Call Me

A missed phone call from his brother sets off alarm bells in Scott Tracy's mind.

This story, originally written for the Tracy Island Writer's Forum 2009 Halloween Challenge, is a work of fan fiction based on the 1960s television series Thunderbirds, created by Gerry Anderson for ITC Entertainment. Characters and situations are used without permission.

Many thanks to quiller for agreeing to beta this story, and to everyone who voted for it in the challenge! Comments, criticisms and reviews, no matter how brief, are always welcome and eagerly anticipated.

Scott Tracy's eyes followed the six-pack's hypnotic motion. Paul, holding the frost-misted beer cans aloft, moved them slowly, temptingly from side to side. Standing beside their fellow astronaut cadet on the doorstep, Azri laughed and shook a bag of nachos, adding its rattle of temptation to the persuasive effort.

Scott swallowed, clearing his suddenly-watering mouth.

"I don't know, fellas." He leant against the doorframe, his weak protest fooling no one. "John's meant to be ringing me this evening."

Azri chuckled, thrusting his burden of snack foods into Scott's arms and reaching down to pick up the cooler at his feet.

"What, you've got the little brothers on a rota now? You can take a man out of the air force…"

"I'm still in the air force, Az!" Scott rolled his eyes. "And so are you, assuming they haven't kicked you out yet." He yielded to the inevitable, not really minding as first Paul and then Az bustled past him into his lounge.

"Seconded to a civilian organisation," Paul reminded him, dropping casually into Scott's favourite armchair. The young man looked around the compact apartment, small by most standards but a world away from the bunks of a USAF barracks. "Your own bedroom, your own space, enough leave to be worth taking, and, best of all, a Friday night with the whole weekend stretching in front of us and no prospect whatsoever of being called back on duty." Easing a can of beer from its plastic wrapper, he popped the ring-pull, downing half its contents before exhaling a long, satisfied sigh. He spread his arms in an expansive gesture. "God, I love being in NASA."

Laughing, Scott caught his friend's flailing arm, yanking Paul up and giving him a shove towards the sofa Azri already occupied. He dropped into the still-warm chair before his friend could recover his balance, the manoeuvre honed by long years of practice on his brothers. Much as he'd loved his service in the USAF, much as he craved the feel of responsive controls under his hands, and the roar of air being shaped around him, he had to admit that secondment to NASA had its perks. Front line astronauts being prepped for a launch led lives regulated down to the tiniest detail, timetabled 24/7 and with every morsel of food they consumed planned, evaluated and approved. The astronaut trainees, on the other hand, transferred in from a variety of armed forces and still going through the initial training and assessment drills, had more freedom than Scott had experienced since leaving Grandma's farm. Or arguably, he mused, liberating a nacho from Azri's bag and swiping the jar of salsa, even before that.

"So," Az concluded, popping the seal on his own beer, and sliding a second along the table towards Scott, "you're up for an evening of cinema and snack foods?"

Scott sighed, catching the beer can and cracking it open one-handed. He ran his spare hand through his hair. "I wasn't kidding when I said John's going to call. With the hours he spends in the lab and our training schedule, we don't often get a chance to catch up."

Azri looked up with interest. "I'm guessing John's not one of the kids back home. So are we talking about the engineer, or the communications whiz-kid? They all sort of blur, after a while. You've got too many brothers, Scott."

Laughing, Scott checked his watch. It was still a good hour and a half before his middle brother would prise himself away from his research lab. There was time to unwind a bit. "Believe me, there've been days when I've thought the same. I ought to make a crib-sheet to give people as they walk through the door: John – twenty – certified genius – Harvard – grad student in advanced communications."

"We can always pause the movie when he 'phones," Paul offered with a shrug. "It'll give us a chance to call for pizza and take a trip out for fresh supplies."

Scott gave the grocery store sacks full of junk food and the beer-filled cooler an amused, incredulous glance. "How much are you planning to get through?" he asked, sipping from his first and, he was resolved, also last full-strength beer of the night.

Paul waggled his eyebrows, reaching for the remote control to Scott's 3D vid system. Entering his own account code on the numeric keypad, he began to page through the catalogue of feature films available to download. "You've not asked what we're gonna be watching yet, Scott. We'll need all that," he nodded towards the cooler, "just to still our nerves."

Scott raised an eyebrow, making a minute adjustment to his chair. The 3D effects on the brand new system would be pretty good from anywhere in the room, but there was nevertheless an optimal point in front of the screen, and Scott's favourite chair was placed firmly on it. His dad had laughed when Scott admitted to spending a small fortune on the entertainment system for his NASA quarters, claiming that 3D video was never anything more than a passing fad. Virgil had laughed too, but that hadn't stopped Scott's closest brother from buying a set of his own a couple of weeks later.

"Man." Azri leant forward on the couch and tilted his head to watch a movie trailer playing in the left-hand half of the screen, while Paul scrolled through menus on the right. "This is going to be amazing."

Scott rolled his eyes. "Great. I should have known," he observed dryly. "You didn't come over to see me at all. You came to see my vid screen."

"You can't really blame us, can you?" Paul teased. He'd stopped searching, a choice of two films highlighted on the screen. Scott blinked, recognising both as the kind of bone-chilling horror films that Grandma would never allow on the farm, even if Scott would consider playing them where his little brothers might see. Paul nodded in satisfaction at his response. "It may have escaped your notice, but it's Halloween tomorrow, Scotty-boy. I say we celebrate in style."

Scott's eyes widened a little. After four years in the air force, spent in restrictive barracks or deployed to parts of the world where Halloween was either unknown or actively discouraged, he'd almost forgotten what the good, old-fashioned American holiday could be. He glanced again at his watch. Paul was right, they could pause the movie when John called, and a quick ten-minute chat would give everyone a comfort break while satisfying the demands of fraternal obligation. Setting aside a niggle of guilt, Scott grabbed the remote for the vid system and hit the light switch, sinking them into a comfortable gloom, lit only by the flickering screen.

- xxx -

"God!" Scott shuddered as the ominous final tableau faded to black and the credits started rolling.

On the sofa, Azri gave an all-over shiver, shaking the delicious tension out of his body. "Man, that was good!"

"Whoever comes up with this stuff," Paul commented, his words slurring. "Ought to be shot. Then put in a loony bin. With the key thrown away."

Scott chuckled, dialling down the volume as spine-tingling music rippled across grey and black credits. "Then they could be part of a ghost story for real," he observed. He leaned forward, reaching into the slush-and-water filled cooler for a final can of the alcohol-free lager that a thoughtful, and rather more sober, Azri had packed for him before the evening started.

Paul watched with a fond smile. "Lightweight," he teased.

Scott tilted the can at him in silent salute. He had no objection to his friends cutting loose from time to time, but four little brothers equated to an adolescence spent on-call. Readiness was a habit he'd never got out of, and which the air force had never given him reason to break. Scott Tracy preferred to remain in control.

Azri sprawled across the sofa, lifting his feet into Paul's lap, and then struggling for balance as they were pushed aside. "Anyone else hungry?" He looked around, bleary-eyed. "Thought we were going to order pizza?"

Paul checked his watch. "Still time, if we order now. Anything without pineapple's good by me. I mean what kind of idiot puts fruit on pizza? You don't put blueberries in pasta, do you?" He nodded, apparently satisfied by his own argument. "What d'you want on yours, Scotty-boy?" Frowning, the cadet blinked to focus on his host. "I've already checked the time, Scott. Pizza's still good. Az, go look in the kitchen, okay, pal? See if Scotty here has any coupons lying around. The amount of junk mail we get through the door, even Mr Efficiency can't have trashed it all already."

Scott frowned down at his watch, no longer listening to his friend, a sense of wrongness filling his world. They had been planning to order pizza, but their anticipated cue for doing so, the call Scott expected from his brother, had never come. Through force of habit, Scott subtracted an hour from the readout on his watch, calculating Kansas time, before adjusting back again. With John in his second year at Harvard, Scott was still struggling to remember that Florida and Massachusetts were in the same time zone. At least if his brother had been on the farm, the hour there would, barely, have allowed for the promised 'evening' conversation. Even by John's standards, and taking into account Scott's persistent insomnia, this couldn't qualify as anything but late night on Eastern Time. In fact, it was pretty close to being 'way too late'.

Unease roiled Scott's stomach, making the weight of beer and snack-food leaden. This wasn't like John.

It was as if the thought of his younger brother summoned the apparition. Scott caught the flicker out of the corner of his eye, and turned back to the vid screen in time to see the interference flickering across it intensify, sweeping across the still-scrolling credits and obliterating them. The music, already at a background level, stuttered and crackled into silence. For a few seconds, the interference seemed to thin out, a half-seen image swimming in and out of focus behind it, and then it surged again, filling the screen with a blizzard of electronic snow. As rapidly as it came, it went. The screen cleared, the film's credit sequence at last reaching its copyright notices as the final few tremulous chords played across it.

Scott stared unseeing, his heart racing in his chest.

"Scott?" Azri frowned at him from the door into the kitchen, looking somewhat more sober as a mild concern began to negate the effects of alcohol. Blinking, Scott mustered the slightest of humourless smiles as Az came back into the room. Paul was scrabbling through the detritus of chip packets and plastic bags, in search of any overlooked snacks. It was obvious that neither man had seen what Scott had.

Rationality fought against anxiety. Scott Tracy didn't believe in this sort of thing. Scott Tracy remained in control.

Whipping out his cell phone, Scott dialled the number of a local pizza place from memory, ordering two specials and giving his own account number together with Azri's address. Both his friends were watching him in surprise as he snapped the phone shut, the frown on Paul's face now matching Az's.

"Well, it's been fun, fellas," he said calmly, standing and offering an unsteady Paul a hand up from the sofa. "Reckon you can make it back to your place on foot, Az? Or do you want me to call a taxi?"

Azri blinked, events moving too fast for his alcohol-blurred senses. "It's only two blocks," he pointed out, shaking his head and catching Paul's arm as Scott gave the other man a gentle shove in his direction. "Scott…?"

"You'd better get going if you're going to beat the pizza. We've got to do this another time, fellas. But right now, I really need to call my brother."

Azri let himself be hustled out of the door, too busy keeping Paul more or less upright to notice that he'd left his cooler behind. Scott watched them down the drive and onto the street before he slammed the door shut and slumped against it, sliding down to sit with his back pressed against the painted wood surface. His 'phone was already out, his fingers trembling a little as he hit the speed dial. He pressed the compact device to his ear, listening to John's 'phone ring and ring. Eyes closed, he tried to banish the memory of John's pale face, frowning faintly as it swam out of the snowstorm of interference, speaking words that Scott couldn't hear before fading back into oblivion.

-xxx-

"John, it's Scott. Call me."

-xxx-

"John, you said you'd call tonight. Give me a ring, okay?"

-xxx-

"Hey, John. I've left a couple of messages on your cell, so I thought I'd try your landline. Call me back."

-xxx-

"It's Scott again. Look, I know it's late, but just call me when you get this, okay? I'll be awake. Really."

-xxx-

"Johnny…"

Scott's voice trailed off. He must have left a dozen messages for his brother, split evenly between John's two telephone lines, in the last half hour. Between calls he'd stalked his apartment, clearing away the mess his friends had left, sorting the detritus between trash and recycling.

Now he'd ended up back in his small lounge, the walls closing in on him as he rode an ever-swelling tide of panic. He slumped onto the sofa, fiddling with the remote for the 3D system, head tilted to trap his cell phone between his ear and shoulder. The vid system had defaulted back to its menu, movie trailers showing in half the screen. Scott stabbed at the standby button to turn it off, and a moment later hit it again. The apartment was too quiet without it, too dark. The sounds and images of the film he'd watched that evening filled the emptiness, and it was all too easy to imagine a ghostly presence standing just behind the sofa, reaching towards him with icy, death-bleached fingers. All too easy, given John's ongoing silence and the glimpsed image his over-stimulated imagination had provided, to imagine that the spectre in question might be his brother's.

Hanging up, he stood and paced a few steps before dropping back onto the sofa, reaching again for the cell phone. His finger hovered over a different speed-dial button, the impulse to call Virgil almost overwhelming. He resisted with an effort. Scott's twenty-two year old brother, a final-year student at Denver, would be well and truly asleep by now. He wouldn't be impressed with Scott for waking him. He'd be still less impressed when he found out that watching a horror movie with friends was coming damn close to giving Scott a full-blown panic attack. Unless, of course, Virgil believed him. Then there would be two of them, fretting and waiting for their wayward brother to answer his phone.

No, better to leave the line open for John's return call. The idiot had probably switched his cell phone to silent for some lecture or other, and forgotten to reset it. Scott was being paranoid. Gordon often accused him of the condition where his brothers were concerned; Scott claimed it was the eldest's privilege. In truth, when you'd helped raise four younger siblings, when you'd been through every one of their childhood terrors and tantrums, a certain amount of protectiveness was only natural. It was that old habit talking now, not the trained air force officer who had nothing but pride and confidence in his brothers. He was being foolish.

Except that Scott's phone lay silent and still on the table, and John, who'd never missed an appointment or broken his word in his life, had promised to call.

There was a crackle of noise, white static cutting across the background murmur of the vid system. Scott shot bolt upright in his chair, squinting into the suddenly snow-filled screen so hard that his eyes almost failed to focus when it cleared.

This time there was no chance of a mistake, no possibility of his imagining what he saw. John's familiar features appeared between one breath and the next, projected from the 3D screen with a crystal clarity marred only by the occasional cloud of interference passing in front of them. He seemed so close, so real, that Scott felt he could reach out and touch his brother. Leaning forward on the sofa, he realised he'd raised his arm to do so, hand extended towards a pale cheek that remained tantalisingly out of reach.

John's expression was calm. His blue eyes, faded into a glacier-ice suggestion of themselves, were tired, but intent. The frown of concentration Scott had seen earlier was still there, just a trace of a furrowed brow.

It took Scott several long, frozen seconds to notice that John's lips were moving. He scrambled for the remote control, turning up the gain on the system, but his brother's words were lost somewhere in the aether. All that emerged from the speakers was a ghastly, undulating wail. It rose and fell between waves of static.

A look of frustration crossed John's face. He shook his head, tilting it in a gesture of farewell, and spoke again. As the final word left them, his lips shaped the hard syllables of his brother's name: 'Scott'.

And then the image was gone, interference wiping the screen clean before being replaced in turn by the garish video menu. Splashes of bright red assaulted Scott's eyes from the gore-fest being advertised, the sound track that accompanied it booming thunderously from the speakers. He grabbed for the remote control in his haste to see it gone, knocking the device to the ground and scrabbling for it before managing to hit the power button. The bright image on the screen imploded to a mere pinpoint of light, and then faded from sight. Silence rang in Scott's ears.

Stories long since dismissed, but never forgotten, swam through his thoughts like sharks, devouring the desperate, drowning flashes of rationality. Tales of spirits captured on camera, fogging photographic film, manifesting through electronics because they couldn't make themselves heard in any other way.

Scott Tracy didn't believe in ghosts.

Hell, John Tracy didn't believe in ghosts. He'd certainly never dream of coming back as one, through the sheer stubborn pride that was such a family trait, if nothing else.

All of which was utterly irrelevant, because John wasn't dead.

Just missing his calls, and not answering the 'phone he always kept with him. Just appearing, chalk-white and intangible, on Scott's vid system a thousand miles away.

Coming to a decision, Scott strode into his bedroom, pulling out a duffle bag and throwing a few things into it. He paused in his bathroom long enough to dry-swallow a couple of the neutralisation pills that were standard issue for the armed forces. He felt stone-cold sober, never more so, but knew better than to trust his own judgement on that. The pills would ensure that both head and blood stream were clear of the effects of his single drink that night.

Yanking the door of his car open, he tossed the duffle into the back. He stuck to the speed limit with determined precision as he crossed first the residential district of the NASA complex and then the base proper, pulling up outside the headquarters building. NASA cadets had a fair amount of freedom, and Scott was officially off-duty until 9am Monday morning, but even so, for an air-force officer, there were formalities to be observed.

The watch commander was stoked up on caffeine and long-practice to ignore the post-midnight low in his circadian rhythm. Even so, he looked startled when Scott, dressed in a leather jacket and carrying his bag, strode into the building and snapped off a textbook-crisp salute.

"Apologies for the late hour, sir, but I need a forty-eight hour pass off-base." Scott stared straight ahead of him, not meeting the man's eyes. "It's a family emergency."

-xxx-

"Tracy Three, ground control. Turn left off runway on taxiway six-niner. Proceed towards hangar complex. Hold on taxi eight-four until further notice."

"Ground control, Tracy Three." Scott could barely hear his own words over the rumble of thunder. Pelting rain ran down the smooth curves of his cockpit, leaving him almost blind and utterly dependent on the coloured lights marking out the tarmac. He was already exhausted after a flight spent weaving between, around and sometimes through the storm cells forming a squall line along half the Atlantic seaboard, not to mention a nerve-wracking instrument-only landing into gusting, gale-force wind. A delay right now was the last thing he needed. "Left on six-niner towards hangars. Hold on eight-four. What's the hold-up?"

"Tracy Three, ground control. Be advised you've touched down six minutes behind Tracy Four. You'll be informed when his manoeuvres are complete and the hangar is ready for you."

Startled almost beyond words, Scott stumbled over his acknowledgement. Thunder roared across the sky, sending a tremor through the airframe of Scott's single-seater jet as he taxied across the airfield, bringing his craft to a cautious halt at the designated point. He drummed his fingers on the control yoke, burning with impatience but knowing there was no way to rush this. Getting both aircraft into the rented hanger already occupied by John's little Tracy Five would take some careful manoeuvring. Despite that, Scott didn't expect any real difficulty fitting in alongside Virgil's compact six-seater, not least because Tracy Four would have been alerted to the fact that he was waiting. Parking beside his brother wasn't bothering him. Virgil's mere presence two thousand miles from his home in Denver was already more than enough to do that.

Thoughts racing, turbulent and ever darker, his eyes wandered to the persistently silent cell phone in the pocket beside him. He'd not been able to spare a hand from the control yoke to check for messages since he approached the densely-packed thunderstorms lingering over Boston. Sternly, he resisted the urge to reach for it now, knowing that in a small, stationary vehicle, he had to keep alert for taxiing aircraft led astray by the abysmal conditions.

Ground control kept him waiting on the hangar approach for six minutes before confirming that it was safe to proceed, informed by Virgil that Tracy Four was parked and powered down. It took Scott another five to edge forward through the murk, his visibility reduced to near zero by rain streaming down the cockpit, and his night vision compromised by the occasional brilliant arcs of lightning that lit the sky. The shelter of the brightly-lit hangar came as a relief, and Scott paused on the threshold to allow his windscreen to run clear before edging into place beside the two aircraft already present.

The hangar door started closing as soon as Scott cut power, the whine of his engines beginning its gradual descent through the octaves. Popping his cockpit, Scott wasn't surprised to see the remote control already in his brother's hand. He was marginally more curious about the stranger holding a clipboard with a keychain taped to it. Both men watched him as he tossed his duffle bag out of the cockpit and dropped lightly to the ground beside it.

Virgil didn't meet Scott's eyes as he approached.

"Driving license," he demanded, holding out one hand in an imperious gesture.

Scott blinked, then reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out the laminated card and handing it over without comment. The man with the clipboard glanced at it, and then up at Scott, checking his photo and details against already-completed forms. He initialled half a dozen boxes before handing the whole pile over to Scott.

Squinting at the rental agreement just long enough to be sure what he was signing, Scott let his eyes drift past the fine print. He scrawled his signature at the appropriate points and accepted the car keys with a polite nod rather than smile, ignoring the man's stated desire that the two Tracys enjoy their visit. Virgil had already authorised payment, including a healthy bonus for the car to be delivered to the family hangar. As the rental agent stepped out into torrential rain that masked any hint of pre-dawn light and hunched over something that looked like an antiquated moped for his trip back to the terminal, Scott had to acknowledge that he'd earned the tip.

The hangar was silent, the stillness broken only by the metallic sounds of two cooling aircraft and the patter of rain on the roof. Virgil had moved to Scott's jet while his elder brother completed the paperwork, pulling himself up beside it with one foot in the step so he could peer into the cockpit and record the readings on a log sheet. Now he jumped down, crossing the hangar floor and accepting a brief, fraternal hug of greeting. Scott's second-born brother was pale, and visibly tired. His rich brown eyes carried a wealth of turbulent emotions as they met Scott's.

Virgil looked away, his hand twitching towards the pocket of his jeans where Scott knew he habitually kept his cell phone.

"The car's out back. I figured that driving would be the quickest way across town to Cambridge. And you're not a passenger at the best of times."

Scott couldn't help a faint smile. Virgil never seemed to have any difficulty anticipating him.

"You knew I was coming?"

Virgil shrugged and ran a hand through his chestnut hair, his expression impossible to read as he led the way to the pedestrian door at the back of the hangar. "I noticed your flight plan in the system when I logged mine. I arranged the car somewhere over Iowa. With the weather you came through, you weren't going to have time to think about it."

"You got that right," Scott sighed, inspecting the keychain he'd been handed and hitting the remote to unlock the vehicle. He pulled his jacket collar up around his ears, hunching over a little as they made a dash through the rain. Tumbling into the driver's seat, drenched even after the short distance, he looked the dashboard over with approval. The car was a decent make, not showy but well made and reliable. Virgil, with an engineer's instinct and a lifetime's practice of avoiding unwelcome attention, had most likely specified it down to the model and year.

Glancing over to check his brother's seatbelt through force of habit, Scott threw the car into gear. He kept his speed down as they made their way along a service road from the private hangars to a discreet side gate. He didn't hit the gas pedal hard until they were past airport security and onto the freeway, skirting downtown Boston and heading towards the university town it had long-since engulfed. Somewhere far above the clouds, the dawning sun was trying to cast the world in a new light. Down here, orange-red street lamps, haloed by the steady rain, drowned out any hint of its feeble efforts.

"John poked fun when I bought my 3D system." Virgil gazed out of his side window, his cell phone pressed to one ear as he tried John's number for what Scott knew must be the twentieth time. His voice was quiet and worried as he cancelled the unanswered call and let the phone drop back into his lap. "He said it was last year's technology, and by the time he got through with it, my set would be an antiquated heap."

Scott's hands tightened on the steering wheel. It was the first time that either of them had commented on why they'd dropped everything and sacrificed their sleep to make a night-flight across half the continent. Until that moment, Scott had been able to pretend that it was coincidence. That Virgil had always been planning to join John for Halloween, and his brothers had just failed to mention it to him. He'd known from his first glimpse of Virgil's pale, anxious expression that he was lying to himself.

"There's got to be an explanation," he muttered, half to himself and half to his brother. Virgil glanced over at him, not needing to ask anything more. He could read his eldest brother's expression just as easily as Scott could his, and they both looked drawn from the strain of the apparition they'd witnessed. "We're fretting over nothing. Letting our imaginations run wild."

It sounded weak even to Scott. One of them might, at a stretch, have imagined this. Not both. Virgil reached for the dashboard controls, dialling up the heat to combat the chill of the late-October morning, and the lingering dampness of their clothes. He spoke softly, not looking at Scott.

"Johnny was going to call me, seven o'clock my time. I emailed him this morning to tell him about my concert last night, and he sent back a one-liner to say he'd leave the lab early and call. He wanted to hear all about it first hand before he got the rest of the family news from you."

Scott didn't answer as he accelerated, leaving a cloud of spray shimmering under the streetlamps behind them.

-xxx-

Cambridge, MA, was a jarring, confused jumble. Wooden antebellum churches stood cheek by jowl with blocky concrete strip malls. Neon lights outside 24/7 convenience stores reflected from the cliff-like faces of red-brick gothic monstrosities that towered above them. The university buildings loomed out of the darkness, their rain-soaked walls a deep blood red, water streaming from the gargoyles on their eaves.

The house John rented along with three other grad students was not far from the campus, lost in the twisting side-roads of a residential area, and set back from the sidewalk by a screen of trees. Scott swung the rental car into the narrow driveway, bringing it in parallel to the front of the house and stopping outside the front door. He killed the engine, and he and Virgil sat in silence for long minutes, staring.

The building was an empty shell. The roof was gone, scorched timbers reaching towards the sky like claws extended to meet the lightning. The porch was almost intact, but the horizontal slats of timber cladding on the façade behind it were charred. Sooty marks against blistered white paint bore testimony to where tongues of flame had licked out between them, escaping the blaze inside. Only scattered, dagger-like shards of glass remained in the first floor windows. On the upper storey, not even the window frames had survived, a few lumps of charcoal left behind around gaping apertures.

Scott's heart was cold and heavy in his chest. Hands still locked around the steering wheel, he concentrated on breathing, his mind devoid of thought as it shied away from the reality in front of him. He didn't move until Virgil threw the passenger door open and scrambled out, shouting their brother's name into the hissing rain.

"Virge…" Scott climbed out of the car, rounding the bonnet to intercept the younger man. Virgil was making for the door of the house, and it was obvious to Scott even at a glance that the building wasn't safe. He caught his brother's arm, the pair of them stopping on the wooden deck of the porch, closer to the ruined building than was wise, but at least out of the persistent, pounding downpour.

Scott could barely see Virgil's wide eyes and pale face in the cloud-obscured dawn light. Under his hand he could feel the fine tremors shaking his brother's body. Virgil said nothing but his muscles screamed with tension as he tried to shake Scott off.

"Virgil, wait!" Scott tightened his grasp, forced into thought and action. "Look!" He gave Virgil a shake, pointing at the door. The wire-mesh insect screen hung open. A strip of yellow plastic tape crossed from one side of the frame to the other behind it, while a laminated notice was nailed to the slightly-scorched timber of the closed door. "Whatever happened here is over, Virge! The authorities have already been and gone."

Virgil stopped struggling, sagging in Scott's grip. Relaxing his hold, altering it from restraint to support, Scott searched his pockets for his key-chain. He twisted the penlight hanging from it and blinked as the LED inside cast a sharp, blue-tinted light.

"City of Cambridge Fire Department," he read, paraphrasing as his eyes skipped past whole paragraphs. "Dangerous structure… do not enter… fire accident investigation…." He stopped reading and shook his head. This close to the building an acrid scent lingered in the air, just sharp enough to irritate the lining of his nose and throat. It had taken him several minutes to notice it though, and there was no hint of the thick, choking smoke that Scott could easily imagine. Frowning, he released his brother's arm and ran a hand through his dark hair, before dropping it to his pocket and pulling out his cell phone. Glancing at the backlit screen he shook his head again, feeling a little calmer as he reasoned the problem through. "Virge, he wasn't caught in the fire. He can't have been. This was over hours ago. Days even. If John was… if they found… Dad would have been called by now, and he'd have told us."

Virgil's frown matched Scott's. His eyes scanned the same text Scott had read, and then slipped back towards the car. Scott followed his brother's gaze to the driveway. Deeply corrugated tyres had churned the grass edging it into mud, the tracks confirming the presence of the emergency services on site.

"Virgil, look. This is all starting to make a bit more sense. No wonder he's not answering his landline. It's probably a melted puddle of slag. And what d'you bet he chose today of all days to leave his cell phone at home as well? Yesterday, that is. There's the reason he's not returning our calls: bad luck, plain and simple."

"You're right," Virgil agreed, frustration and weariness mingling in his voice. "But what we saw…" He bit off the words. Raising his hands to his face, he kneaded his eyes before looking up and starting again. "But if he isn't here… where is he, Scott? Where's John?"

The same question chased itself in circles through Scott's head as he led the way off the buckled planks of the porch and into the open. The rain was thinning now, subsiding from downpour into a steady, penetrating drizzle. He took one last, lingering look at the building behind him before ducking back into the car. The smell of damp leather filled it, swelling as he started the engine and the heater coughed back into life. After the frost on the morning air, the warmth was welcome, but it didn't come close to the lifting the chill Scott still felt inside.

What he'd told Virgil was true as far as it went. But at the same time, the memory of their younger brother's spectral form haunted Scott, and looked out at him from Virgil's eyes.

Fingers drumming against the steering wheel, he thought hard. "So, you come home to find your house has burnt down," he hypothesised. "Presumably with everything you own inside it, and the weather outside is doing its best to emulate a biblical deluge. What do you do?"

"Call Dad."

Scott raised an eyebrow at his brother, unable to resist a brief laugh. "Like you did the time your dorm got raided by the police in Denver and you needed someone to wire you the cash for a hotel?"

Virgil rolled his eyes, the pallor of his cheeks making way for a flush of colour.

"All right then: call you."

"Great, except that this is Johnny we're talking about. He's always been more inclined to independent action if that's an option."

Sighing, Virgil tilted his head back against the rest, closing his eyes. "What would he have had with him?" He thought for a moment before answering his own question. "Jacket, wallet, car keys." He paused, swallowing hard. "Cell phone."

"He left the cell phone at home, remember?" Scott insisted, clinging to that possibility.

"John never forgets his phone, Scott!" Virgil sat up. Deep, tired creases furrowed his brow as he looked at his elder brother. "Not even when he's all wrapped up in an experiment!"

Scott shivered, not willing to dispute the point. John was a creature of habit, content to split the vast majority of his time between his home and his research lab, and running through a checklist – wallet, keys, phone – every time he left one for the other.

Wait. There was a possibility there. "His lab," Scott mused aloud. "Virgil, if John came home to this last night and needed somewhere familiar to go at short notice…"

Wordlessly, Virgil waved a hand towards the road and the university campus beyond. Scott didn't argue with the silent instruction.

-xxx-

The overhead lights in the building were motion sensitive, springing into life around Scott and Virgil, fading into darkness behind. High ceilings and hard, tiled floors made their footsteps echo as they searched the labyrinthine complex. The pool of light passed across research posters, littered with equations and illustrated with complex plots, rendering them no more comprehensible. Between the posters, doors punctuated the corridors, the laboratories beyond shadowy and ominous in the washed-out light of dawn.

Scott felt like an intruder… was, in fact, an intruder. He and Virgil would be in a lot of trouble if they were found, but that wasn't as important right now as finding their way to this wing, this floor, this door.

John's name adorned the door in gold lettering, that of the post-doc in charge of the lab above it, and the names of the two other students that shared the workspace below. Scott's fingers caressed the familiar letters, hovering over the nameplate for a second before he laid his palm flat against it. He glanced over at Virgil, not so much asking if his brother was ready as warning him to brace himself.

Taking a deep breath, he pushed open the door and stepped into the lab.

Electronics lined the walls: server stacks, computer monitors, oscilloscopes, gauges and other less readily identifiable equipment all jostling for space. An array of standby lights, status indicators and LCD screens almost out-competed the pink-tinged glow that spilled feebly through tall windows. Fluorescent tubes stuttered into life far above, triggered by the movement as first Scott and then Virgil entered. They cast their vivid radiance over electronic components littering the bench to Scott's right, held in clamps or on frames, forming the skeleton of some device that should more decently be clothed in a steel box and inaccessible except through a many-buttoned remote control.

And, perched on a high stool, a tall, slender figure slumped forward across it.

"John!" The exclamation escaped Scott's throat as little more than a whisper. Relief at finally finding his younger brother fought against a dark wave of fear at finding him like this, motionless and alone in a darkened lab.

"Johnny!"

Virgil moved forward, and Scott reacted, as always, to his brother's need, hurrying to be the first to John's side.

Thick blond hair fell in waves around John's face, concealing it from view, and almost hiding the fact that the young man's head was cushioned on his folded arms. Virgil came to a halt on John's other side, looking across their brother's back with an anxious question in his eyes. Scott swallowed hard, reaching out to lay a hand on John's shoulder and giving it a gentle shake.

"Johnny? Are you okay?"

The warmth under his hand melted some of the ice from Scott's soul. The rest evaporated as if under a blow torch as John shifted, moving his head to one side before lifting it and shaking the hair back from his face. Bleary, sleep-fogged blue eyes opened. John's brow creased into a half-awake frown.

"What is it, guys? I could do with…" He stopped, his eyes widening and becoming more focussed, his frown deepening. He sat bolt upright on the stool, looking at his elder brothers in turn. "Scott! Virgil! What…? What are you fellas doing here?"

John yelped as Scott grabbed his shoulders and pulled him first to his feet and then into a bone-crushing hug. Virgil didn't give John time to react or recover when Scott released him, wrapping his younger brother in a heartfelt embrace of his own.

"You scared us half to death, you idiot!"

Limp with relief, clinging to the bench for support, Scott considered protesting the slight against his valour. He abandoned the idea. Virgil knew better, and John was looking far too confused by the whole situation to consider taking advantage of it.

"Virge…? I don't understand…"

Scott shook his head, taking in the weary slump in John's shoulders and the shadows beneath his blue eyes. He frowned, instinct and habit taking over as he nudged John back down onto his stool.

"You look ready to drop. What are you doing here? You should be in bed."

John blinked some measure of alertness into his eyes. He looked away, his body language evasive.

"I would be, but… ah…"

Scott dropped onto the seat beside John's. Virgil had already pushed himself up to perch on the bench itself, looking as tired and unsteady as Scott suddenly felt.

"But it's a bit on the toasty side right now?"

"You know about…?" John slumped and shook his head, realising that he wasn't going to get away with less than the full story. "Yeah, well, after the lightning strike, things were a bit rushed. What with Ewan ending up in hospital with burns, and the struggle it took to get him out…"

John was looking down at his hands, not meeting his brothers' eyes, so he didn't see the colour drain once more from Virgil's face, or notice Scott's shocked expression. John was in the house when lightning hit it? Scott pictured the interior of the house John shared with his technology-mad student friends, not quite as lined with cutting-edge gadgets as this lab, but running it a close second. It was all too easy to imagine the power surge running through the walls and along multi-gang cables, electronics bursting into flame, or worse, in a near-instantaneous cascade of devastation. It must have turned the place from comfortable home to explosive conflagration within seconds. John went on talking, oblivious.

"Well, I'd grabbed my jacket, but my cell phone must have fallen out of the pocket while I was trying to pull Ewan clear, and there was no way to go back for it, so I came here to get a bit of quiet and figure out what to do next. And then I remembered that I'd promised to call you both, and I figured you'd freak if you didn't hear from me. I didn't want you guys to worry, so I thought I ought to try to get in touch." John paused, running his eyes over the array of equipment in front of him. He reached out as if to adjust one of the components, and then glanced miserably up at his brothers. "I was up half the night trying to get it operational. I could have sworn I was getting an image through, I was watching the bandwidth and…" His voice trailed off and he shook his head, disappointed. "But, I'm sorry, fellas. I guess it didn't work."

Virgil's mouth was opening and closing soundlessly, the look on his face somewhere between amusement and anger. Scott scowled at John's earnest expression.

"That rather depends," he told the younger man through gritted teeth. "On what it was meant to do."

"Well, the image is captured by these two cameras, and is processed by that encoder before passing through these two filter/amplifier assemblies…"

Rubbing a hand across his furrowed brow, Scott closed his eyes and counted to ten, trying to ignore the laughter shaking Virgil's shoulders. His brother seemed to have decided that hysteria was the only sensible response at this point. Scott was tempted to agree with him. "I'm looking for a one-line summary here, Johnny."

John hesitated, struggling to encapsulate the enormity of the project in a single sentence. "It sends 3D video and audio communications through the vid distribution system." He looked a little despondent. "Or it was meant to. I thought if I could isolate your network IDs and bump a signal through from my test rig, I could tell you to relax 'cause I'd just lost my phone, and I'd call tomorrow."

"You mean all this… that picture…" Scott dropped his face into his hands, words failing him.

"The video got through, John." Virgil gave a curious little hiccup, struggling to swallow down a chuckle. "I don't think either of us got the audio. It might have been more effective at stopping us 'freaking' if we'd actually had any idea what we were looking at."

Now John's tired expression became hurt. "I told you I was working on piggybacking encrypted and Huffman-coded streams using an object-oriented…"

John's explanation was muffled as Virgil hopped down beside him and pulled him sideways into a second, gentler hug, laughter fading from his soft voice.

"It's a pretty safe bet, Johnny, that if my eyes glaze over half a sentence into a conversation, I'm not going to be able to paraphrase it a month later. Would it have killed you to use a pay phone? I couldn't help noticing the one in the lobby downstairs."

"Oh!" John blinked up at him, and then looked again into Scott's relieved blue eyes, the archetype of a bewildered genius. "I… I guess I didn't think of that." He stood, pacing a few agitated steps. "You really didn't know…? And you flew…?"

Climbing wearily to his feet, Scott did his utmost not to sway as the strains of the night caught up with him. He smiled to ward off the chastened and humbled expression on John's face.

"Come on, Johnny." Draping an arm around his little brother's shoulders, he kept the gesture casual with an effort of will. Virgil shared a fatigued smile of understanding with Scott before turning back to John, nudging his shoulder and gesturing towards the door. If the younger man noticed that his elder brothers' body language was more than usually affectionate, he thought better than to comment on it.

"Why don't you lead us to a nice hotel with three rooms to spare?" Virgil stopped John's protest with an upraised hand and a grin. "You need a few hours sleep as much as we do. There'll be time to go apartment hunting for you this afternoon. Besides, Scott's paying."

It was said so matter-of-factly that it took Scott's tired mind several seconds to process the statement.

"Hey…!" he said, stopping halfway across the room to the door, the arm still around John's shoulders pulling him to an unsteady halt too.

Virgil shrugged, unapologetic. "Johnny's going to need all his cash for replacements. I got the car hire. It's your turn."

"Sounds fair to me," John observed, tilting his head to look up at his eldest brother with a tentative smile. He hesitated, looking around the lab, and the smile faded as he subjected the clothes he stood up in to a forlorn survey. "Bed, and I want to check on Ewan… then new clothes, a new apartment, new computer…"

"A new phone," Scott added firmly, deciding not to dispute the cost. He looked down at his brother as they walked on, knowing the warm look in the blue eyes that met his was beyond price. "And then it looks like you've got Virge and me to yourself for the rest of the weekend. I'm on a forty-eight hour pass."

John brightened, a grin spreading across his face. "And it's Halloween tonight! There are going to be some great parties…"

John's voice trailed off, his enthusiasm fading into confusion. Scott hadn't been able to conceal his shudder. Pushing his brothers through the door into the corridor and following them out of the lab, he kept his voice level.

"You know what, Johnny? I'm thinking of giving Halloween a miss this year. After all, it's not as if I believe in ghosts."

Magnanimous in his relief, Scott decided to overlook the baffled glance John shot him at his perfectly reasonable statement, and the way that Virgil's shoulders shook with silent laughter.

-xxx-

The End