Ray, Gaby, Gunn, Alcott, Lorent, and TransGenics are mine.
Rated PG-13 : Mild sexuality; harsh language, strong violence.
Ray sat in the chair, uncomfortable and self-conscious, wanting to curl up and disappear. He was in a Time Force infirmary examination room. He was getting tired of all the questions, and of being poked with needles and having instruments waved at him. Doctors in the future were just as bad as in 2003. Maybe worse.
An impressively tall man sat in front of him. Ray had shaken hands when he introduced himself as Captain Logan. Now he was talking, going on and on, and asking questions. The others, the Rangers Ray had surrendered himself to, stood or sat behind him. Two of them -- Lucas and Trip -- had also been treated, for the injuries they had gotten in the flyer crash. He had been introduced to all of them, but only Wes Collins wouldn't shake his hand.
They had told him that Alcott and Lorent had gotten away. He was sorry for that. They should be punished, for what they had done, to him and to Eric. Instead they were out there, somewhere, making plans to do more damage. He could tell by their faces and voices that Logan and the Rangers were scared.
But he wouldn't be much help. Ray was tired, tired of listening and answering, but also with a bone-deep exhaustion. He knew it was part of his sickness, the one the treatment had caused.
"When did you start the treatment, Ray?"
"About three months ago, I guess."
"How did they give it to you?"
"They put a needle in my arm."
"What effects do you feel from it?"
"At first, I just felt stronger and faster, a little more each time. I could see and hear better too, especially hearing. Then I started to get smarter. Now, I'm losing some of my strength, and I'm having pain."
"The treatment they gave you caused genetic instability. It's making your DNA deteriorate."
"I know. That's what the first Ranger told me. Eric Myers." He saw Wes's face tighten at the mention of the name. "He said it would kill me. Is that true?"
Logan sighed. "We're doing what we can. But the older you were when you were mutated, the faster the DNA breaks down. That's presumably why they picked someone so young. Which makes what they did even more despicable. A lot of damage has already been done. The serum Wes told us about, the one we're treating you with, has only been able to slow it down."
"So I'm dying." He felt less fear than he had expected, mostly a dull anger at Alcott, for betraying him. "Maybe I deserve it," he said softly. "If I hadn't helped them capture Eric, he would still be alive." He saw Wes turn his face away, and spoke to him directly. "I'm sorry about your friend. I tried to help him, at the end. I swear, I didn't know what they were doing to him, until it was too late." Wes didn't answer, or even look at him.
Logan spoke to him again. "You can help us against Alcott and Lorent, if you want to."
"I'll do whatever you want."
"What do you know about their plans?"
"I heard them talking. Lorent has friends that he got more weapons from. And he showed them the Quantum morpher. They're going to try to make more of them." He saw several of them exchange uneasy glances. "They're going to go back to the past again. To my time. They want to change things, so you won't go after them and their friends will be more powerful in this time. I heard them talk about attacking Bio-Lab."
"They're going to try to prevent us from existing. Just like Ransik," the pretty brown-haired woman -- Jen -- said softly.
"We stopped Ransik. And we'll stop Lorent and Alcott, too," Wes said.
"I heard them talk about the serum. I guess the one you've been using on me. They're trying to get some to take back."
Logan turned his head to the others. "The serum. Eric must have told them about it. With it, they can make as many mutant soldiers as they want, without genetic instability. Another major problem."
He turned back to Ray, his face grim. "You've been a big help. We'll do what we can for you. Let me know if you need anything." He stood.
Ray stood too. "Don't worry about me. No one else ever has. Just get them."
They all started to file out. Ray took a step forward. "Wes."
"What?"
"I meant it. I feel bad about Eric. I even turned off the machine they were using, but it was too late. If I'd understood what was going on..."
Wes finally looked at him. "It's Alcott's fault, more than yours. And Lorent's."
"But I was involved. I thought I had become some kind of superhero. But Eric was the real hero. And I helped kill him."
Wes's face was sad, but no longer angry. "You made mistakes. Everybody does. You didn't know any better."
"And I'm paying for them, now."
"Yeah. It's our job to make sure Alcott and Lorent pay, too."
As he started to open his door, Wes heard her step behind him. He knew who it was instantly, through some strange connection he felt they still shared.
"Wes? We need to talk."
"Jen. Come on in." He held the door for her. She walked in and looked back at him.
"I haven't talked to you in a couple of days. How are you doing?"
"Okay, I guess."
"Are Lucas, Trip, and Katie taking care of you?"
"They've been great. They keep taking me on tours."
She turned away from him and walked to the window, looking out over the city view. "Maybe I should have spent more time with you, but under the circumstances..."
"Yeah. The circumstances."
Still with her back to him, she went on softly. "This mission will be over soon. If we succeed, you'll go back to your own time. If not -- I don't know what will happen. I don't want things to end like this between us."
"Neither do I. I said some things I shouldn't have. Both to you and Alex."
She turned to face him. "I guess I did too. I should have been more considerate."
"You were fine." He looked down at the floor.
"Wes, I don't like the idea of you being with someone else. But I meant it when I said you should go on with your life."
"Easy for you to say. You seem to have already done it." He softened it with a faint smile.
"I'm trying to. But I want you to be happy, too. Isn't that part of love? The most important part?"
"I guess that's the way it's supposed to be. I'm trying, Jen. But it's not easy to get over you."
She smiled. "Isn't there a saying in your time? 'Who told you life was supposed to be easy?'"
He smiled back, with difficulty. "Can I ask you something?"
"Anything."
"If there was some way we could stay together -- if you had the choice -- which of us would you be with? Me or Alex?"
She looked at him, visibly upset. "That's not a fair question."
"Who said it was supposed to be fair?"
"I don't have a choice. I can't leave my own time. My life is here, and yours is in 2003."
"You haven't answered the question."
"Wes -- what do you want me to say? That I still love you, and I'd give anything to stay with you?" She took a step to the sofa and sank onto it, face crumpling. Her breath caught in a sob.
Feeling thoroughly ashamed of the surge of happiness he felt, Wes sat next to her. "I'm sorry. You're right. I shouldn't have asked."
"The truth is, I didn't want to see you because it was too painful... because I had accepted things the way they are, and now I have to go through saying goodbye all over again. I want so much to be with you... but Time Force would never allow it. We can't interfere with previous times."
With a resolute look, she sat up straighter and wiped her eyes. "I wish I had the freedom to choose, but I don't, and neither do you. We have to stay in our own times. Apart. Forever." Her voice trembled again.
Wes put his arm around her shoulders. "I should have understood. Maybe I do need to grow up a little."
She looked up at him. "No. I guess that's one of the things I like about you. I hope you never grow up completely."
Their faces were only inches apart, Jen was smiling softly, her eyes still sparkling with tears. Wes leaned forward slowly to kiss her, overwhelmed by the sensation of her lips against his, finally making reality of what he had dreamed of so many times. She met him halfway, her arms going around him. He pulled her closer, holding her tight, and for a few moments they clutched at each other with the frustrated passion of more than a year of separation.
A chime from the room communicator interrupted them. Reluctantly they drew apart, and Wes got up to answer, pressing the button that would activate a voice link with whoever was calling.
"Hello."
"Wes?" It was Captain Logan's voice. "There's been a development. Please report to my office immediately. And be prepared to leave."
"A development," Wes said, turning back to Jen.
"Looks like this is it," she answered softly. "One way or another."
Captain Logan's office was large, but it was crowded now, with Logan himself and the six of them. They sat in front of his desk, like an audience waiting for the speaker to start. Wes and Jen were the last ones in. Wes saw Alex glance at them, his eyes questioning and perhaps suspicious, as they took their seats.
"You can guess why we're here," Logan began. "Our instruments have detected an unauthorized timehole, going back to 2003. It must be Lorent and Alcott. They've escaped again. We also have a report of the theft of a stock of the Venomark serum from a research institute in the city. That means Lorent and Alcott are back in the past, with weapons, the Quantum morpher and probably the means to duplicate it, the mutating treatment, and the serum. We have a major crisis on our hands."
"How bad is it?" Alex asked quietly.
"Bad. We're starting to see signs of serious disruption in the timestream. We could have handled the disturbance caused by Eric's death. He had already made the most vital part of his contribution to history, although there were other things he's supposed to do. But this is much worse. Lorent knows exactly what to do, in order to prevent our existence, and the evidence says he did it.
"We have only preliminary indications now, but it looks like he not only provided local criminals in the past with weaponry, but used the mutating treatment to build an army of mutant soldiers. With the serum to stabilize them and TransGenics' resources at his disposal, there was nothing to hold him back. It looks like TransGenics also was able to duplicate the Quantum morpher, and arm many of the mutants with it. They became unstoppable. Silver Hills and Bio-Lab never recovered. Under these attacks, and without Eric's leadership, the Silver Guardians went out of business."
"Without the Guardians, there will be no Time Force. No control over mutant technology. War between humans and mutants, like in the other alternate realities," Jen said, her voice shaking just a little. Wes turned to look at her sharply, realizing for the first time just what the connection between the Guardians and Time Force was.
"Yes. Even worse this time, since it began sooner. And it looks like TransGenics, and Lorent, were able to gain a great deal of power out of it, which is presumably what they were after all along. They've created a new reality, one we haven't seen before. We don't know the details yet."
"How long before it affects us?"
"A few days before this reality changes. Only hours before the timestream becomes so disrupted that normal time travel will be impossible."
"Then we have to go, now, and stop them," Wes said.
"Even the six of you may not be able to defeat them. Lorent and Alcott are very intelligent. They have TransGenics, and all its money and resources, behind them. They only need a few months to have dozens of powerful mutants working for them. You probably won't even be able to find them until it's too late."
"What does that mean? We should just give up?"
"Of course not. It means -- there may be another way to handle this. And we're desperate enough to try it. All of this is a consequence of their capturing Eric and getting information and the Quantum morpher from him. He could be the key to preventing all of it from happening."
There was total silence as Logan paused before going on. "I'll go over some background. Most of you know this, but Wes probably doesn't.
"Time travel isn't as simple as just picking a time and going there. There are certain time 'distances' that we can jump. In general, multiples of a basic unit of time, varying with the time span involved... I won't go into theory or the mathematics of it. The effect is that when we go back to 2003, we can travel back and forth exactly one hundred ninety-nine years, two months, and roughly five days. No more, no less. In other words, if you travel to your time, spend a week, and come back, it will always be exactly a week later here, and vice versa."
Wes frowned slightly. "Trip explained that we couldn't go back to before Eric died."
"Good. That's true, under normal circumstances. It makes sense, if we could jump around to any time we wanted, changing history and then going back again, undoing those changes and making more, the timestream would be in chaos. There's also the problem of the same person existing more than once in the same time."
"Interesting, but how does it help us?"
"I'm getting to that. I said we can't do it under normal circumstances, but conditions now are not normal." Logan took a deep breath before continuing.
"We've known for some time that there are certain exceptions to the rule. When the timestream is severely disturbed -- as it will be very soon -- it becomes possible to change the time jump interval by perhaps as much as a couple of weeks. Until now, it's been impossible to even try it; no ship could survive the trip, because of the roughness of the timestream and the additional stress caused by the non-standard jump. And of course, the kind of disruption of history that makes it possible is very rare. But in the last year, we've developed a new type of experimental timeship, much stronger, and protected by time stability fields. One of them could do it, at least in theory.
"It will still be extremely dangerous, and this mission will be on a volunteer basis. If we're successful, we can send you back to ten days before our corresponding time in 2003. Before Lorent and Alcott arrived back in the past. Before they left the past, to come here. Before they got the Quantum morpher and found out about the serum. And that means…"
Wes smiled, his first genuinely happy smile in the last ten days. "That means we get a do-over. And Eric gets a second chance."