This may become a series…

I do not own the Thunderbirds, and I am making no profit from this story.

"Scott!"

Virgil's cry echoes hollowly through my comm. system, and I unconsciously lean forward, my shoulders tensing and my gloved hands squeezing into fists, waiting for the reply.

Virgil tries again. "Scott, come in!"

Gordon breaks in, speaking between coughs. "What happened, Virg? He wasn't in the building when it collapsed, was he?"

"I don't know," Virgil replies tensely. "Scott, do you read me?"

The silence from our older brother is long – too long. My heart rate begins to pick up, and I whirl toward the panel that displays my brothers' vital signs and suit statistics, looking for clues that might indicate whether Scott has been injured.

Just then, though, there's a crackling sound, and Scott's voice comes over the radio. "Hey, guys, can you hear me now?"

"Scott!" Virgil says, his tone relieved. "What happened? You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine – my comm. system just glitched out for some reason. I could hear you, but apparently you couldn't hear me. I'll have to have Brains take a look at it when we get home."

The conversation transitions back into the normal rescue chatter then, and I float backward with a soft sigh of relief, letting the words drift past me without paying much attention – I know what to listen for.

For a little while, I'm busy monitoring the airwaves and keeping half an eye on the map of the danger zone, watching for any signs of an aftershock.

"Hey, Johnny, you there?" Gordon suddenly asks.

Well, it's not like I have anywhere else to go. "Yeah, Gords, what's up?"

"I don't think this guy knows any English. Can you translate for me? I'm trying to get him to follow me to the safety checkpoint."

I sigh. That's me – the Orbiting Translator, on call 24/7. "Sure." I speak to the man, trying a Mandarin greeting first; most of the people in the area are likely to know that, although some probably speak a dialect.

Sure enough, I'm rewarded with an excited reply, and I take a minute to calm the man down before I tell him to follow Gordon.

That throws him into a panic, and it takes a few minutes to unravel the issue – namely, that he doesn't want to leave the scene because he's concerned that his wife will come looking for him, and he has lost his cell phone, so he can't call her and tell her where he's going.

I ask him for his wife's phone number and patch the phone call through Gordon's comm. system. The man gives a little cry of joy as he hears his wife's voice.

I smirk a little as I listen, wondering what Gordon thinks of the storm of Chinese rattling through his speaker. Too bad I can't see his face…or wait, can I? He's near a store…and yes, it has a security camera! I tap in to the camera's feed and grin as the scene pops up onto my screen.

There's Gordon, subtly leaning backward, his face frozen somewhere between polite and really, really alarmed as the Chinese man speaks rapidly, his mouth a few inches away from the IR symbol on Gordon's chest.

But then the camera seems to vibrate slightly, and I stop smiling. A second later, an alert sounds, and I spin around to look at the topographic map of the scene. My suspicions confirmed, I quickly push the button that will contact all of my brothers.

"International Rescue, we have an aftershock coming," I announce. "Get to a safe location immediately!"

And my last glimpse of Gordon is him grabbing the Chinese man by the scruff of the neck and pulling him out into the middle of the street, away from buildings that might collapse on them. Then the camera cuts out and I'm blind again.

Fifteen long seconds later, the aftershock is over, and there's another flurry of activity over the comms as Scott checks in with Virgil and Gordon. Both of them report in quickly, and I breathe yet another sigh of relief.

That is, until I pick up on a soft, muttered "Ouch" from Virgil.

Scott hears it too. "Virg? What's wrong?" he demands.

"Oh, nothing," Virgil replies quickly. "I'm fine, totally fine! Nothing wrong here!"

I glance at the medical screen and roll my eyes. "Scott, he's lying. Virgil's suit sensors are showing that he received a significant blow to his right shoulder. And based on the way his pulse and breathing are picking up, I'd guess that it was something sharp and that he's losing blood."

"Virg?" Scott repeats.

There's a long pause, then Virgil mutters darkly, "Tattletale." He huffs in annoyance. "Fine…I'll stop by Two and do a quick patch."

"Take a break and hydrate while you're at it," Scott tells him. "You were about due for a break anyway."

Virgil just growls in response.

I smirk – Virgil seems to think he's got the corner in the market when it comes to catching brothers hiding injuries, so it's always entertaining to catch him doing the same thing.

Scott's hologram pops up in front of me; he's in the Mole now, tunneling under a building to get at people trapped in the basement. "Keep an eye on Virg for me, will you?" he asks. "I'll be down here for a little while."

"FAB, Scott," I reply.

We share a glance and then laugh as we realize we're wearing the same expression – Gordon would call it the Smother Hen face. It's nice to be able to see Scott. I can't always get a visual on a rescue scene, and it can feel very restrictive to try to figure out what's going on based solely on what people are saying over the comms.

The rest of the rescue goes smoothly; we successfully evacuate several dozen people from the scene of the earthquake.

Gordon corners Virgil and checks on his shoulder, announcing – with perhaps a bit too much glee – that the wound will require stitches and that Virgil should probably allow his copilot to fly Two home.

That suggestion is met with the expected response, and I listen with amusement to five minutes of Gordon's wheeling and Virgil's growls. Scott finally steps in and tells Virgil to go ahead and fly, but to swallow his pride and turn the controls over to Gordon if the shoulder should start to give him any trouble.

"Hmph!" Gordon says. "What's the point of having a copilot if he's never allowed to fly?"

"Gordon, every time I have let you fly her, you've grouched about how huge she is, and how terribly she handles, so I honestly have no idea why you keep on asking to fly her."

"It's the principle of the thing," Gordon mutters.

I shake my head and turn the volume of the conversation down, heading to my tiny kitchen area for a mug of hot tea – I need to unwind. This had been fairly tame as far as rescues go, but still, the constant ebb and flow of adrenaline gets to me after a while.

I think it would help if I could be there, instead of just listening in, getting bits and pieces of conversations. But my role right now is to be the listener. I'm the one who hears the cries for help, the despair in my brothers' voices when something goes wrong, the joy when things go right, the emptiness on the line when someone drops out of communication…I hear it all.

Some days I love it. Some days I hate it.

But here I am, always listening.