Chapter 8

The Mistress landed the time ship smoothly in a secluded area of the beach. Her mutant aides looked at her, waiting for instructions. "You are all to wait here until I come back," she said sharply as she got up from her seat.

"Ma'am, don't we need to get ourselves a base of operations?" one of her mutants asked.

"Not yet. If everything goes as planned, then we won't stay long," she explained. Without one more word, she walked out of the ship and towards the road, through the sand.

****************

The Power Rangers fought with everything they had. They tried to stop the mutants from doing any more damage to Time Force headquarters, but the trio seemed determined to destroy the entire building.

Jen was fighting side by side with Alex against the golden version of Steelix. Jen saw a small tattoo on his leg. It had the same symbol she had seen on Catgat's jacket when he had attacked her inside her mind some time ago. It seemed a much longer time than it truly was.

"Alex!" She called for her husband's attention.

"Yes?" he said.

"This guy, his DNA patch," she pointed out. "It's the symbol on Catgat's jacket!"

"What symbol on which Catgat's jacket? I though he was invisible," Alex commented, firing his blaster at Ransik, who was getting dangerously close to Lucas.

"I saw it in my mind, Alex!" Jen complained. "I think this has got something to do with you-know-who!"

"The Mistress?" Alex asked out loud. Nadira turned sharply to him and shot a blast of energy at him. He landed on his back, gasping for breath. "Guess she did betray her mother, then."

"No," Jen told him kneeling next to him. "This is all a plan. A well rehearsed plan." She was reading Nadira's mind, and she was under someone else's control.

"What do you mean? A plan for what?" he asked her, as Ransik moved closer to Lucas again and managed to grab his throat.

Jen focused on Ransik and parted his fingers from Lucas's neck with her mind. "Lucas, you okay?" she asked.

"Yes, Jen, thanks."

"Alex, this is a distraction," Jen said suddenly. "She had nothing against Time Force, but she wants to keep us busy."

"Busy? Why?"

"I don't know," she admitted.

"I do," said a baby voice in their communicators. It was Circuit. "The Mistress has recently left in a Timeship for the early 21st century!"

"She's going after Wes?" Jen asked.

"I don't know," Circuit answered.

Jen looked at Nadira, who was moving towards her slowly with a malicious smile on her face. "Then," Jen told her team, as she stood facing Nadira and focusing on her. "We'll have to ask someone who does."

**********

Wes snoozed on a chair next to Jessica. She was now unconscious, a machine breathing for her, plastic tubes going in and out from her body to many machines. Her hair was tangled and her face was even paler than usual.

It wouldn't have been easy putting her in the ventilator if she hadn't been so sick and weak. The doctors had put her to sleep, but she kept crying and begging them to stop, begging them to leave her alone, telling them she didn't want to go to the ICU until the very last moment. She hadn't woken up since, and according to the doctors, she wasn't going to, until she was healthy enough again.

The door of the unit opened, but Wes didn't hear it; a woman stepped into the room and walked towards Jessica. She was marveling at how much Jessica looked like Jen, and how much Wes looked like Alex.

"Blond?" she wondered, walking towards Wes, she looked carefully at his hair. "Not naturally," she concluded.

She turned to Jessica. "So defenseless, so small. Poor little thing, you have no idea of what's happening. Well, that's just too bad," she said with a wicked smile, pulling a small crystal sphere from her pocket. "Goodbye, Farm Girl," she said, but not to the woman lying on the bed, but to another, far, far from there. She put the crystal in the unconscious woman's hand, and it started to glow red.

Jessica Collins' eyes snapped open and she looked at the woman standing next to her, her face showing fear and pain only for a second. The next, her cardiac monitor was showing a flat line and her eyes went blank and milky.

She was dead.

Samantha Drake picked up her poisonous crystal ball from the dead woman's hand and walked out of the room, as Wes woke up.

***********************

Nadira struggled against the hands holding her down. Alex and Katie tried to keep her as still as possible. Jen stared into her eyes. She entered Nadira's mind, a dark gloomy place, just like her father's. She found Nadira, who was wearing black instead of white, standing firmly in the middle of the room, looking at her defiantly.

"Where's The Mistress?" Jen asked.

"What if I don't want to tell you?" Nadira shot back.

Jen knew she couldn't do much in Nadira's mind. "Why wouldn't you want to tell me? We are friends," she said.

"Why would I be your friend? You hate both of my parents!"

"Nadira, come on!" Jen said; her voice slightly annoyed. "I don't have much time."

"I have all the time in the world," The pink haired mutant answered.

"Are you really going to force me to do this the hard way? I have your father and that other mutant frozen already."

"Are you going to freeze me?"

"Not before I find out what I need to find out."

"What is that?"

"Where The Mistress is, for example."

"I don't know," Nadira said, her eyes wandering away from Jen.

"I tried to do this the nice way," Jen said, turning to leave.

"And what is the hard way?" Nadira asked after her.

"Did your mother ever tell you anything about protocol fifteen?" Jen asked.

"Yes," Nadira said, her voice trembling.

Protocol fifteen was a protocol Time Force rarely used, for it was cruel and inhuman. However, every now and then, there was a mutant who deserved it, and the officers in charge of the operation were allowed to use it. It involved cruel interrogations in which a series of devices were used, one known as the Mind Scrambler. It was a particularly painful one and its effects were the same as those of the attack perpetrated against Brynn months ago by Catgat.

The principle of protocol fifteen was "the end justifies the means," and if the end was to obtain information on who orchestrated the attack on Time Force headquarters, the means included a high technology version of the Spanish Inquisition.

Jen turned to Nadira. "Alex managed to get us a green light regarding that protocol, meaning, that's the protocol we are using right now with you, your father and your other friend," Jen said cruelly. "The only reason I'm here is because Lucas begged me to try this way first, so, go on, give me a reason to use the Mind Scrambler on you to get the information I need."

Nadira looked at her, swallowing hard. "She's in the year 2004."

"Doing what?" Jen asked.

"Getting rid of Wesley Collins' wife."

"His wife? Why his wife?"

"Because she's your ancestor," Nadira said.

Jen stood there looking at her with her mouth slightly open. Nadira didn't know the implications of what she had just said. If The Mistress was in the year 2004 to kill Wes's wife, not only she was going to disappear. So was Alex.

Jen left Nadira's mind in a hurry and the moment she got back to her own body she hugged her husband and kissed him deeply. "Have I ever told you how much I love you?" she whispered.

"Jennifer, what's going on?" he asked, his voice shaking.

"She's in the past. And she's going to destroy us both," she told him.

"Us both? How can she do that?"

"Killing Wes's wife," she told him. "My ancestor."

In that moment, they all felt a rush, as if they had been standing in the way of a tsunami. When the dizziness was gone and she opened her eyes, Alex lay on the ground, his eyes staring, looking at Jen. As she knelt next to him and closed his eyes, kissing his forehead, a tear slipped from her eyes. His body had disappeared before the tear fell on it.

"Now what?" Lucas asked.

"Why are you still here?" Katie asked Jen.

But she wasn't listening. Her gaze was lost, her pain too big for tears. "We are going to the past," she murmured. "To the moment before she gets there, and we are going to stop her."

"What are we going to do about them?" Katie asked, pointing at Ransik, the golden Steelix and Nadira, who was the only one still unfrozen.

Jen got to her feet and turned to Nadira. The pink haired mutant looked at her apprehensively. "Why are you so scared?" Jen asked. Nadira didn't answer. Jen moved closer to her and put both hands on the sides of her temples.

"Please no, please, please no," Nadira begged.

"Give me one good reason not to do it," Jen said. Nadira whimpered incoherently. "Wrong answer," Jen said, and closed her eyes.

Nadira yelled in pain as Jen scrambled her mind, shaking her every thought, messing with her brain, burning her consciousness, removing her identity from her, taking from her everything that was precious, that was important. Nadira yelled at the top of her lungs and Lucas jumped forward to try to stop Jen.

He was repelled backwards as if a protective shield covered the two women. Jen opened her eyes and removed her hands from Nadira's temple. The mutant fell limply to her side.

"You killed her!" Lucas called, kneeling next to Nadira, lifting her head into his lap. "She's dead!" he yelled at Jen.

Jen pulled out her blaster and shot Nadira in the chest and the head, right in front of Lucas' eyes. "She is now," Jen said tonelessly and walked towards the Vector cycles.

To Be Continued.