me."

Brains swallowed hard and looked down at his shoes. "I didn't keep my promise to you," he whispered.

"How do you mean?"

Looking back up in surprise, Brains explained, "I didn't keep Tin-Tin safe. She was attacked by that stranger!" He knew his emotions were getting the better of him but couldn't stop them from bursting to the surface when faced with Tin-Tin's father. "It could've gone so much worse, ah, Kyrano! Ah, she could've been...killed or, or, or raped or—"

Kyrano effectively stopped Brains' tirade by reaching out and pulling the younger man into his arms. Brains went, stiffly at first, but when Kyrano enveloped him in a fierce hug, Brains let himself relax into it.

"On the contrary, my friend," Kyrano said softly and, Brains thought, with a voice that trembled slightly. "It was your ingenuity that ensured the worst did not happen."

"But she was attacked," Brains repeated, and felt tears pricking at the backs of his eyes. "When I, when I think of what might have...I'm sorry I didn't keep her safe."

"You did, Brains," Kyrano countered, pulling away so they could look at each other properly. "Your auto-alert brought help in time to save all three of you." He smiled. "Yes, she was attacked. And you and Blakely were almost killed. But you brought her home to me, as you promised, safe and sound."

Brains swallowed hard.

"I cannot protect my daughter from the world," Kyrano concluded, "and so I know sometimes things will happen to her that may not be so good. But you, Brains, did keep your promise to me. And I am forever in your debt because of it."

Brains watched in awe as the man he thought for sure would never let him near his daughter again turned and left the room. A smile slowly spread across his face as sleep finally nudged at the corners of his mind.

"Thank you, Kyrano," he said aloud to the empty room as he fell into bed at last. "Thank you."