Chapter Four

The Command Center was cold. So very cold. It had always been that way. The place had been built for far more rangers than they had ever worked with. It made no sense that there had ever been a need for that many rangers to exist at once, but neither of them had really thought about it before now. They had not thought about a world with hundreds of rangers.

"Coffee," Tommy croaked as the smell wafted in to the dormitory and he slowly sat up from his cot. He looked to his right and saw that Kimberly's cot was empty. How was he going to explain all of this to her? Could he even explain all of this to her?

The need for warmth won out over making a game plan and he followed his nose towards the smell. Nothing could make the last four months better. Coffee would make this morning manageable and he desperately needed manageable.

She was making breakfast- actual breakfast. He could not remember the last time he had eaten a proper meal. As soon as he realized what was happening with the rangers- his world had shifted to trying to save and protect the rangers that were left. And he had failed. It was that simple. He hated that he had failed. He hated that he still did not know what was after them. He hated that he had no answers and that they might be stuck in the Command Center for the rest of their natural lives if he did not find some answers soon.

"You make enough for two?" Tommy asked and she turned around to face him. He had gotten a decent look at her last night, but it was nothing like this morning. It was nothing like seeing her in a way that he had imagined her to be so many times. It took his breath away and also solidly forced him in to the present. This was not a dream. She was here because she would be dead otherwise. And he must keep her alive.

"Yeah, I figured whatever you have to tell me would be best done with a full stomach," Kimberly said as she slid a plate in front of him. He smiled as he recognized the breakfast- it had always been one of his favorites. How had she remembered that? "Apparently the Command Center knew we would be staying here for quite a bit- there was plenty in the refrigerator. And it looks like all of our favorites."

"I don't know what we'd do without this place," Tommy whispered and he rubbed his face to try to get the last bit of sleep from his eyes. He needed to be clear headed as he told her everything. And he would tell her everything. There was no point in minimizing the story now. He had hoped that he would be able to tell her just the minimized version. He had hoped he would be able to call her, tell her that she was safe forever, and that he had made that happen. Now- now there was no chance for that. Now she had to know the entire truth. "It started four months ago…"

"Tommy- you don't have to start in to this right now. We have time," Kim said as she grabbed his hands and he looked up from his plate at her. Something passed between the two of them that let him know how scared she was, but also how determined she was to keep up a good front for him. She was determined that she would not be a liability. The fact that he could tell she still thought that she was a liability in the ranger world ripped in to him in a way he was not fully prepared for. Kimberly may have never been the fighter the rest of them were- but she had always been valuable to the team. She had always done things that caught the monsters, and them, off guard. "We really do."

"We may not. The Command Center isn't infallible- and we can't live here forever. It started four months ago- when the first group of rangers died," Tommy stated as he stood up to gather his research. One of the benefits of having a PhD was that he had had to become an expert at keeping notes and doing research- he had just never thought that it would benefit him in this way. He passed over the articles surrounding the first four rangers' deaths. "They were recent rangers, obviously. As far as I am aware- they were the last active ranger team- about a year ago."

"These articles- they're exactly four months old. How did you notice so quickly?" Kim asked as she pulled on her glasses and started reading the details. The obituaries were all similar, eerily similar. These rangers had spread out after high school and gone to colleges around the country- but the obituary could have been written by the same person.

"I made a computer program that scraped the internet for specific types of articles about rangers. There was some filtering involved to make sure that it was a ranger and not some random person with the same name. I warned the others when I first found these and verified that it was true. I chose not to warn you- because I felt you would be our best chance at finding out who did this, quietly," Tommy stated and he watched her face. She did not seem surprised, if anything, she seemed to understand where he was coming from.

"Because I'm a bit of a public figure?" Kim asked and he nodded. She was the host of a nationally aired morning show- her disappearance would cause far more problems than any of the other rangers. He had bet that whatever was after the rangers would take more time to plan with her than with the others. "How's that theory going?"

"Not well. From what I have been able to pull together- there is no one in your circle that overlaps with anyone in ours. There also have not been any monster signatures around you- there were monster signatures around the others, except me. Either they don't know you were a ranger or they were waiting until now to start to come after you," Tommy hurriedly said. He knew what he believed, but he was not sure that she would listen or believe him. He thought it was insane and he had been doing the research for several months. "I believe it's more likely that they did not realize you were a ranger, but I could not risk that they knew about you and that you would be next."

"Did you risk the others?" Kim asked and he just shook his head. Rage flooded his body that she thought that he would risk his friends and fellow rangers like that. He had done everything that he could possibly do to keep all of them safe and it had still not been enough to avoid this situation. "That came out wrong. I know you wouldn't purposefully put them in harm's way."

"I asked the next team to consider going in to hiding for a bit- let me at least try to get a handle on what was going on. I was not as concerned about the older teams at that time. They refused. They were all dead within the week," Tommy forced out as he passed over another grouping of obituaries. Slightly older faces. Still far too young to be dead. He watched as Kimberly's face hardened, as she realized what he had realized. That there was a systematic plan to destroy all of the Power Rangers that had ever existed. "At that point I suggested most rangers go in to hiding and I offered up the Command Center. Some of them went in to hiding. Others said that they would welcome a fight. None of them came here- except you."

"Well- you didn't give me a list of options, Tommy. If you had…" Kim trailed off and he broke eye contact. He knew that giving them options had not been wise, but he also knew that many rangers were too stubborn to listen to any sort of reason. Being stubborn was a very common ranger trait. "Okay- so over the last four months, something- most likely a monster- has been systematically killing rangers. Have you gone to the authorities?"

"Really? The authorities?" Tommy questioned and he watched as her cheeks blazed pink. In any other circumstance- that would make sense. If he had been able to determine that it was a human- it would make sense, but this was a monster. It was a monster that had no name and he had no idea how to fight it. He could fight almost anything that he could name. "If this was a human, maybe. As far as I can tell- this isn't a human. I think we have a good chance that it is a monster, but it's not like the traditional monsters we have faced. It doesn't want to destroy the world. It just wants to destroy rangers."

"Which means we are at the top of the list now," Kim concluded and he barely nodded. "What other research do you have?"

"I've got every article going back about five years that has anything to do with any ranger alive. I pulled down the program from the database about a month in to this and have only manually run it since then, but that information is all here as well. And I have the film. The film from Jason and Zack's hideouts," Tommy forced out the last part and he tried to push back the pain. He knew he should watch the film first, but he also knew that he could not watch two of his closest friends be murdered. None of the other rangers had been willing to install cameras, as much as they trusted him- that was an invasion of their privacy that they were not willing to have. If just one of them had been willing- this might have ended before it got to this point. "Their hideouts…it was bad. It was brutal…"

"But the videos might give us a glimpse of what is behind this," Kim supplied and she quietly began cleaning off the table. He had taken on a role that had never been meant for a man- it had always been meant for the keeper of powers to be this central to ranger generations and then Zordon had died. Somewhere along the way- he had become the one that all rangers looked to and he hated to think that there was something he could have done to save them. He hated to think that his pride or some other human trait got in the way. "We need to know."