Chapter 3: Things I'll Never Say
Heather's voice sounded cautious and a little uncertain, but it echoed around the zord bay as she called Cam's name. Why she had to come down here herself instead of using the comm system was a mystery. A message would interrupt Cam just as completely, but at least it wouldn't be as persistent. Cam knew from experience that Heather was a lot more distracting in person.
She tweaked one of the controls on the insect zord, making it twitch in the Crimson Ranger's direction. A mechanical wave. She meant it to be cute, but Heather actually jumped, casting a wary eye over her own zord. "Cam?" she repeated. "You down here?"
Cam frowned out at her from the zord's cockpit. Obviously, or why would Heather be looking for her here? She looked skittish, Cam decided, studying her as carefully as she could at this distance. Not a normal look for Heather. Not by any stretch.
Something must be wrong.
She poked her head out of the insect zord and shouted down to Heather, waving when the other girl's eyes lifted to hers. When she took her glasses off, she could see that Heather was wearing something that definitely wasn't a training uniform... and something that looked suspiciously like her amulet. Cam's hand went to her neck automatically, but sure enough, the amulet was gone.
"What are you doing here?" Heather called, not making any effort to come closer.
"Working," Cam said. She glanced down to make sure she wasn't just missing the amulet, maybe too accustomed to its familiarity to feel it anymore. But no, she really wasn't wearing it. Was it possible that Heather had it?
"What, you don't work on the zords enough in real life?" Heather still sounded edgy, like she was expecting something to sneak up on her deep in the heart of Ninja Ops. "And since where are our zords in your zord bay, anyway?"
Cam raised an eyebrow at that. "Since I needed them close enough to work on. I'm not going all the way out to your holding bay when there's plenty of space right here."
There was a pause, and then Heather said, "Look, could you, uh... come down here for a second?"
"Why?" she wanted to know. She was busy, and Heather was acting strangely. Cam frowned down at her, wondering if those could possibly be pajamas that she was wearing. They definitely weren't anything she could wear to work.
"Because I'm worried about the influence your subconscious might have on heavy machinery," Heather replied. When Cam just stared at her, she added, "Just come down, okay? It's important."
Cam sighed, and oddly, it was that tiny gesture that triggered a memory she couldn't quite pin down. She... sighed a lot. Someone had said she sighed a lot. Or... maybe not a lot, but--in a particular way.
She blinked, shaking her head. Grabbing the railing, she swung down the ladder-like steps two at a time and made her way over to Heather. "What is it?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest. "Because if you just want to make out, it would have been a lot more fun in your zord."
Heather gave her an odd look, assessing her in a way that didn't seem quite right. Then a smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "When we get out of here," she informed Cam, "I'm going to remind you that you said that."
Cam eyed her in return. "Isn't waiting until we leave counterproductive?"
"Cam." Heather's smile was gone, replaced by a look of worry that made Cam wonder what exactly she was doing here. "Seriously. Why are you here?"
She would have asked Heather the same thing except that obviously she was here to drag Cam away from what she was doing. As usual. "I told you," Cam responded irritably. "I'm working. And why are you wearing my amulet, anyway?"
Heather considered that for a long moment before she said, "I think a better question is, why aren't you wearing your amulet?"
"Apparently," Cam said dryly, "because you are."
"Yeah?" Heather brightened visibly, like this was an actual answer to her ridiculous question. "Well, that's easy enough." She pulled the amulet off over her head and held it out to Cam.
Cam just looked at her, and Heather frowned. "Not that easy?" She took a step forward anyway, lifting the cord up over Cam's head and letting it settle around her neck. Cam glanced down, saw the comforting green glow of the samurai amulet against her training uniform, and she touched it gingerly.
That must have been what Heather wanted, because she was gone when Cam looked up again.
She didn't see another human being until her mom appeared with the mail later that morning. She must have been down at the post office, since the academy didn't receive regular mail anymore. Two letters for Cam: one from her advisor's department and one from Academic Counseling. She didn't want to open either one.
Luckily, a tentative knock at the door kept her from having to find out what the university thought of her now. Heather popped in before either of them could invite her, and Cam blinked. She wouldn't wear clothes like that out of the house, let alone to work. And to be perfectly honest, she wouldn't have expected Heather to, either.
"Nice place," Heather was saying, just before she caught sight of Cam's mom. After a moment's obvious hesitation, she added, "Um, hi." Like she had never seen Sensei before, Cam thought with a sigh.
Then, for no particular reason, she thought of a cat.
"Hello, Heather." Cam's mom, at least, sounded mildly amused by the odd reaction. "Is there something we can do for you?"
Heather's eyes widened. "Sensei?" she blurted out.
Cam exchanged glances with her mom.
"I mean, uh, no," Heather said quickly. "No, I just... I came to see Cam."
Cam tried not to smile. Cute even when she was confused, and there was probably only one person in the world she would say that about. But Heather was so sure of herself, so together, so quick about almost everything that the times when she did stumble seemed more amusing than annoying.
Her eyes focused on Heather's necklace, and her hidden smile disappeared. Her hand went to her neck, but the amulet wasn't there. Which should have been obvious, since apparently Heather was wearing it. Why was less clear.
"Why are you wearing my amulet?" she asked aloud.
"Oh, no," Heather said, taking a step back. "I learned my lesson about that the last time. I'm keeping the amulet, Cam."
She frowned. "Why?"
The Crimson Ranger didn't usually wear it, she was sure. It didn't seem completely wrong that she had it now, even if she couldn't remember why that would be so. Even if it were a prank, though, it was still Heather. It wasn't like she would let anything happen to it.
"Kind of a long story," Heather was saying. "Why don't we, um, go for a walk or something. I'll tell you outside."
Very subtle, Cam thought. Her mother would never see through that clever ploy. Cam had no compunction about rolling her eyes, letting Heather know exactly how convincing that excuse wasn't. "Right," she said. "A walk. I'll be back later, Mom."
"Have a nice time," her mom replied placidly.
"Okay," Heather said, barely waiting for the door to close behind them. "Here's the thing. This isn't real. You're in Ninja Ops, unconscious, and your mom thinks the amulet's taken over your brain. You can obviously control it somehow, or you wouldn't be seeing..." She gestured vaguely at their surroundings, but Cam just stared at her.
"Are you all right?" Cam asked. She knew what all of the words meant, but put together, they didn't seem to form coherent sentences. "Because you're making a lot less sense than usual."
"I told Sensei about the dreams," Heather said in a rush. "She thinks Lothar might be influencing you through the amulet. Because she had it for a while, before you, right? Sensei thinks maybe you were seeing the stuff she was planning without Lothar knowing it, and now Lothar's trying to make it work the other way so your mind shut off to keep her from getting in."
Cam eyed her. "I really don't know what you're talking about."
"Cam." Heather put her hands on Cam's shoulders and gave her that intent look that usually meant she was about to be kissed. Or cuffed. "None of this is real."
"It feels pretty real to me," Cam informed her.
"Well, I'm real," Heather shot back. "Who else would be stupid enough to touch the amulet while Lothar's trying to use it?"
Oddly, that was what made her hesitate. While the rest of Heather's remarks hadn't taken on any real significance in her mind, that question caught her attention. "What are you doing?" she asked warily.
"Trying to figure out what you're doing," Heather countered. "Sensei didn't realize you were kind of conscious in here until you kicked me out. I told her I could talk to you. Maybe get you to work the problem from the other side."
The only explanation Cam could come up with was that one of them was at least mildly delusional right now. And she knew it wasn't her. "Maybe," she said carefully, "we should go back inside and ask Mom to help us figure it out."
Heather stared at her for a long moment before letting her hands fall. "Wow," she said. She actually sounded hurt, which Cam didn't think was fair at all. "I get that it's weird, but I thought you'd at least... you know. Consider the possibility."
Cam sighed, but she couldn't take that kind of disappointment and maybe Hunter knew it. "Fine," she muttered. "Tell me how I can disprove your crazy theory about unconscious realities."
"You were listening." Heather sounded relieved. "Why do you have to disprove it? Maybe you can't. Maybe your mind is creating explanations out of nothing; how do I know?"
"Anything that can't be disproven isn't a theory," Cam snapped, losing her patience with the whole thing. "If there's no possible observation that your theory can't explain, then it's dogma, not science."
"Dogma?" Heather repeated, staring at her.
"You're. Delusional," Cam said, very clearly. "Stop trying to drag me into it with you."
"Okay," Heather said. "I'm going to pretend you didn't just say that to me, because you're under the influence of some weird ninja magic and--hey, I just had an idea." She grinned at Cam, wild and reckless and Cam felt guilty for disappointing her again. "What if I can disprove your theory?"
"My theory?" Cam gave her a blank look. "I don't have a theory."
"Yeah you do." Heather was still grinning. "Your theory is that all this is real. But if this is real, you should be able to hold onto me, right?"
Cam frowned. She was actually starting to worry a little, because Heather seemed really convinced and Cam still couldn't figure out of what. "What?" she asked aloud.
"Seriously," Heather told her. "You're a ninja. Bet you can't hold onto me."
Cam rolled her eyes, reaching out to wrap her fingers around Heather's arm. "Happy?" she asked.
"Come on," Heather urged. Stepping closer, she engulfed Cam in a gentle hug. "Hold on to me."
This Cam wouldn't question. She put her arms around Heather, grip tightening reflexively when Heather's did. She heard Heather whisper in her ear, "I'll be right back." And then she was gone.
Cam lost her balance, stumbling to correct without thinking, and spun around the moment she'd regained her footing. Heather was nowhere to be seen. She shouldn't have been able to just vanish like that. Visually, maybe. But physically? Even Heather's ninja shadow battle wasn't good enough to get her out of a close-up hold with zero warning--and without taking the person holding her along for the ride.
The light around her shifted, making her look up automatically, and dread twisted in her stomach. The sky was darkening. The pattern was distinctive. This was the day Lothar had attacked the ninja academies. It might have always been today, or it might have just happened now, but Heather thought Lothar was after her somehow and whatever was going on couldn't be good.
The next time she saw Heather, her face was hidden behind the Crimson Ranger's visor and her voice was distorted by technology Cam didn't recognize. Cam tried to talk to her, tentative with bound hands and kelzaks all around on a ship full of alien technology. But the other Ranger's manner was cold and dismissive in a way she'd only seen once before and with a sinking feeling she knew that Heather was under Lothar's influence again.
Her only ally in something she barely recognized as wrong: lost. Maybe it wasn't wrong at all. Maybe she was. Maybe Lothar had been able to capture her because she wasn't thinking straight, because she was more than a little out of it... because she was crazy.
"You're nothing here," the Crimson Ranger snarled at her. "You're only important as long as other people will trade for your release."
"Go to hell." Heather's real voice came from right behind the Ranger wearing her uniform, and her morphed and brainwashed alter ego took a blow to the head that sent her crashing to the floor. Her visor snapped open as she struck the deck, but there was no face behind it. The suit was empty.
"Fuck," Heather muttered, reaching for the glowing cords that held Cam's hands behind her back and yanking on them hard enough to make Cam wince. "We are so going to talk about this later."
"You said you'd be right back," Cam said breathlessly. Her wrists already hurt, and Heather wasn't making any effort to be gentle. The cords felt like they were scraping her skin raw.
Heather froze, and the pressure on her wrists was suddenly less. "You remember me?"
Cam swallowed, because now her hands were starting to ache and this was absolutely the last place in the world she wanted to be. "You're hard to forget," she managed, giving Heather's sleepwear a look that was meant to be pointed but probably just came off as distracted.
"Yeah." Heather sounded so grateful that Cam's hands twitched, wishing she could reach out and touch. That prodded her impromptu rescuer back into action, sliding her fingers over Cam's skin to protect it as she pulled her wrists free. "So how do we get out of here?"
"I thought you were working on that," Cam said, flinching as she moved her shoulders forward and bent her elbows, very carefully, in a more familiar direction. Her wrists were red and wounded and she wondered vaguely if Heather would see them that way wherever she was, too.
"Sensei is." All of Heather's attention seemed to be on her hands, and if her expression was horrified then at least her voice was calm as she added, "I was talking about the ship. A few minutes ago you were at the academy, now you're here, and I have no idea what happened."
Cam frowned at her, somehow more willing to ignore the condition of her wrists if Heather wasn't going to. "It wasn't just a few minutes."
Lothar's voice, unintelligible but thunderous, came from somewhere down the hall. Heather's eyes darted in that direction before settling urgently on Cam. "How do we get out of here?"
"You're the one who used to live here," Cam muttered, unwilling to admit that she had no idea. She still wasn't totally sure what was going on, but she gathered it wasn't good.
"Really?" Heather's speculative look triggered another memory, but she didn't have time to retrieve it before Heather added, "Will that work?"
Luckily, she didn't seem to need an answer. Taking Cam's hand, she pulled her across the deck toward some sort of control interface, and a moment later her grip tightened. "Hold on," she said, and the world disappeared around them.
For one too-brief moment, Cam panicked. She registered the teleport only when the valley outside Ninja Ops came into focus around them. Before she could pin it down more than that--day, date, year?--Heather was picking up her other hand and studying her wrists with obvious dismay.
"Only you," she declared. "Only you could get into serious trouble in your own mind."
"I can't control it," Cam said quietly. "You said I could, but I can't."
Heather looked up, transferring her intent gaze from Cam's wrists to her eyes. "How did you end up on the ship?"
Trying to think, to keep any of this clear in some sort of linear fashion, was like trying to keep herself awake after an entire day of fighting. "Lothar was here," she said at last. That was all she knew.
Heather's eyes narrowed. "Lothar was here," she repeated. "Really here? Or you just thought she was here?"
Cam opened her mouth, but she didn't really have an answer. Finally she just shook her head. "I don't know," she murmured.
"Okay." Heather seemed to accept that. She didn't look happy about it, but she didn't keep asking. "I have to tell Sensei that it's getting worse, that you're getting hurt, that Lothar might even be here. But--"
Cam knew she should keep her mouth shut, let her go, let her do what she thought was right. Cam obviously wasn't going to be much help. But she didn't like this, didn't like how easy it was to forget, how hard it was to be sure of anything. "It wasn't just a few minutes," she repeated reluctantly.
"Yeah, you said." Heather sounded torn, and Cam felt badly for making her doubt. "I don't want to leave you alone here."
Just then, the bunker doors were thrown open and Heather stuck her head out of Ninja Ops. "Hey, Cam!" she shouted, apparently uncaring that her exact duplicate was standing right there. "I thought we were supposed to spar this afternoon!"
Almost exact. The Heather in Ninja Ops had her hair pulled back and she was wearing her training uniform.
Cam looked from one to the other, and she saw the startled look on her Heather's face relax into a small smile. "Yeah, okay," she said, as though that had been the question to which she now had an answer. "That'll work."
Drawing in a deep breath, Cam took that as goodbye and turned away, entrusting her eventual fate to her pajama-clad girlfriend. The less real Heather was still waiting at the top of the stairs, smirking the way Heather always did when she thought she'd caught Cam at something she wasn't supposed to be doing. "Forget your watch again?" she teased.
"Hey!" Heather's voice made her turn, and the amulet glinted above her crossed arms as she told Cam, "Don't make me evil again, okay? I took that kind of personally."
Cam had already forgotten what she was talking about, so she just waved.
"And don't forget your bracers!" Heather called after her as she joined her fellow ninja at the entrance to their underground base. "You can get hurt here, you know!"
"What did you do to your wrist?" Heather asked, catching her hand as they headed down the stairs. She held it up to the light, frowning, and Cam raised the other one for comparison. They both bore deep red abrasions and clearly broken skin.
"I don't know," Cam admitted, staring at them in confusion. There was something she was supposed to remember about that, and it had something to do with Heather. But Heather was here and she didn't seem any clearer on what had happened than Cam did, so she put the thought aside.
Her wrists were wrapped in cotton gauze and she didn't wear her bracers because Heather wouldn't let her attack with her hands anyway. They didn't really spar at all, just practiced kicks and minor ninja skills until Heather's morpher beeped and Cam reached for an amulet that wasn't there. She had a brief mental image of Heather wearing it--which was ridiculous, since she clearly wasn't--before it occurred to her that she had never finished the zord repairs that morning.
"Be careful," she urged. "The lateral stabilizers are acting up, and if you push them too hard there's a very small chance they'll burn out completely."
"Which means more work for you," Heather finished. "I'll try to duck instead of block."
"Just try not to crash," Cam said with a sigh. "That's all I ask."
She was barely gone when that same voice came from the other side of the control room. "Does it really bother you when we blow stuff up?" Heather wanted to know.
Cam spun, coming face to face with a Heather that was definitely out of uniform. "What's going on?" she wanted to know, reaching for the amulet automatically. Heather was wearing it. She'd been right after all.
"Don't do that." Heather caught her hand before it could reach her, with a quick glance at the gauze on her wrists and maybe a flicker of surprise in her eyes. "Last time you touched it, I disappeared, and I need to tell you something first."
"Okay." This was the Heather she was supposed to trust. The one with the pajamas and the amulet. She was sure of it, even if she didn't know why. "I'm listening."
"Sensei's trying to ward the amulet," Heather said. "I don't know what that means, exactly, but she says things might get kind of weird in here. If she can't do it, we'll have to drain it," she added, "and who knows what that will look like for you."
Cam still didn't understand most of what she was saying. "What do you need me to do?" she asked quietly.
"I need you not to freak out," Heather said. "I'm going to stay here with you as long as I can, but depending on what happens with the amulet, and what happens with you, it might not be very long."
That was when the alarms started going off. Cam didn't take her eyes off of Heather, who held her gaze without flinching. "I don't want you to go," she murmured.
Heather's mouth quirked upward at the corner. "Believe me," she said, letting go of Cam's hand to touch her face gently, "I don't want to leave you here any more than you want to stay."
It wasn't just an alien incursion. The intruder alert howled up and down the audible frequencies, and compromised zord warnings were sounding across the board. The Rangers were in some kind of fight and as usual, no matter how far away it was, Ninja Ops was at the heart of the battle. Cam tried to focus on the person in front of her, but it was getting harder.
"It figures," Heather was saying. "When you're under attack, the first thing you think of is that Ninja Ops will fall apart. Kind of arrogant, isn't it?"
The amulet on her chest flashed, the light violent enough to make Cam flinch, and Heather's eyes widened. "I can hear you," she said, apropos of nothing.
Cam lifted her own hand to cover the one Heather still had pressed against her skin. "Hear who?" she asked, not sure she wanted to know.
Heather's fingers twitched beneath hers, but they didn't feel quite real all of a sudden. "Sensei," she said. "She says she can't complete the ward while I'm using the amulet. I have to go."
"No." It was an involuntary reaction, a thoughtless one, and it made Heather take a step closer to her.
"She's still using it too," Heather said. "Why can't you ward both of us?" Only the nature of the question let Cam know that Heather wasn't talking to her anymore.
There was an explosion of sparks from the direction of the mainframe, and Cam could have sworn she heard Lothar laughing. The alarms were drowning out everything else, but somehow she heard Heather mutter, "Oh. I should go, then."
CyberCam was in her chair, shouting instructions at the Rangers, and Cam had never heard her sound so serious. Heather's zord had gone down. No one could pick up the Crimson Ranger on their scanners, or through the network, or get her to answer by comm. She was gone.
Cam felt tears prick her eyes as the ghost in front of her grabbed her shoulders and glared at her. "Cam, I'm right here. Don't listen to that. Don't do this to yourself. Everyone's okay, everyone's fine; we're waiting for you in Ninja Ops. None of this is real."
"I told her to be careful with the stabilizers," Cam whispered, knowing Heather would never hear her over the shrieking of the alert systems. Lothar's voice was in her head, mocking her. "You shouldn't have listened to me. They would have held, they would have been fine--"
"Cam!" Heather let go of her with one hand to toss the amulet over her shoulder, swinging the necklace around backwards as she stepped in to wrap her in a hug. "I didn't crash! I'm right here!"
"I hate your stupid Glider bike!" Cam shouted, trying to shove her away and failing. Her eyes were hot and wet and the Crimson Ranger could be dead for all she knew and what would she do then? "I hate your zord! I hate the way you throw yourself into the path of anything that looks remotely dangerous!"
"I can't leave, Sensei!" Heather sounded anguished. "She thinks I'm going to die!"
"Everyone dies!" Cam cried. "Lothar comes and she puts them into bubbles or she turns them into bugs or perfume or stamps and someday we won't be able to get them back! Someday she's going to win!"
"I can't!" Heather shouted at no one in particular. "Just do it!"
Lothar's voice abruptly vanished and the panic went just as fast, leaving Cam slumped against Heather in a control room that was starting to waver around them. Everything got horrifyingly fuzzy as the alarms started to blend together. Then it was just the roaring in her ears and Heather's arms around her when the entire world went dark.
Voices. She could make out voices again. Heather's voice, whispering something. Her mom's voice, answering a question she hadn't heard. And then Dusty saying, "Dude, I think you broke it."
I don't care, she wanted to say. I don't care what you break, as long as it isn't you.
"Hey," Heather said softly. "We like it when you complain, Cam. That's how we know stuff works, that it's good, because you complain about us breaking it."
The static in her ears was receding but it was still enough to muffle the silence that followed before Dusty's voice asked, "What?"
There was a barely noticeable pause, and then she added, "I mean, yeah. We definitely, uh... like it? When you complain?"
"You never made us doubt," Heather was murmuring, and Cam could feel arms holding her up, propping her against something warm and soft that had to be a person. Heather. Heather was still holding her. "It's never your fault that we get hurt, okay? Not ever."
Cam tried to move, but her legs wouldn't respond and belatedly she realized that she was lying down. On the floor? She managed to get her eyes open, and here she was, still stuck in the control room. Her fingers clenched convulsively, and Heather's soft shirt wrinkled beneath her hands. "You shouldn't have listened to me," she whispered.
"I didn't," Heather told her. "That wasn't real, Cam. You've been here the whole time. You keeled over right after you got the generators back, remember? Using that much power from the amulet for that long must have gotten Lothar's attention--"
"Perhaps explanations could wait," Sensei's voice suggested, and Cam lifted her head enough to see the cat perched on the arm of the couch beside her. Not on the floor after all, then, but the couch beneath the library.
Leaning heavily on Heather, she finally got her body to shift itself into something like a sitting position. Her face was wet with tears, and when she lifted a hand to her cheek she saw the white cotton gauze wrapped around her wrist. She stiffened, tears forgotten as she jerked her other arm free of Heather's comforting embrace and stared at the matching wraps in horror.
"Yeah, I know, sorry about that," Heather blurted out, her words falling over each other in her haste. "I don't get it either; I mean, maybe injuries you imagine could become real but I don't know how you knew we were bandaging them--"
"You did it," Cam said, her voice harsh in her ears. She could feel herself starting to shake, tears threatening once more as she wondered hopelessly if she would ever be able to trust her senses again. "You bandaged them."
"Um, actually," Toni began, crouching awkwardly in front of her. "That was me."
Cam stared at him, not aware that she was shaking her head until Heather brushed a hand against her cheek and said quietly, "You mean, in your head it was me. When I left you at Ninja Ops with... the other me. She did it."
She turned to search Heather's expression, looking for anything that would prove beyond a doubt that this was actually happening. The cord around Heather's neck caught her attention. It was off-center, pushed back, whatever was on it hanging over her shoulder like she'd shoved it out of the way. Cam reached for the cord, slowly, almost afraid of what it might hold. Heather didn't try to stop her.
It was easily within her mom's reach, Cam noted distantly, as she pulled the amulet forward and stared at it for a long moment. Heather was tall enough that even slouched on the couch as she was, the amulet would have been visible over her right shoulder. It looked normal now, felt a little cooler than she remembered it, and didn't call to her the way it once did.
"You want it back?" Heather asked, reaching up to pull it off before she'd finished the question.
"No," Cam said sharply, halting her mid-motion. Heather gave her an odd look, but she couldn't take it. Not now. Not when it was the only thing that distinguished this Heather from the others. The amulet and the pajamas. They were all she was sure of right now.
"Just... no," she added, when Heather seemed to be waiting for an explanation.
Heather shrugged, but she let her hand fall. "Okay," she agreed.
"So, uh, how are you?" Shay was standing next to Dusty at one end of the couch while Blaze loomed behind Sensei at the other. Toni hovered in between, watching her worriedly, and they all looked like they wanted to ask what Shay had finally said.
"I mean," the Red Ranger plowed on, "after all that... you know. You okay? How do you feel?"
Cam stared up at them, remembering the sound of one zord failure after another. She could still hear the sirens in the background, alarms piling on top of each other, and CyberCam's voice yelling that Heather was gone. It hadn't felt any less real than this moment with the Rangers.
"Alone," she said softly. The room was very quiet now. "I feel alone."