Despair

Ben heard the crack as the White Ranger's head struck the concrete floor. He wasn't the only one, he realised, as everyone seemed to freeze. He turned to look in time to see the White Ranger unsteadily regain her feet.

"Is that...the best you got...old man?" she asked, the hitch in her voice telling Ben she was dazed.

From Eric's body language Ben guessed he'd spotted the signs too and was more than reluctant to continue this fight. "Give it up kid," Eric replied.

"Fight me you son of a bitch!"

"No." Ben watched as Eric's whole posture relaxed. It was a sure sign that as far as Eric was concerned, this fight was over.

"You've got to pay!" she screamed. "You did this to me!"

Ben's jaw hinged open, even as the White Ranger started to charge. He was reasonably sure that whatever had been done to the White Ranger, Eric was not the culprit. Nor was Eric prepared to play scapegoat, Ben realised. As the crazed female got within range, Eric grabbed her and hip tossed her...

...and as she went over, her helmet came off. She landed in an uncoordinated heap while the helmet spun away across the concrete. Ben found his eyes rooted to the spot where the ranger had landed. She was a blonde. For some reason, that surprised him.

Eric had stepped closer and was offering her a hand up, but there was something wrong. Something about the way Eric had tensed. Maybe it was just the familiarity of the hair colour -- after all, Alice was a blonde. Maybe this woman reminded Eric of his missing daughter.

But that thought evaporated when he heard the moan and saw Eric collapse to his knees. Ben felt sick as the White Ranger finally got back to her feet. He still hadn't seen her face clearly but her next words confirmed the unwilling conclusion he'd drawn,

"I don't need your help, daddy."

It was Alice. Ben didn't know how, didn't know why, but it was. Over his headset he could hear someone sobbing; a pitiful, broken sound that could only be coming from one source. The sickness was overridden by a deep and abiding anger at whoever had done this.

"Oh, so now you're remorseful?" Alice was scornfully taunting Eric now. Circling him. "You did this to me. To us."

"Alice!" The exclamation was frantic, almost bordering on hysterical, and suddenly Kimberly was moving across the warehouse.

Ben watched as Alice froze at her name.

"Ohmygosh... Alice?"

Alice relaxed and returned her attention to the defeated Quantum Ranger. "Butt out Pinkie -- this doesn't concern you. Yet."

Ben watched as Kimberly's shoulders suddenly tensed. "Alice Megan Cunningham Myers that is enough!"

"Who...you're not her!" In a flash of light, Kimberly demorphed and stood in front of her daughter. "Who the hell are you?"

Ben couldn't see Kimberly's face but he was sure her expression was interesting at that question.

"You don't remember, do you?" Kimberly answered, a strange tone to her voice.

"And do you think I care?" Alice shot back.

"You should. How much else have you lost? How much else can't you remember?"

Alice's expression faltered, but before she could say anything she -- and the other Vengeance Rangers, and what few Cyclobots remained -- vanished in a haze of teleportation sparkles.

"Oh man," Ben murmured.

~*~

"Ali?"

Lexia's voice echoed through Frax's complex. Alice heard it easily but didn't bother responding. She needed time to think. That was why the second they'd returned to Frax's complex she'd demorphed and found herself an out-of-the-way place to think things through.

Who had that fierce woman been? It sure as hell wasn't Rick and Lexia's mom -- that was who Alice was sure normally used the Pink Time Force powers. And she'd known Alice. She shivered. Something subconscious recognised the way the woman had said her full name. The tone of voice.

And she had known. Known that Alice had gaps in her memories. If anything, that was what freaked Alice out the most.

Although seeing her stepfather on his knees and completely at her mercy without her having to do anything except reveal her identity was more than a little unnerving.

The whole set-up was a mess.

It was supposed to be easy. Fight. Get the three Time Force bastards. Make them pay. So simple...

"Thought I might find you here."

~*~

Briefly, Rocky wondered just why it was that he only ever seemed to end up in Silverhills when there was trouble in town. And one look at the pale, shadowed expression on Eric's face told Rocky that it was trouble with the capital T. And what the hell can be worse than having your kids abducted? he wondered as he took his seat at the conference table in the SGHQ.

There was a long silence. Rocky glanced at the other occupants of the room. Everyone looked a little shell-shocked, although Wes and Jen slightly less so. As though whatever had happened had only affected them by proxy. Or as though they don't actually have to believe it yet. Rocky shuddered. It probably meant that they'd found one or more of the missing children, just not in time.

"OK, so does someone want to fill me in here?" he asked when no-one seemed over inclined to tell him what had happened.

"There's a new bunch of rangers in town," said Eric tonelessly. "Alice is one of them. There's four in total."

Rocky wished he hadn't asked.

"But it's not Alice as she was on Friday," Wes continued quietly. "She's older."

"And she's under some sort of mind control," said Kimberly. "I was there. She didn't know who the hell I was." Rocky winced at the hurt and pain in Kimberly's voice at that. "She seems to think that whatever happened to her between Saturday and today is..."

"My fault," Eric whispered.

"Ouch."

Rocky was about to ask how he could help when the holoscreen suddenly flared into life. Considering Rocky hadn't noticed its presence at the end of the conference room table, the sudden burst of noise from the device startled him more than somewhat.

Lucas obviously saw Rocky's reaction because he smiled a little sheepishly. "Sorry. I got your message -- what's happened?"

~*~

Rick watched as Alice jumped. She'd been so deep in thought that she obviously hadn't heard him walk up to her hiding place -- the dark, blank space under the stairs. It had been a place he'd spent a large amount of time in the previous day, trying to sort out his own feelings about the situation as Frax laid it out.

"Rick?"

"May I?" he asked, gesturing to the space beside her.

Alice shrugged. "Sure."

Rick sat down. "So...you want to talk about it?" he offered.

Alice sighed and tipped her head back until it was resting against the wall and she was studying the roughened concrete of the underside of the stairs. "What's to talk about?"

"Well, I don't know about you," he replied, "but what we got in that warehouse doesn't jive with anything Frax said about Eric Myers. That's weirding me out -- and all I was doing was watching you."

"If I'm honest," Alice admitted softly, "it doesn't really jive with what I remember of him either."

~*~

Lucas sat back in his seat as Wes finished the explanations. "Good news is," he said, "I can pretty much tell you what's happened to Alice."

"Which is?" asked Jen.

"AAMA," Lucas replied grimly.

Jen paled. "But that's illegal...I thought all the tech for that was destroyed."

"And for those of us who didn't go to the Time Force Academy that means...?" Rocky prompted before Lucas could respond to Jen's comments.

"Artificial Ageing Memory Adaptation. It was a process developed by one Merle Askot," Lucas replied.

Eric frowned. It was the first time Lucas had seen the other man so much as move since this meeting had begun. "Merle Askot?" he echoed. "As in...?"

Lucas nodded. "As in the ice cold bitch who created the Alpha Project."

"Another Time Force screw up job?" enquired Wes.

Lucas shook his head. "Actually no -- the reason I have any of this data to hand right now is there's a temporal hotspot circa 2920. Someone's made an illegal trip to that period and stolen the AAMA blueprints and test data."

~*~

"This doesn't add up," Rick continued quietly. "I know what Frax said...but..."

"You think he's lying," Alice stated.

"I don't think he's being totally straight with us," Rick agreed. "I mean, if Eric Myers was as cruel an SOB as Frax was making him out to be...why was he on his knees, crying when he realised it was you?"

"Guilt?" But Alice's voice carried little conviction. "I don't know." She sighed. "I...I remember all this stuff. About him...things he's supposed to have done...but it doesn't feel real."

"Real?"

"Well -- we've all gotten information just downloaded into our heads...what I remember about Eric's kinda like that...but kinda not...and that woman was right," Alice continued softly. "I know I've got gaps in my memory."

Rick looked at Alice. She looked confused, a far cry from the confidence he'd seen in her until now. "Do you have any ideas who that woman was?"

Alice shook her head. "Not a clue. She looked familiar but..." She trailed off and shrugged.

"Do you remember your mom?" Rick asked hesitantly.

~*~

"Someone?" queried Jen.

"Covert Ops received an encrypted transmission this morning," Lucas replied. "It stated that The Master had struck the first blow. Along with the transmission, which was back-timed in the system to three weeks ago, was encoded temporal data, giving precise details of when the temporal incursion was made and what was stolen."

"So it's this Master person who's done this to Alice?" said Wes.

"One of his subordinates, I think," Lucas answered.

"Lemme get my hands on the son of a bitch," Kimberly hissed. "I'll rip him limb from limb."

Lucas shivered. "Unfortunately, that's half the problem."

"What do you mean?" Eric asked in a tone of voice that made Lucas extremely relieved to be a thousand years into the future. It was a flinty-hard, venomous tone of voice that promised death to anyone who got in Eric's way over this.

"Potted history," Lucas replied. "About a year ago, TF Crime started to get reports that someone was steadily pulling back together the assorted criminal empires that, between us, we managed to wreck ten years ago. Ransik's cartel, Arachna's spy network...couple of smaller gangs. All reports stated it was being drawn together under the leadership of someone calling himself or herself The Master. And that's all we know about them. Whoever it is, they've hidden their tracks well."

~*~

Alice frowned for a few moments before finally shaking her head. "No. I know I have one...I know she's not dead...that's all I do know." She hesitated a beat. "Do you remember her?"

There was a long silence. Alice finally glanced in Rick's direction to find him frowning in concentration. He finally gave up and shook his head. "Nope, sorry."

Alice swallowed. "Do...you suppose that woman could have been her?"

Rick chewed his lip thoughtfully. "Well...not that I'm leaping to conclusions but...it would make sense."

"So why would someone block the memories of my mom?"

~*~

"Why would a crime lord of the thirty-first century want to do something to us, here?" Wes asked. "It doesn't make sense."

"Unfortunately, it does make sense," said Lucas with a sigh. "Wes, you and Jen and Eric probably did as much as anyone here to bring Ransik down, and then there's your roles in Arachna's downfall."

"Never mind that," said Kim, forcefully, "what do we do to get the children back?"

Lucas squirmed; again glad he was separated from Kimberly and Eric by a gulf of a thousand years. And with the way she was now glaring at him, even that might not be enough. "You'll need to give me twelve hours to speak to a couple of people in this time. I promise I'll have answers for you soon." Kimberly looked as if she might like to argue over that. "In fact...I'll contact you at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. If you can have Dr Zaskin present too."

"Why?" asked Jen, puzzled.

"Because I think that you're going to need some hardware along with whatever information I come up with," Lucas replied.

~*~

It somehow seemed natural for Rick to wrap his arm around Alice's shoulders. "Perhaps the question should be 'who', not why?" he suggested.

"But we know the answer to the 'who'," Alice replied quietly.

"We do?"

Alice sighed and opened her mouth to answer him, but before she could the sound of footsteps filled the space as someone ran down the stairs. A moment later and John appeared.

"There you two are," he started, but got no further. Rick realised, a little awkwardly, that John's eyes had fallen on where his arm was resting. John's eyebrows lifted. Rick stared back feeling both embarrassed and defiant. "Frax is looking for you," he eventually continued, not taking his eyes off Rick's arm, but there was no way Rick was moving it unless Alice asked him to -- it felt too right. "I think he wants to know what happened in the warehouse."

Alice sighed and, to Rick's surprise, she leaned her head against his shoulder. John's eyes widened at that although Alice seemed oblivious to her brother's reaction. "OK, Jonno. We'll be right there."

Satisfied that his message had been passed on, John turned and departed, not before giving Rick a look that promised volumes.

"We'd better go," Alice murmured.

"D'you know what you're going to do?" Rick asked.

Alice smiled faintly. "I'm going to get some answers."

TO BE CONTINUED...