Old Friends: Chapter Two

Disclaimer: Power Rangers isn't mine.

Summary: Chapter Two. Hayley brings in outside help for her Zeltrax project. Anton is a jerk.

Repost: I suddenly realized that the times indicated by Mercer in the second chapter didn't mesh with the first (Mercer and Susan didn't get together until Prom night). How embarrasing. Anyway, I did some editing, and I think I like this version better. It fits a little more smoothly into the story line.

--

"You wanted to see me?"

Anton looked up from his work. Susan Randall was standing at the door to his office. She was dressed in a neat skirt and blouse, her long dark hair pulled back into a braid. She looked patient, kind, and caring, and exactly the opposite of Elsa.

"Ah, Susan." Anton put the file to one side. "Right on time. Come on in."

"Is there something wrong?" She asked. "You said it was urgent."

"Yes, extremely." He stood and pulled on his jacket. "If we don't leave now, we'll never make the reservations I made at the Coffee Club."

Her smile widened in confusion.

"Sorry?"

"Breakfast," he clarified. "I'm taking you out to breakfast."

She raised an eyebrow, reminding him that though she might have lost her sadism and her sword, she'd lost none of her razor sharp wit.

"Anton Mercer, are you asking me out on a date?"

"A date? Oh, no. Just… breakfast, between two very old, very close friends." He smiled his killer smile. Unable to help herself, she smiled back.

"Don't you want to spend the morning with your son?" She pointed out.

"Right at this moment, Trent is sleeping off his prom night. I'm to meet him at Oliver's house for lunch, but my morning is completely free."

He'd given Trent and his friends the use of the lake house and a monetry limit on how much damage they could inflict. He hadn't checked on them this morning, not wanting to catch his son – or god forbid, one of the others – in bed with someone they probably shouldn't be, or in possession of certain substances they definitely shouldn't be. If he caught them at it, he'd have to put his foot down. But you were only seventeen once, and after the year they'd had Trent and his friends deserved to celebrate their prom night however they chose. Besides. Trent was a level-headed boy. He'd keep the others in check.

"So." Anton offered his arm to Elsa. "Shall we go?"

He told his assistant to field today's calls, and summoned one his drivers to take them to the resteraunt. Some men might take their girlfriends to a diner or a takeaway place. Anton would never be that crass. His female companions always got the best of everything. It was his way of ensuring a smooth transaction between them. After all, if you gave a lot, you received a lot in return.

He wasn't a misogynist. He was upfront from the begginning about his expectations, but not offensive. He was respectful with his companions, selecting them as much for their intellect and their inner strength as for their physical charms. He was generous with those that played within the rules. For those that didn't…well, there'd only been a few of them. And of those, only one serious mistake.

Susan hadn't been a mistake. She wasn't one of his usual companions either, to be eventually discarded. To be honest, he wasn't quite sure what she was to him.

She'd started out as a brilliant genetics professor that had disappeared mysteriously in the middle of their affair. He had been puzzled, and very slightly irritated that he hadn't been the one to end it. It hadn't really occurred to him to be worried about her, just as it hadn't occurred to him to be worried by the disappearance of Mercer Industries resources, or the increasing amount of time lost in black-outs. By the time it had occurred to him to worry, Mesagog was already too far in control, and Anton was powerless to save himself, let alone Susan.

But perhaps that shared trauma had changed something, altered something within Anton himself. He didn't know what he felt for Susan now: he'd hesitate to call it love. Attraction, certainly, and respect, and protectiveness. All powerful emotions. Enough to make him start pursuing her again, which was breaking one of his cardinal rules (never, ever form a relationship with a woman more than once: it leads to expectations).

"So what do you want to talk about?" He asked, once they were settled into their seats, and the waitress had taken their order.

"I don't know." Susan said. "Anything. Everything. Who's president?"

Anton told her and she made a face.

"No way."

"Way." He rather enjoyed the immature banter.

"Well he wouldn't have gotten my vote. Which reminds me. Did I vote? And who fed my cat while I was - ?"

"Evil?" He said helpfully. She slapped his hand playfully.

"Yes. "

"Well, I had someone come round when you first disappeared. Then I think your parents took her."

He realized his error a moment later.

Susan's parents had died in a car crash not long after Elsa showed up. Initially welcoming of their missing daughter, they'd become more and more suspicious, as this woman acted nothing like the daughter they'd raised. Anton suspected, but could never prove, that they'd become too pointed in their observations, and that either Mesagog or one of his goons had arranged the accident. He could only hope it hadn't been Elsa herself. When he'd told Susan, after his rescue, she'd broken down in tears, falling to the ground and pounding on it with her small fists as if begging it to open up and take her too.

Anton seemed to always be the bearer of bad news. He'd been the one, all those years ago, to tell Trent about the cave-in, and then, as now, he'd found himself holding someone as they grieved.

"I wish… " Susan started. "I wish Mum and Dad were still here, even just for a little while, so they could know I'm okay."

Anton laid his hand over hers. Sometimes he'd found it was better to say nothing at all. There were some things for which words weren't adequate. Susan quickly wiped away her tears, summoning up her smile again by mere force of will. It was one of the bravest acts he'd ever seen.

"Speaking of parents," she said. "How are you and Trent?"

"Fine," he said. "Great, actually. We're getting along better than ever. He's starting art school in the fall."

"That's fantastic. And he and Kira – ?"

"He's working his way up to it." Hopefully last night he would have made intentions clear last night, or Kira would have. She didn't seem like the patient type. Honestly, Anton didn't know where Trent got his reticence around women.

"Still?" Susan teased. "And his father being such a ladies' man."

"I am not a ladies' man."

"Oh, yes you are."

A shrill deet-de-deet came from Anton's cellphone. He frowned at the callscreen. Only a few people had his personal number, and even fewer would presume to use it. The name flashing on the small gray screen was Hayley Ziktor. He almost let it go to voice mail, but Ziktor was one of the small inner circle involved with Tommy Oliver, and there was the tiny, almost insignificant chance this might have to do with Mesagog.

"Excuse me," he said to Susan. "This will only take a moment." He answered. "Mercer speaking."

"Mercer." Ziktor's voice was crisp and no-nonsense. "I need to talk to you."

"Can this wait?" He smiled at Susan. "I'm rather preoccupied at the moment."

"It really can't."

"Ziktor, I can't get away right now."

"Listen to me very carefully, Mercer. The two words I'm about to give you will give you an indication of just how urgent the situation is. Killer cyborg."

The sounds of the resteraunt faded into the background.Anton struggled to keep his face blank. There was only person she could be talking about. Zeltrax.

"Where are you?" He said. "I'll come meet you right now."

"I'm in the Memorial park, next to the founder statue."

Mercer flipped his phone shut.

"I'm sorry, Susan. I'm going to have to cancel."

She looked concerned.

"Is everything alright?"

"Just fine." For Susan, he managed a reassuring smile. "Just a problem with the Cyberspace paperwork. Small, but urgent if Hayley and I don't want to have to pay a fine."

Susan's baffled smile said she wasn't quite convinced.

"Alright," she said. "Another time then."

"Tomorrow," he promised, kissing her cheek. He paid for their coffees and asked the waitress to call up a cab for Susan. That taken care of, he ordered his driver to take him to the Memorial park.

Ziktor was sitting on a bench. She rose to her feet as the car pulled up. Anton rolled down the window.

"Get in," he said, not bothering with the preliminaries. At this moment, he doubted she was any more concerned with them than he was. She slid into the seat beside him, pulling the door shut behind her. Her red hair was pulled back into a careless twist, her face pale and strained. He couldn't see any bruises or cuts. For whatever reason, Zeltrax appeared to have left her untouched. Luck, or a deliberate choice on Zeltrax's part?

Anton ordered his driver to circle the block, not caring what the man thought, and pressed the button to raise the privacy screen between the front and back of the limousine.

"Are you hurt?" He asked Ziktor.

"No." She laced fingers together but couldn't quite hide their trembling. "All he wanted to do was talk."

Talk. That was a new strategy. Zeltrax had been brutal: a creature of brute force and rage. Mesagog had chosen him specifically for that quality. Where Elsa was the scalpel, Zeltrax was the hammer.

Anton closed his eyes for a moment, and carefully centred himself in the present. The scraps of Mesagog's memories floating about his subconscious surfaced sometimes and they were never pretty.

"Where is Zeltrax now?" He asked.

"At my house. I gave him a painkiller to help him sleep."

Of all the answers, Anton had expected, that was not among them. Ziktor rose higher in his estimation. Plainly, she had a cooller head under pressure than he'd given her credit for, if she'd managed to talk a psychotic cyborg into not only letting her live, but allowing her to administer a sedative. Tommy, for all his faults, had a discerning taste in women.

"Have you told the rangers yet?" He asked. She surprised him by shaking her head. "Good. You did the right thing coming to me." He pulled out his phone. Ziktor sat up a little.

"What are you doing?" She said.

"Calling in some private forces. They'll take care of this little… problem." He began to dial.

"Don't." She grabbed his wrist. The vehemance in her voice startled him.

"Ziktor?" He queried.

"You can't kill him."

"I assure you, Miss Ziktor, that's not so. Your house will probably suffer in the process, but I'll pay for any and all damages incurred." He tried to free himself from her grip, but she was stronger than she looked, and there was a cold gleam in her eyes that he'd only seen on her once or twice before.

"If I wanted him dead, you think I'd come to you?" The words were tinged with scorn. "Tommy has friends who would take care of this problem much more easily and efficiently than you ever could."

An interesting titbit of information, but one to pursue another time.

"Forgive if I've gotten the wrong idea," he said, letting sarcasm tinge his voice as well. "But why wouldn't you want to neutralise what you yourself described as a quote 'killer cyborg' end quote?"

"Zeltrax didn't come looking to hurt me," Ziktor said. "He came to me for help."

Their stand-off lasted a little longer, then Anton flipped his phone shut. Ziktor released his wrist.

"Let me start from the begginning," she said. "Smithy came to me last night–"

"Smithy?"

Anton was surprised. Not by the name. He'd known Zeltrax's human identity. But he was surprised that Ziktor would know it.

Ziktor ignored his interruption.

"He says he faked his death. He could be telling the truth." She shrugged, with a sceptical frown that said she didn't believe it. "It's more likely he just took advantage of the situation, letting everyone believe the attack finished him off, when all it did was clip him. Zeltrax wasn't the most strategic of creatures, and Smithy always liked everyone to believe him smarter than he was."

"No. No, he wasn't." Had she known Zeltrax then, back when he was human? Anton believed there you could never know too little, and Ziktor was certainly proving the point. He'd known she was a genius of a level he could only dream of, but he'd assumed her interest in the matter had been purely intellectual, a scientist leaping at the chance to study the closely guarded ranger technologies. If she'd known Zeltrax – and known him well enough to make off-the-cuff insights to his character – she was more deeply involved than Anton had thought.

What else, then, did she know?

"He says he's dying," Ziktor continued. Her words were crisp and calm and precise, outlining a scientific challenge rather than a moral delemnia. "He's telling the truth. I've examined him. His metal components are being rejected by his body. Without surgical intervention, he'll be dead within the month. He wants me to remove the cyborg components."

"That's insane. That will kill him." The cyborg components were the only thing keeping Zeltrax alive. Zeltrax must be even more insane than Anton had thought.

"Not with his body showing superior healing abilities," Ziktor shot back. "The Tree did something to him, hyped up his healing abilities to a supernatural extent. It's why his body is rejecting his organs now." She hesitated. "Anton, he wants to get better. It's why he came to me."

"Yes, that interests me. Why you?"

Her face flooded with colour. Embarrassment, perhaps, or some deeper emotion.

"We went to college together," she said stiffly. "Smithy and Tommy and I. We– we were friends."

"Ah. Interesting."

And indeed it was. Her hesitation hinted that it was more than just some casual acquaintence. They'd been close. Lovers? Doubtful. Anton knew perfectly well that Ziktor and Oliver had been involved during grad school, and Ziktor didn't seem like the type to cheat, nor Oliver the kind to tolerate it. But still. This was a lot of trouble to go to, for a friend you hadn't spoken to in years, and who had routinely tried to take over the world.

"I want to help him," Ziktor continued. "And I need your help to do it, Mercer."

"And why should I?" He pointed out pleasantly. "It would be much neater, and easier, just to end the problem now."

"Because you created the problem," she said, equally pleasant. "And the easiest solution isn't always the right one. And because you owe him."

Her words evoked an uneasy uncertainty in Anton, a sense akin to watching a twisted brown shape on the forest floor and trying to decide if it was a snake or just an oddly shaped branch. How much did Ziktor know?

"He's a killer," he said.

"So were you and Susan and Trent."

"But none of us by our own violition. Trent was controlled by an evil gem, Susan was brainwashed, and I had a mutant dinosaur in my head. But Zeltrax went along with it because he hated Tommy Oliver."

Ziktor looked as if she were about to say something, then changed her mind. Inside Anton, doubts became real suspicions. How much had Smithy told her?

"He wants the chance to change," Ziktor said. There was a beat, and she added: "I want to give him that chance."

They were looking at each other, eye to eye. Anton was ruing his dismissal of Ziktor. Both his initial dismissal of her as an ambitionless fool wasting her talents on a coffee shop, and his more recent assumption that she'd only been involved for the technology. She was in this just as deep as Tommy Oliver and his three child soldiers. As deep as Susan, and Trent, and Anton himself. All of them tangled up in a quagmire of love and secrets, jealousy and betrayal. They'd thought they were out. They'd thought they were free.

They'd been wrong. You never escaped the past. You only sank a little deeper.

Right now, Ziktor had a piece of Anton's past, and knowingly or not, she was holding it to his neck. Tommy had chosen his helper and his confidant well. Although, probably not as well as he could have, if she was insisting on trying to save a homicidal cyborg.

"What will we tell Tommy?" Anton asked, only realizing a moment later that he'd agreed to help Ziktor with her idiotic plan.

"That's easy. We won't."

--