The Delta Force

Prologue

Don't walk behind me, I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend. - Unknown

"Give it up, Tomars," Jack shouted. The rest of his team lined up beside him. Tomars was cornered, trapped between five rangers and a tall metal fence. "There's nowhere else to run!"

"This time, we're taking you in," Sky added and drew his blaster.

Three months had passed since Tomars teleported Jack and Sky to a parallel universe. Boom had managed to bring them home, and nobody — not even Piggy — had seen or heard from Tomars since then. Sky had assumed that the criminal was trapped forever in a parallel universe. He was clearly wrong.

"We'll see about that, rangers," Tomars sneered. He lifted a silver laptop in one hand and shot them a slippery smile. "I think you'll find that my new inter-dimensional hyper-speed relocator is… magnificent."

Bridge suddenly clutched his head. His blaster slipped from nerveless fingers and dropped to the ground. In that moment, Sky forgot all about Tomars and the relocator. He forgot about their mission.

"Bridge!" The green ranger wavered on his feet, and Sky reached out to steady him. "What's wrong?"

Bridge shook his head. "I don't know." His voice trembled. "Something…"

Several things happened at once. Tomars drew a blaster from his ragged coat just as Jack activated his morpher.

"S.P.D. Emergency!" Jack deflected the first blast with his striker and returned fire. The deadly red beam streaked toward the criminal, but Tomars held up the relocator as a shield.

There was a brilliant flash of light. The metallic surface of the relocator rippled as it absorbed the blast, leaving Tomars unharmed. The criminal's clawed hands shook where they gripped the relocator, but his expression was triumphant.

"See," Tomars said. "I told you it was perfect." As if to contradict him, the laptop sizzled with purple electricity. Tomars gave a pained yelp and hurtled it at the closest ranger.

Sky instinctively raised his arm to deflect it.

"Don't!" Bridge shouted.

It was too late.

Sky touched the inter-dimensional hyper-speed relocator. It was like being struck by lightning. Every muscle in his body seized and froze. An invisible force was tearing him apart, and he couldn't move, couldn't think, couldn't even scream. The last thing he saw was Bridge reaching toward him before the world fell away.

The laptop slammed into the ground and shattered into a thousand pieces. Bridge stood stunned, his hand still outstretched. Where two rangers had once stood, there was now only one.

"I lost him," Bridge said numbly. Sky was gone and, in a flash of premonition, Bridge knew he might never return. How had a simple mission gone so horribly wrong?

Jack covered the ground in three quick strides. He lifted Tomars by his shirt. "Where did you send him?" Jack demanded. Tomars whimpered as the red ranger slammed him against the fence. "Bring him back!"

"I can't!" Tomars tried and failed to squirm away from the iron grip. "He could be anywhere in the universes!"

Jack spoke into his morpher. "Sky? Can you hear me? Come in, Sky!" But there was no response, only an ominous, empty silence.

First there was light. Brighter than the sun, brilliant, blinding, searing. Blades of color cut through the white, folding inward like a kaleidoscope. After what could have been minutes or mere seconds, there was a thunderous sound. A jagged line appeared and quickly became thicker. Sky realized that he was hurtling toward it at incredible speed.

The line wavered and ripped apart. Sky glimpsed stacked concrete blocks beyond. There was a moment of disorientating weightlessness, and then he slammed into the wall so hard the impact knocked him cold.

Everything was dark, pitch black. Blacker than night. And the smell…

It was horrible. It was like standing at the counter of Piggy's restaurant, but worse. His mouth tasted like something had crawled inside and died. Maybe he was the one that had died, and this was all some kind of awful afterlife.

Something bit his hand, and the pain brought him fully back to consciousness. He opened his eyes in time to see a small and grey creature scurry away on short legs.

A rat.

He had just been bitten by a rat. Sky fought back a wave of nausea and pushed himself to his feet. He leaned heavily against the wall and tried to get his bearings.

'Where am I?' His last conscious moments were hazy and faint. He remembered fighting Tomars… and then nothing. 'Where is everyone?'

He was alone in an alley between two tall and windowless buildings. The smell, and the rat, came from one of the overfilled black dumpsters that lined the street. The rumble of traffic echoed from nearby.

Sky glanced at his injured hand and bit back a curse. Blood oozed from two small punctures in the fleshy part of his thumb. He tore a strip of fabric from the bottom his shirt — no easy task with an injured hand — and bandaged the wound as best he could. That finished, Sky walked toward the bright column of sunlight and sound that marked the entrance of the alley.

He stepped out into a city transformed.

Glass towers stretched into the clouds, their shining facades streaked with pink and orange from the sunset. He passed a storefront and a holographic salesperson followed, pitching products he had never heard of at a rapid-fire pace. On the next block, the glass itself rippled with color and shifted to an advertisement for a luxurious interplanetary vacation, complete with midnight black beaches and moon tours.

A huge billboard caught his eye as it hovered over the street. The advertisement displayed a badge with a stylized human hand. Beneath it were three silver letters: S.P.D.

Text flashed beneath the acronym. "Humanity must stand together! Fight for your freedom!"

This was Newtech City. It had to be. He recognized the street names. An elementary school used to be here, on this corner. Over there was an old firehouse, now replaced with a hotel. Had the inter-dimensional hyperspace relocator thrown him into the future?

Someone bumped into him. "Sorry," Sky muttered, distracted. His breath caught in his throat when he saw who it was. "Bridge?"

Bridge froze for a split second and then shoved Sky with all his strength. Sky was taken completely by surprise. He careened into a group of sightseers. By the time he recovered, Bridge was half a block ahead and weaving in and out of the crowd with ease.

Sky set off in pursuit. Bridge made a sharp turn into a narrow street and swung himself up a fire escape. He soon disappearing over the edge of the roof.

Sky began to climb. This building was old, the bricks worn and darkened with age. The fire escape rattled and creaked with every step. Some parts were dangerously rusted. His foot plummeted through a rotting step and, as he struggled to free himself, a woman spotted him from her open apartment window. She let out a high-pitched scream before retreating from sight.

He reached the top just in time to see Bridge fling himself off the edge. The teen landed in a graceful roll on an adjacent roof. He straightened and, for the first time, met Sky's eyes. There was a challenge there, a hard edge of defiance.

This wasn't the Bridge he knew. No, this was someone else, someone altogether unpredictable and dangerous. This Bridge was willing to risk both of their lives in order to prove a point, and Sky had no idea what that point was.

He approached the edge and peered over. The drop was massive, thirty floors down a yawning chasm of brick and concrete. The wail of police sirens came from far below. He had to make a choice, right now: jump, and contend with a hostile Bridge, or stay and face arrest. Sky backed away from the edge. He took a bracing breath and broke into a full run. The moment his feet left the ground, he knew he wasn't going to make it.

Time became elastic. The gaps between each heartbeat lengthened and stretched. His perception sharpened until every brick of the opposite wall stood out in sharp detail. A flailing hand caught the edge of the roof, and Sky hung there precariously. He grabbed for a second handhold while his feet scrabbled against the side of the building.

Before he could pull himself to safety, a booted foot crunched down on his injured hand. Bridge looked at him with cold eyes and slowly drew his blaster.

"Don't," Sky cried out. "I don't want to fight you. I just want to talk." He slipped a little further towards a certain death, three hundred feet below. "I'm not who you think I am."

Bridge hesitated for a long moment, and then the weight on his hand lifted.

"I know," Bridge told him. He pulled Sky onto the roof. "Because if you were the real Sky, I would already be dead."

~ TBC

A/N: Please take the time to review. Reviewing helps me as a writer and makes it easier for other people to find this story. Best of all, it only takes a second!