Seven: Trapped
It was dark, terrifying.
Wes Collins stared at darkness the likes of which he had never experienced before, surroundings so black that for a moment he wondered if he had suddenly gone blind… or if he was dead, fallen into the deepest pits of hell, into oblivion, where nothing existed but him and the black…
Through it all, he could hear a distinct slithering sound – like a snake over glass, wet and distinctly organic. It was continuous and reminded him of his childhood nightmares, where he had dreamed of monsters and pythons circling around him just like this, closing in on him, ready to squeeze his life out of him, as he continued to scream, and scream, and scream…
Get a hold of yourself, Wes.
"Alex…?" Wes blinked behind his helmet, and suddenly, like a vista of colours that had suddenly opened up to him after a long and treacherous sojourn in the darkness, a series of blinking lights sprang to life on his visor again – that usual, unending stream of data that helped him handle the suit.
It was only a minor systems failure, a hologram that had suddenly popped to life in front of his eyes said. A hologram, with dark-grey sunglasses. Slicked dark hair. Time Force uniform. Strong, tall. This place is causing some problems for your suit. You'd better demorph soon.
Wes had absolutely no idea about this person – wasn't he supposed to be dead, anyway? – but he whispered, once more, "Alex?"
Get a hold of yourself, Wes.
Now.
A sudden vigour seized his limbs – unexplained, sudden and panicky – and he reached to stroke the dial of the morpher to demorph himself before he was even consciously aware of what he was doing. He opened his eyes – not sure of when or why he had closed them – and the world opened to him once again; still dark, but now composed of shadows that seemed to merge into another, resolving into momentary silhouettes in the wake of an inadvertent sliver of light coming from an unseen source.
I ought to have asked the guy what was going on, Wes thought ruefully, stroking his morpher dial again. "Come on," he whispered, stroking it harder, "Time Force! Time for Time force, dammit!"
No response, except for a tiny wisp of smoke that suddenly emerged from its innards, after which Wes was definitely discouraged to try and morph anymore.
His eyes had adjusted to the darkness better by then, and he looked around him, trying to make out which part of BioLabs he was in. He lifted his foot, and heard a sick, wet squelching sound. He bent down and ran his hands over the floor – the floor was covered with a coating of a thick, gelatinous substance. Already? Wes thought, crinkling his nose in disgust. He lifted his fingers – now coated with the substance – to his face, sniffing delicately. It seemed to have the consistency of congealed blood, and smelled revolting. Gagging on the whiff he had got, and feeling decidedly sick, he shook the substance off his fingers, smearing the rest on the wall.
What's going on here? Wes wondered half-despairingly, as he tried to make his way down the corridor, step by squelching step. Obviously it had a lot to do with… well, whatever happened to Ransik back at the Oaken Avenue warehouse. And with those… terrible monsters that most of the Silver Guardians had become. Trip had tried to explain to him as they had run to BioLabs, but Wes wasn't sure if the Xybrian really understood what was going on himself.
But I don't need to understand, Wes thought, All I need is a goal. Something to reach.
And that, he felt, described his time with the other rangers-from-the-future, fighting alongside them, for them. He didn't really understand his relationship with them, or how he did the things he did; but he was aware of the goal they were working towards, and was only too happy to help them reach it, no matter the means. The "How" part of the whole deal was a question he wasn't prepared to think about; something he didn't want to think about – all he knew was the power and knowledge that took over his body every time he morphed; a deep sense of confidence and authority, almost as if a different personality had taken residence in his body. Slowly that personality was starting to take over his life – right from the sudden independent streak that had caused him to break away from his father's planned future and carve out his own destiny, to that lovely, intangible feeling that made his heart flutter every time he set his eyes on Jen, he had undoubtedly, irrevocably changed.
Not too sure what to make of the new me, though, Wes thought, a half-bitter smile curving his lips, continuing to make his slow, torturous way down the corridor. Sure, being a Time Force Ranger had revolutionised so many aspects of his life beyond his wildest stretches of imagination, but then again, it had planted these strange emotional responses within him – that attraction to Jen, and that… that long-festering jealousy that burned in him like a flame whenever he saw Lucas…
Lucas.
Somehow, the mere thought of his former teammate reinforced the old vigour in his limbs, and he narrowed his eyes, quickening his steps. I've got to keep going. Got to help others in this building if I can, Wes thought determinedly, unable to help a chill dread from settling in his spine at the thought of what might have happened to those unfortunate enough to get trapped in the building with the transformed Ransik. First thing to do would be to find some light and weapons. And then… I've… got to find Ransik, and finish this. Somehow.
He was without morphing power, without weapon, without teammate or friend in a building virtually taken over the enemy, but Wes, with just one goal in mind, was unfazed.
Or so he liked to think.
This was a bad idea.
There were not many moments in her life that Katie Walker felt unsure of her decisions – not even during that disastrous mission that brought Ransik and them to the past, not when they invited Wes into their fold, not even when Lucas left them, and the team seemed as though it was crumbling apart – but now, cornered by a mutated Silver Guardian, with the entire Silver Hills City on full alert, she finally found her mind slipping into doubt.
Even as her Chrono Sabre finally cleaved through the mutant's torso.
Even as disturbingly human blood spattered onto her suit…
Sirens blared and flashing police lights painted the city in the colours of chaos – panicked people rushed past her, handkerchiefs pressed tightly to their faces, to their children's… an endless sea of humanity, wave after wave of people rushing from point to point, a sort of blind fear overwhelming their senses.
The mutants had made quick ground since they had left BioLabs – more and more people had become infected, though real panic had only begun to set in after Mr. Collins' announcement through the television about the real dangers that the city was facing. The news had also reached Washington by then, and the whole of Silver Hills City had been cordoned off. Flights into and out of the city were left stranded. People desperate to leave had been stopped at the outskirts by the army. The telephone lines were jammed, millions of people trying to call their loved ones at the same time. It was a terrifying state of isolation – with no way in or out.
The whole city had been quarantined.
Despite Mr. Collins' confident reassurances that the city management, the remaining resources of BioLabs, what was left of the Silver Guardians, and the Time Force Rangers would pour their combined effort into finding a fast and effective solution to the crisis, Katie couldn't fight off the doubt that chewed at her brain. Gnawing away at the self-confidence that had brought her so far in the Time Force Academy. Bit by bit.
She couldn't help but feel that the whole city had been left to die.
And we did it, she thought, a drop of blood of the mutant she had killed (the human I… murdered) sliding down her visor. We came here because we messed up, because we were trying to atone for a mistake, but we've just gone and done a much more terrible thing.
A sinking despair started to weigh down on her diaphragm, and suddenly she found it hard to breathe – all she wanted to do was huddle against the wall, bury her head between her knees, and, oh, just sleep away all that burgeoning despair…
Her hand moved slowly toward the morpher dial (I'm so damn tired anyway, I'm so sick of this, we're not getting anywhere –); just one stroke, and she'd be demorphed, and she could just, just go somewhere, because if she stayed, terrible, terrible things were going to happen –
"Katie? Katie, you there?"
She lifted the morpher dial to her face – a tiny hologram of a very worried-looking Trip flickered to life. "Oh, Thank God you're okay," he said, throwing back his head for a moment. "What was going on just now? Your beacon wasn't moving for a long time, and I thought –"
"I'm fine, Trip." Physically, anyway. "The situation's a bit… sickening, that's all."
He lowered his eyes for a moment. "I know. But Dr. Zaskin and I are working on it." Trip was collaborating with what was remaining of the BioLabs team, to try and find a solution to the crisis. "You, and Jen, and Eric – you guys keep fighting. I know we can get this back under control."
Katie nodded distantly. "Yeah. We can have a try at that, I guess."
"Katie – you've gotta… I mean, you've always been so strong, in body and mind, and I… you should – you know, try and keep up hope, and –"
She smiled weakly. "Yeah, Trip, I get it. Thanks."
He gave an embarrassed little grin at her, and she felt the tiredness start to slip away. Just a little.
"What about Wes and Lucas? Are they –?"
The smile slid off his face and he shook his head. "Both of them demorphed soon after they got into the building – I'm not able to track them anymore. I'm not even able to get a handle on the emergency homing device on the deactivated morpher – either the morphers are damaged beyond repair, or something is jamming communication."
"Oh." The despair was teasing her at the back of her mind, waiting to take over. Once again. "I… I see. Keep… keep me posted on any more developments, okay?"
"Sure," Trip said seriously. "You take care of yourself."
"Yeah. You too." The hologram flickered and died as they terminated communication. The brief flicker of levity that she had got out of her conversation with Trip had long since been snuffed out, and she now found herself looking at the task that lay before her with the weariness of a veteran soldier who had fought countless battles, seen terrible atrocities. There were mutants to be disposed of, a potentially dangerous Nadira on an insane rampage, and, of course, the very strong possibility that Wes and Lucas – two quarrelling thick-headed idiots with swollen egos, and also their last hope against this new menace – were dead.
She considered all of this, and could find only tired indifference in her soul. A bit of regret, perhaps. Maybe some fear. Plenty of despair, and resigned melancholy. The mental strength that she had prided herself of was now nothing more than a mockery of a dream… a distant dream, to be sure. Deep within, she knew that this should scare her, but the more she fought, the more that voice died down.
She shook her head and climbed onto her Time Force bike. Her blood-tinted visor swallowed the world in disturbing shades of crimson as Katie Walker drove into battle once again.
There were times when Lucas Kendall bade farewell to all pretences of machismo and gave into fear.
This was one of them.
His life, for all its complementary facets fitting perfectly into each other, was a dangerous one after all – professional racer, Time Force officer, a Time Ranger three hundred years into the past… but it wasn't these that scared him, not really. It wasn't the thought of the responsibilities that stoked the fear in his heart, but their consequences. He knew he wasn't alone in his fear of what kind of horror they had unleashed on the timeline by letting Ransik escape into the past, but now, with everything that had happened –
"Wes? Wes! Where are you, dammit!"
The fear bug was chewing away at his soul faster than an agricultural beetider as Lucas made his way through the darkly organic corridors. He had been forced to drop his morph soon after entering the building, and now had only an incredibly primitive 21st century pistol as a means of defence. The gooey substance that coated the walls was growing at an incredible rate – they hung like translucent branches reaching out like wreaths as in forests from nightmares.
The funny thing about forests…
-
"Alex, we're lost. Accept it."
"No. No. We can still make it out. No problem."
He sighed. That stubbornness again. One of these days, it was going to kill them all. "No, we can't, Alex. We need help."
Alex finally turned, in his eyes burning that eerie fire. "Why do we need help when I'm here? I'm the Red Ranger, dammit! You've just got to listen to what I say!"
He felt his discomfort rise like bile at the back of his throat. That bloody morpher again… "Yeah, Alex, and look at where listening to you has gotten us. Dinah, dead. Porter, lost. Rachel… dying. We need to stop this mission now, Alex. No, look at me," he said, grabbing Alex's shoulders and turning the officer toward him, even as he tried to look away, "we may be stuck in this forest, but your morpher is the only one among ours that's still functional. If you could give it to me… maybe I could reconfigure some of the circuitry and establish some sort of communication – well, maybe not as well as Porter could… can, but I can still try."
The fire burned harder than ever. "And compromise on our protection? You want both of us to die too? Is that it?"
He was starting to feel desperate. "Protection from what, Alex? Everything that can happen… has already happened. The only thing left to hurt us…" he looked sadly at his leader, "is us."
"No." Alex pulled away from him, fingering the morpher tied to his wrist. "No," he repeated. "You're not having this."
"Alex…"
"You don't understand," the Red Ranger said suddenly. "I… I need this. This… this morpher here is everything I am. Everything I ever will be. It's me, don't you see?"
He was starting to feel more than a little panicked now. He had never seen Alex act this… psychotic before. "Alex, please. Give it to me. You can have it back after we've left this place." Alex's eyes met his, and he thought he saw a light of reason begin to flicker within their blue depths. "You see we have to leave as soon as possible, don't you?" He had to tread carefully here. Alex was not himself, had not been himself ever since he had become the first Time Force Officer to be entrusted with the coveted Red Ranger morpher. "We need to get back home. Get Rachel treated. Send out a proper search party for Porter."
"Home…" Alex murmured, confusion fleeting across his face. "But the mission… my mission…"
He tried to hold on to his fraying patience. "Let's… let's just forget about the mission for now, all right?" he said, softly, kindly, as if he were speaking to a particularly hyperactive six-year-old. "We need to get back home before we meet with any more trouble. Rachel's life depends on it." He finally decided to go for his trump card. "Think about the people who're waiting for us… for you. Think about Jen."
Alex's lips curved upward in a smile. "Jen…"
He felt as if he were treading firmer ground now. "Yeah, Alex. Jen. Think about how anxiously she must be waiting for you to return."
To his surprise, storm clouds pulled across the smile on Alex's face, and his eyes darkened. "I wonder about that."
"What do you mean?"
"Maybe she's not waiting for me at all. Maybe she's just having fun with Kendall."
His eyebrows shot up. "Officer Lucas Kendall? The racer? I wouldn't be surprised if he's interested in Jen, but she's not the type who'd go after someone like him…"
"Well, she is. She is!" The flame of reason blossomed into a forest fire, teasing at the realms of insanity. "This… this morpher is all I have left. This power is the only thing I have left to call mine!"
"Alex, stop! Look at what that morpher is doing to you! Give it back to me, Alex, you've got to –" A white-hot explosion of pain, precise and excruciating, blossomed in his abdomen, cutting off his words. A crazed Alex held his laser pistol, still pointed toward his abdomen, where the crimson of his blood was fast starting to stain the white of his uniform. With trembling hands, he reached down at it, and the blood was soon painting his hands, and the whole experience was so surreal…
Suddenly, strength left him, and his knees buckled as if they were made of cloth. "Alex…" he gasped.
He looked up, and the pistol was now pointing directly at his forehead.
No, not Alex. Not his best friend, his comrade-in-arms, their best officer.
No.
The muscles in Alex's jaw worked silently, tension and conflict rippling through his handsome face, before he finally spoke. "You understand, don't you – I can't give away this power. I can't."
The last thing he heard before an explosion as unimaginably fantastic and indescribable as the Big Bang itself blasted away his universe forever was precisely this:
"I'm sorry, Zeph. I really am."
-
… Lucas Kendall fell to the coated floor, trembling, cold sweat beading across his temples.
He got out his arms just in time to check his fall, and stayed in that position for a few moments, resting on his palms and knees, breathing heavily.
What was that all about? He remembered the original team that had first been entrusted with the Time Force morphers, remembered the mission that was to be their last, remembered how Alex had been the only one to survive that disastrous mission, how he came back home a tragic hero, forced to watch as his teammates died around him. Remembered the tears that had sparked in Alex's eyes as he had described their deaths at the hands of the enemy, remembered the set line of his jaw, the quiet anger, the determination that had endeared him to the whole galaxy. Remembered how he declared that he was going to work solo from then on; that the morphers he had retrieved were not to be used by anyone else anymore.
Lies.
He remembered how awed he had felt.
He remembered how easily he had believed.
Zeph Bracken, the original Time Force Blue Ranger. Porter Wilkins, Green. Dinah Davidson, Yellow. Rachel Andrews, Pink. These were the ultimate officers. Hand-picked to assume the honour of being the first ever Time Force Ranger team. Along with Alex, these were people that Lucas and several others grew up in the Academy admiring – these people were role models for so many generations of budding Time Force officers.
And yet…
They were all gone, thanks to the very power they had been bestowed with.
Suddenly a lot of things made sense now.
I just saw Zeph Bracken die, Lucas thought wildly, squeezing his eyes shut, the image of Alex pointing his gun to the head of his best friend imprinted forever on the back of his eyelids. No, more than saw – he had felt him die. He had felt all that overpowering despair, the sadness, the panic, the disbelief – the white agony of pain, and then… that all-encompassing blackness of utter oblivion.
Some more trembling moments passed by before Lucas realised the wetness on his cheeks.
It took him a few more to realise that that wetness was his tears.
He supposed he was crying for the sudden death of a beautiful illusion.
The illusion that the morphers were a gift. That the device he was wearing represented his destiny, the great things he wanted to achieve. The people he had to save, the mistakes he had to atone for. Yet, far from being a blessing, these morphers were plunging human minds already ensconced in conflict into confusion deeper still – they were providing them unimaginable power, and turning them against each other.
Eating away at the bonds that held the team together.
Lucas's head dipped even further. Wes, I'm sorry. If only –
He understood, now: the anger that had greeted him when he had given in to his little moment of desire back at the Clock Tower, the incredible strength that had pushed him through the clock face – all that had been Alex. Not Wes, not really.
"Hey… who's there?"
A disturbingly bright light suddenly stung his eyes from the darkness, and Lucas flinched, turning his face away. Narrowing his eyes and forcing them to get used to the sudden change, he looked toward the direction of the person holding the flashlight.
Tall, broad-shouldered. A glint of shimmering blue in the eyes. Muscles of the face taut in some perennial half-grimace. Almost like… Alex.
"Wes?"
Using the wall as support, Lucas got to his feet. "Wes?" he said again. "Man, am I glad I found you."
"Lucas," Wes said, almost dully. "So you did follow me."
"Yeah, well, I couldn't just let you go face whatever it is that Ransik's become without actual backup."
Wes nodded distantly, before his gaze snapped back onto Lucas. "You okay?"
Lucas pursed his lips. "Not really," he said, "but I'll be fine." He took a deep breath. "So – we'll search out Ransik together, shall we?"
Wes gave him a half-grin. "I don't suppose we have a choice – you're the guy with the weapon, and I'm the guy with the light."
Lucas decided to afford himself a little laugh. "Yeah – quite a duo."
Discomfort permeated the moment once again as the two severely conflicted young men considered what still lay ahead of them. They were walking into a battle with neither of them quite sure of what they were going to face. One, fanatically single-minded. The other, disillusioned, broken. But morpher or not, broken or unbroken, they were still Time Force Rangers – in essence and spirit.
They walked in silence, side-by-side, into their next battle.