Veg-notables: For whumptober. This one kind wrote itself and I wrote it a$$ backwards starting with the end and filling in the rest. It ended up longer than I expected so I apologize in advance for the word spewage - The boys wanted to banter so I let ‘em.
As always, thanks to @gumnut-logic for her help hashing out the plot.
“Hey, we’re almost done on the South end of the factory but it’s slow going. The smoke and the super structure of this place is screwing with our scans so we’re having to back track.”
“I’ll see if there’s anything John can do on his end to clear it up. Find anything?”
Virgil shook his head before he realized that Scott couldn’t see him. “It’s what I haven’t found that disturbing me. What the hell happened to the fire suppression system?”
“Not sure. Both John and the GDF confirmed this facility was registered as meeting requirements on its last inspection. It’s a question I am going to be posing to the CEO once he’s done showboating for the media hounds.”
“Well, wait for me. I would love to hear the answer.”
He got a chuckle from the other end of the open comm. “I’ll see what I can do. Get back at it and check in with me in five.. Or if you find anything.”
“Will do.” The comm channel clicked off and Virgil turned as his youngest brother appeared in the doorway at his back with a tote bag full of suppression grenades.
They were making their way through what was left of a chemical manufacturing plant that had seen better days. They’d received a request for assistance in the early hours of the morning as flames has shot some fifty feet above the roof line. The noxious fumes of the burning cocktail of who knew what that wafted out had been pushed by a North Eastern to the neighbouring township. Forcing the local services to call for the immediate evacuation of the 8, 962 residents.
During the course of the evacuation Scott had been roped in to help shuttle while Virigl and Alan had stayed behind to help with containment. For the most part the fire out due to their specialized gear and a fire retardant foam that Brains had concocted for just this scenario.
Now though they had to pick their way through the smoldering remains to search for survivors who could be holed up in any of the emergency fire shelters that were scattered around the confusing maze of corridors that made up the complex.
The installation of a mobile ventilation system was doing it best to clear out the contaminants and particulates polluting the air but the smoke was still hung heavy over the hulking, burnt out husk of a factory which meant that Virgil and Alan had to do the majority of the foot work themselves.
The place had to be cleared back to the GDF before they would risk the lives of any of the local crews on clean up.
“How’s are inventory?” He asked by way of greeting and turned to focus on the holographic schematics of the building that were hovering above his wrist unit.
“Depleting but we should have enough.” Alan dropped the bag at his brother’s feet and started redistributing the spherical concussion bombs into Virgil’s bag. “We’ll have to start using these sparingly.”
Virgil rubbed a hand over his sooty visor, “Well looks like the fire is contained in this section. Should just be a matter of snuffing out hot spots to prevent flare up from here on out.
Alan nodded in understanding and pushed up to his feet. His eyebrow cocked when he noticed a look passed over Virgil’s face. He stepped closer in inquiry. “You get something?”
Virgil’s brows furrowed in concentration. “Not sure, think I saw a blip over in the North East corner, back by the biochem labs.”
“We went through there though.” His brother stated. “The area was clear.”
“We must have missed something.” Grabbing his bag off the floor, he flung it over his shoulder. “Better go back and check it out again. This place had a lot of staff and the numbers haven’t come in from the department supervisors yet. We can’t be sure everyone got out.”
Alan managed to just barely suppress a pout and Virgil bumped his shoulder brotherly as he stepped around him. “Come on, Rocket Boy. Sooner we get this done the sooner you will be back home killing Zombies and scarfing down veggie sticks.”
Virgil grinned as his brother grumbled out. “It’s Rocket Man, thank you very much.”
“Hey Squirt, when you can see over the dash of Two I’ll start referring to you as ‘Man’.. Until then, your stuck.” He dodges a swat from his baby brother. Friendly ribbing aside they had a job to do but it helped relieve some of the stress.
Back on task, they headed out back down the blackened corridor, ducking under hanging ceiling lights and stepped over fallen ceiling tiles and other assorted debris.
The track back across the rat’s maze of hallways and cross corridors, through disengaged mag-locked doors and over a rather rickety catwalk that spanned ash covered vats; their tops having blown off during the blaze, took far longer than Virgil would have liked.
He knew they were running low on time with the GDF circling outside looking for answers and the local authorities eager to start their investigation into the cause of the fire Virgil needed to find a way to pick up their pace.
Stopping to orient himself, Virgil check his wrist comm again. “This place is way too complicated for a private sector supplier.” He said this offhandedly and wasn’t expecting a response back in kind from the blonde at his six. He got one anyways.
“Maybe it’s a top secret government think tank where they brew up all sorts of crazy potions for world domination.”
Virgil snorted and nodded off to the left. “Down here.” Flicking on his shoulder mount, the high powered beam lit up the windowless corridor. “Ya right. Do you honestly think the Black Suits would let us in here if it were. Even with our affiliations with the GDF we would be lucky to get within ten miles of this place.”
“Cover up.” Alan tossed out with a shrug. “Who really knows how these government spook organizations work.”
Virgil shook his head and turned down a short set of stairs and stopped abruptly at a large set of blast doors. “You spend way too much time surfing the conspiracy sites.”
“Everyone needs a hobby.”
Rolling his eyes, he tapped his comm line open. “Scott, we got something.”
“10-4. Talk to me ”
Virgil knew his brother was following their progress from his ‘bird along with John floating around up in space. “Looks like another fire proof room but I can’t find it on the schematics.”
John’s voice cut in with no preamble. “Those were the ones that were provided to the local planning board with the factories last retrofit. They should be up to date.”
“Well, from where I am standing,” Virgil rapped a padded knuckle on the heavy door, “They are inaccurate and I can’t get a read on what’s on the other side. ”
“One moment,” John sounded a bit peeved. Virgil knew he hated inaccuracy and the ineptitude of lazy people not doing their jobs, making stupid mistake drove him bat shit crazy.
Virgil inspected the door and the surrounding area and pointed back down the corridor. “Check around the corner and see if there is an electrical closet would ya? Or a service panel? Door this big is magnetically sealed so a power relay is needed. ”
“Like it would be on this side of it? Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?” Alan asked
“If it’s not in use it will be powered from out here for maintenance purposes. Once activated though its self sufficient and it disconnects from the external source for preventative reasons.” Like opening up to a massive blaze or a toxic chemical spill.
Alan zipped off around the corner, his comm line active so they could keep in communication with one another as per S.O.P when on site.
“What do you think is in there?” Alan’s voice sounded in his ear, he was still close enough that it echoed a bit with a tiny time delay as it went through their secure network.
Virgil tweaked the volume and went back to inspection the door and the coded palm reader that was a charred mess to the right of it. “First guess is it’s another fire room but considering its not on spec…who knows.”
Scott’s voice chimed in, “I’m done playing taxi. Last patient has been dropped at the next closest hospital. I’ll have a word with the CEO and Colonel Casey when I am back on site in ten.. Get us some answers as to what the hell is going on.”
“Roger that.”
Alan appeared back at his side. “Nothing.”
Virgil frowned at the door and ripped the charred panel from the wall to expose the mass of surprisingly undamaged wires behind it. “This isn’t adding up..”
Pulling out a network access key from his baldric, Virgil started pulling wires. “Hey Johnny, I got a hack job for you if your done angrily tearing the local civil servants a new one.”
“Patch me in.”
“Yup, working on it now. “ Stripping a few wires, he tested to see if there was power to them and hooked them up to the small device. “You find the idiot that misfiled those docs?”
“Not yet,” Came the disgruntled sign of annoyance. “Eos is working on it.”
“Ouch.. that’s gonna hurt.” Virgil could hear the evil glee in the red heads voice and almost felt sorry for the poor bastard that was going to get steam rolled once he was found.
The small device in his hand flared to life and just as suddenly the door before him hissed as the locking system released. “Wow, that was fast.”
“That wasn’t me.”
Virgil blinked and locked eyes with Alan. “Understood, keep an eye on things for me would ya? We’re going in.”
“Be careful, Thunderbird Two. Picking up weird anomalies from the other side.”
“Roger, stand by.”
It took both of them to pull the heavy door open, boots finding little purchase on the foam slicked floor. Braced against the wall with one final heave the mighty steel portal swung up just wide enough for them to pass through one at a time. Standing in the opening, Virgil peered into the space beyond, eyes narrowing when a curious distortion caused the air to waver
Virgil’s eyes widened as what he was seeing registered with the still smoldering remnants in the corridor. He only had seconds to push Alan out of the way before all hell broke loose.
The ensuing conflagration of heat knocked the breath from Virgil’s lungs as he was tossed like a rag doll through burning ozone. The sudden and abrupt stop as his body met wall caused pain to burst across his whole nervous system and left him a whimpering heap on the floor.
The world grayed out around the edges but one thing kept him just his side of blissful oblivion, the thought of his little brother.
By sheer force of will he commanded his lungs to start working again and with a reserve of energy he didn’t know he had, he lifted his torso off the floor, stars flashing across his retinas.
Coughing, he dragged himself across the floor ears straining against the buzz of a million bees as he called out for his sibling. His voice hoarse and tinny to his whirring ear drums.
“Alan!! Thunderbird Two to anyone!” He was panicking and he knew it wasn’t helping but he had to find his baby brother. “Alan, god where are you? Answer me”
The visibility was completely next to none existent as smoke billowed out from whatever the room behind the blast doors had been. Flames scorching and white hot licked with renewed strength up the previously foamed walls with a growing intensity that he could feel through the protection of his fire gear and sweat trickled down the length of his spine. He had to get them out of here.
Oh god, where was his brother?
“Scott? Scott, I can’t find Allie…” Padding around on all fours as close to the ground as he could he reached out in every direction. Pushing singed debris and refuse out to the way as he search.
Coughing again, a fine spray of blood peppered across his visor but he wouldn’t give up, he couldn’t.
The hand that landed suddenly on his shoulder had his heart stuttering to a stop in his throat. The flash of red and that grabbed at his helmet kick started it back over again.
“Allie, oh thank God.”
“I’m okay but my comms are down. We gotta get out of here.”
Virgil nodded his agreement. Pushing up to a crouch, hell fire raining down around them, he look left and right to try and gauge the best direction to take. He gave his head a shake when the world greyed out around the edges of his vision and shot a hand out to brace himself against his brother’s shoulder.
“You okay, Virg?”
An odd expression passed over Virgil’s face as time seemed to crawl to a stop. The flames of the fire all around them stilling, the heat fading away and an odd, surreal chill slowly encompassed his body, radiating up his torso and slowly suffusing his limbs.
His thoughts grew distance as the center of the chill started to thaw with an excruciating burn and he looked down. What the…?The echo of confusion cut off abruptly as his gloved hand came away dark and wet.
“Oh god. Virgil, hang on..” Were the last words he heard before Earth reared up and hit him hard.
Starting this at 1 in the AM so not sure how good it is going to be. ‘Scuse the drool stains…Bit of a filler piece but I wanted to get Johnny PoV on things. I may come back and tweak this a bit later..
Not 100% satisfied with this one but meh.. wanted to get something up for you all.
@gumnut-logic ..::covered in riot gear happily munching on hard candy ::
Blanket warning: loads of internal dialogue.. Johnny is in an introspective mood and wouldn't shut up
Characters: Space bagel and others on the periphery
Whumptober - TaG’verse
Previous post can be found HERE
8. Stab Wound
Enjoy…
oOo
Despite the fact that John spent the majority of his time floating about 20 000 kilometers above the Earth on Five, he was actually well acquainted with the feeling of being stabbed.
He’d been thirteen at the time, surprisingly enough. Tall, lanky and awkward. All things that made him a massive target to the douche-bag crowd at school.
He was no stranger to being the odd man out. He was quieter than his brothers, more reserved and introverted. He preferred to spend his free time studying the things he loved while his siblings were in to all manners of extracurricular activities.
Not to say he didn’t do his own activities outside of school, his were just of different ilk to the boisterousness of other activities that would attract youth.
This tended to make a target out of his gingered hide.
One particular instance had been worse than the rest. A group of fellow classmates had taken a dislike him early on in the school year. He tried his best to ignore it as one of the boys was actually from a troubled home and was just looking for an outlet for his frustrations to make himself feel better.
John had learned fairly quickly that with bullies it was best just to ignore them and not react. Eventually they would grow bored and move on to other things.
This troubled individual had other plans though.
He took John’s lack of response and non reactive attitude as an affront to his person and set out to completely destroy him.
His tactic had been nothing short of guerrilla warfare..Lots of little things over the course of several weeks.. Everything for stealing his gym clothing to sabotaging a school project he had been working for an extra credit. At one point he’d even anonymously accused him of having a weapon in his locker, which resulted in the school going on lock down, the police being called in and a rather disturbing visited to the principal's office.
Due to this there was threat of a mark on his permanent school record which he had protested vehemently about but the school insisted they had to put it down as per procedure. It had taken his Dad threatening legal action on libel to get the school to drop the report and clear his file of any misdoings.
Clear record or not the damage was done. After that he couldn't go anywhere without other students either leaving the room or just down right avoiding him at all cost. They all thought he was going to snap and do something stupid despite the fact that he had been proven innocent. A rumours had been spread rather viciously and no one wanted anything to do with him
The bully had succeeded in cutting him off from his peers.. Well not all off them, he still had his brothers but he didn't want them to worry about him. Scott was tied up in studying for his finals and Virgil was prepping for an upcoming music recital. And the terrible two were too young to understand.
So he continued to deal with it on his own. Until one horrible afternoon when he got corned by his tormentor and accused of getting him suspended. John hadn’t had anything to do with it but the bully wouldn’t accept his answers.
The ensuing beat down had him fighting for his life as the other boy had a good fifty pounds on him and had a reputation of being a spectacular brawler.
The knife that had come out of nowhere was the last thing that John had expected and if it hadn’t been for Virgil coming out of the music wing from an after school session he would have been pushing up daisies.
Virgil had pile-drived the kid halfway across the yard. Even then, Virg was a tank and had a reputation for not taking shit from anyone when the chips were down.
John had been lucky, his wound though deep had been superficial. Some stitches and a week off at home and he was right as rain again though he’d had serious trepidation about returning to school.
His brothers on the other hand had rallied. Like a well intentioned wall, his brothers circle around him and John had returned to school. It didn’t take long before all their support and attention started to pay off. And just like that, one day several weeks later, he stopped looking over his shoulder every five minutes and he sank back into the routine of school and family life.
Looking back at it all, he realized that one incident had actually been a small blip in comparison to all the others that followed but it had a lasting impact on him. He’d become less withdrawn from his siblings, a trait he at a very young age had acquired when their mother had died, and as a result the group of them had become stronger for it.
There had been some major events since then of course, the disappearance of their father being one, a run in with the chaos crew that left Gordon in traction another but he’d learned that no matter what, as long as he had his brothers, they could get through anything.
Until now.
He hadn’t thought that it was possible for mental anguish to have an actually physical manifestation but it did. The stabbing, heart wrenching pain behind his breast bone at having to watch his nearest and dearest suffer was something he would never wish on his worst enemy.
And life again was threatening to take one of their own.
Somehow though, through the miracle of modern medicine his brother was still alive. The expert team of specialist that had swarmed his brothers room like ants had managed to stabilize the cardiac arrhythmia and Virgil was still with them.
Though for how long, no one could tell.
The hospital was doing its best with what it had. A massive donation from Tracy Industry and a call out to all bacterial specialist and bio-engineers the world over would hopefully do the rest. But the outcome of it all was still uncertain and the doctors were hesitant to provide them with any unsupported hope for a positive outcome.
So they were stuck in a holding pattern.
Kayo was understandable distraught and after the initial shock of the near death she’d withdrawn into herself and refused to talk to anyone.
Alan was glued to his Grandmother’s side, her hand clasped firmly in his own. Eyes hollow and unseeing.
Grandma wasn’t fairing much better but she was trying to cover it up with fussing over the others now that the mild sedative Penny had given her had leveled out her nerves.
Gordon was leaning heavily on Penny for support, never far from her side and seemed to be engrossed in some task that he refused to tell him about no matter how many times John approached the subject.
Brains was around somewhere, head bent over petri-dishes with the medical staff. One of his side interests that he hoped would provide some help no matter how small
That left the absent Scott who had taken off some hours earlier for areas unknown. He’d been in contact with John of course for a data dump and he’d checked in on them about three hours ago from an undisclosed location but since then it was radio silence.
Even with the power of Thunderbird 5 at his beck and call, if a tracking beacon was turned off even John would be hard pressed to find One. It was basically a cloaked rocket on acid when the beacon was disengaged. A silly fail safe that had been installed in the slim chance someone might have the gall to try and follow them.
With the speeds of their ‘birds though the chances of that were slim.
Folding his arms across his chest, John shifted his weight to his opposite foot and settled back into the corner he had claimed in the small, private waiting room. This part of the process really was tedious and all he could do was stew in his own thoughts as everyone else was doing.
To put it mildly, it sucked.
Just when he thought things couldn’t possibly get worse though, they did.
