The Colonel and the Rest of the military left the Garage, leaving the Rangers to prepare for their journey into the wastes in search of new colonies and settlements. Vasquez had done some scans, but Hicks had decided that it was best that they leave the briefing until they were ready to go. The soldiers who stayed in the base now had all been sent to give the Rangers and their families time to be together and say their goodbyes.
Mike had also gone back to his own Command Centre to give them privacy. Tenaya and Alex were sitting in one corner, giving Ziggy a chance to just hold Alex and play with him one last time before he left. He knew that they would occasionally go back to Corinth, but he was also realistic about the fact that they had no idea how long it would be before he could come back to them. He didn't want to think about the fact that it was possible he wouldn't come back at all.
Summer and Dillon were over by the table, sitting closely, whispering to each other, though it seemed a lot more intent and forced than it usually was. Summer just sat, gently twirling her barely-touched first glass of champagne as she looked into his eyes. Dillon ran his hand through her hair, grateful to have at least this level of contact with her. He didn't know why, but from the second she had realised they were being called back into action, something bothered her. She had naturally been afraid before battles before, but her fear never got the better of her. She always managed to hold it together and come through when the punches started flying. He knew that there was something she wasn't telling him.
Flynn was sitting with a noticeably upset Sam, holding her in his arms and rocking her gently as he whispered in her ear, reassuring her and holding her stomach softly. It pained him to think that he might miss the birth of his first child. Although he knew the importance of his work, he wanted what any father wanted. He wanted what he had seen Ziggy have with Alex. He wanted to hold his child, play with and raise it. He wanted to help with homework, as much as he could despite knowing Sam would easily be the more useful in that capacity. He wanted to teach his child to ride its first bike, to see it fall in love. Like Ziggy it pained him to think of all the things he could miss out on.
Gem had gone into a room to be alone. No one really knew what he was doing, but they understood why. Gemma had gone to be alone with Hicks. They had a lot to discuss.
Meanwhile Dr. K was sitting with Scott, staring into a collection of printouts from the file Charisma had given her. He had also taken her into a side-room for privacy while they discussed her torment. Tears ran down her face and her hands shook, her grip tight on the paper wrinkling it.
"Dr. K..."
"Sarah!" She snapped as Scott finally started to try and say something. "My name is Sarah!"
"Alright, if that's what you want, I'll call you Sarah." Scott assured her. "Sarah, please talk to me."
"I guess not many people ever find out how much they really mean to their parents." She hissed bitterly as she pulled out the bank statement. "100,000 dollars. That's all it took for mom and dad to cast me away."
"Sarah..."
"I remember everything about that day!" She snarled, rounding on him. "I remember playing on my tricycle on the street. I remember the fact that it was warm, very warm. There was no wind, so it was barely comfortable, but I loved the tricycle so much, I ignored the heat."
She wiped her eyes and looked up to the ceiling.
"I knew even then there was something different about me. I saw things in a way no other kids did. While other kids were watching patronising television presenters telling them how to count, I had already figured out how the guy in Los Angeles was appearing on my screen across the country." Dr. K told him. "While some kids played with E-Z bake ovens, I had already taken mine apart and was figuring out how to improve it and make it work in seconds." Scott laughed a little hearing this last point.
"I guess it's just as well you didn't have access to parts when you were four." Scott replied. "With your sweet tooth..."
"I remember when that other girl handed me the chalk. She had just drawn a crude picture of a house, but that's not what I saw." She continued. "I started writing down all the equations in my head. It wasn't long before the people in suits came to collect me."
"Sarah..."
"I screamed when they grabbed me." Dr. K whispered, the day coming to her in detail. "When the man grabbed me, I kicked and I screamed, I screamed so hard but nobody came. I was screaming..."
"You were screaming for your mom." Scott interrupted her as her words tailed off. Dr. K nodded sadly, sniffing back some more tears.
"At first I blamed them for not being there." She told him. "In time as I thought about the incident, I started to work through it logically. I just thought I had gone too far, that mom and dad hadn't seen or heard me being taken away. I used to think about them, imagine them worrying about me, searching for me...I used to dream that one day they'd find me and bring me back home." She threw the reports onto the bed.
"No police report was ever filed." Dr. K snapped. "I guess now I know why they never found me. They weren't even looking!"
"Sarah, I can't imagine what that feels like." He said comfortingly as he put an arm around her. "I had problems with my dad, but I knew he'd always stand with me."
"The Macha Group bought me and turned me into...THIS!" She grumbled, hitting herself in the chest with her hand. "A socially inept, intellectually superior, morally ambiguous..."
"You are NOT morally ambiguous!" Scott interrupted her sharply, turning her to face him and looking her straight in the eyes. "I'm not sure what ambiguous means, but you have shown me nothing but goodness..."
"I created all those weapons for years. I knew exactly what they would do!" Dr. K reminded him.
"You had no choice, and you created them believing they would be used to defend our country." He answered her. "You had no idea what Alphabet Soup was."
"Do you want to know the REAL reason Alphabet Soup was making me create Venjix?" Dr. K asked him. "It's all right here!"
"Dr. K..."
"They were creating the Ranger Technology, and knew it was powerful. They wanted to sell it, but to drive the price up they needed an enemy only the Ranger Rigs could destroy!" She told him, grabbing another report and shoving it into his chest. "They planned to release Venjix on purpose. I just unleashed it too early. I released it before we perfected the technology."
"They were going to unleash Venjix?" Scott asked her. She nodded.
"I destroyed the world, all because some big shot in a suit wanted to get rich." She said in a long sigh. "All of this..."
"This was never your fault, you have to remember that." Scott told her. "You were trying to escape. If you'd put up that firewall, Venjix would have been restricted to Alphabet Soup."
"But..."
"What if you had succeeded?" He asked her. "Like you said, all they saw was the potential for profit. If you had escaped, do you really think they'd have given up on it?"
Dr. K fell silent as she considered this. The Macha Group had taken such a cavalier attitude to human life, it was doubtful they would have passed up the most devastating weapon since the nuclear weapon. They would have hunted the world to find her and bring her back, exhausted every resource at their disposal in the search. According to the files, the Macha Group was estimated to be worth over 900 billion dollars. Even if they had spent every penny of that, once Venjix and the Ranger technology had been perfected, they would have earned that back an infinite number of times. With them being the only ones capable of defeating Venjix, they would have been able to name their price, and the world would pay.
"You were the only one who knew what Venjix was. You were the only one who had a hope of destroying it." He reminded her. "They would never have allowed you to go free."
"One way or another they were going to release Venjix." She told him. "It seems like no matter what I do, I would have been the one to destroy everything."
"You never had a choice." Scott reminded her. "Of course you did have a few choices. You chose to send out that warning. You chose to set up project Ranger. You chose to fight with everything you have to set things right."
He pulled closer to her, stroking her hair gently as he looked at her.
"You are not what they made you. You chose what you became, and I'm not talking about the clothes or the hair." He assured her. "Dr. K, Sarah, I really don't care what you want me to call you now. You are, and will always be the woman I fell in love with."
With that, he pulled her in, kissing her passionately. Dr. K parted from him a little way, biting her lip.
"Scott, there's something I want to ask you." She told him. "You know what I said about marriage before..."
"I know you aren't wild about the idea." Scott replied.
"No, that's not it at all. I want to, I was just nervous." She said quietly. "This whole thing terrifies me. We both know the risks in the new..."
"Sarah..."
"I know that it's illogical. I know that it's only a promise, just words that are spoken which could have no statistical influence on your probability of survival..." She tailed off and shook her head, pounding a fist into the bed. "Damn it, why do I always slip into thinking like that? Summer makes all this stuff look so easy..."
"Dr. K..." He began. "Sarah, it's alright. Just relax."
Scott held her hand softly and turned her face towards him, making her look into his eyes. He smiled at her.
"Don't over think it. Just look at me, and say what you want to say." He told her. "Just say the first thing that comes to your mind."
"I think I might feel more at ease with you leaving, like I know you'd come back to me if." She paused for a second, taking a breath as a tear rolled down her face. "If you agreed to marry me, I feel like you'd have a reason to come back."
"I'd always have had a reason to come back." Scott assured her, kissing her softly. "I would be honoured to."
Dr. K leapt across at him, tackling him off the bed, hugging him tightly in her excitement. As she lay on top of him, looking down on him as they both laughed nervously, she started to slowly lean over, and kissing him with a passion she had never felt before. Scott watched as she got up, making her way slowly to the door, before flicking on the lock.
Out in the main room, Dillon kissed Summer softly as he went to get something to drink. Tenaya handed Alex to Ziggy, before making her way over. Summer looked up at her and smiled.
"Tenaya..."
"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Tenaya asked her aggressively. Summer looked up at her a little hurt.
"What...?"
"Helen and I found the test." Tenaya interrupted Summer in her indignation. "I know you're pregnant."
Summer looked completely stunned by this, but the way her eyes grew wide gave her away. She had only taken the test the day before, but since then, things had gone out of control. She'd barely had time to digest the information herself.
"I'm guessing you haven't told Dillon yet." Tenaya chastised her sister-in-law.
"Tenaya, please..." Her words tailed off as she tried to straighten out her thoughts.
"How did this happen?" Tenaya asked her.
"I was always careful. I knew the team needed me. I knew I couldn't risk..." She found her words tailing off as she cast her mind back over it. "A few weeks ago, I realised I had forgotten to take my pill. I didn't think anything about it at the time; I just started back on it." She wiped away a tear gently. "A couple of days ago, I was late."
"When did you take the test?" Tenaya asked her.
"I took the test yesterday." She informed her sister-in-law. "I was so excited; all I wanted was to tell Dillon, but then..."
"This all happened." Tenaya replied.
"I don't know what to do." Summer whimpered. "I want to tell him, I just wanted a normal life, but I know..."
"Summer, you can't possibly be thinking of doing this." Tenaya interrupted her. "Are you trying to lose the baby?"
"How could you possibly think that?" Summer asked her, clearly hurt by the question. "I want this baby more than anything!"
"Then you can't do this." Tenaya told her.
"You knew about Alex while you were substituting for Dillon." Summer reminded her. Tenaya shook her head.
"The difference is, I knew that was temporary." She replied. "We don't know how long this is going to take."
"That's exactly why I want to go." Summer told her. "I...I want Dillon to be with me through this. I don't want to go through this by myself."
"What do you think he's going to say when he finds out?" Tenaya asked her. Summer hung her head low.
"He'd tell me to stay." Summer replied. "He'd try to talk me into staying behind."
"No one's going to blame you for putting the baby first." Tenaya told her. "You need to tell the others. You can't risk this. You'd never forgive yourself if anything happened to the baby."
"But..."
"Let me put it this way. If you don't tell Dillon then I will." Tenaya stated abruptly. "He has a right to know."
"I suppose I wouldn't be able to keep it secret for long anyway." Summer responded morosely as she thought about it. She had a weak laugh as she thought of something. "I don't know if the nano fibre would stretch far enough anyway."
"There's a thought." Tenaya chuckled, conceding to the mental image. "I guess the suit wouldn't really be that flattering."
Just then, Tenaya looked up, seeing Dillon coming back with a couple of mugs of hot chocolate. She smiled at Summer. "Now's your chance."
As she left, leaving them with as much privacy as they could get in the conference room. Dillon put the mug down in front of Summer.
"Mini marshmallows?" Summer asked him, noting the little sweets floating on the surface of her drink. "You better hope Dr. K doesn't find out."
"I think I can risk it." He replied. "I mean, we leave tomorrow. By the time she finds out, we'll be miles away."
"Um...yeah, I have to talk to you about that." Summer replied gently, taking his hand. "Dillon, I need to tell you something. I won't be going."
"You're not going?" He asked her.
"Dillon, I can't go with you. I can't risk anything happening." She told him. "Dillon, I'm pregnant."
Dillon sat, staring at her for a moment, making her feel a little uneasy. She could tell that he was surprised, that much was obvious in his expression, but she just couldn't read how he had taken it. After a couple of moments, she couldn't take it any longer, she finally spoke up.
"Dillon, please say..."
He didn't reply in words. He just took her into his arms, kissing her enthusiastically, before hugging her tightly. He couldn't believe that he could be so happy after hearing that she wouldn't be going with him. He parted from her a little way, smiling brightly.
"Are you sure?" He asked her. She nodded.
"I've only taken one of those over-the-counter tests, I haven't seen a doctor yet, but I'm pretty sure." Summer told him, grinning through tears of joy. "We're having a baby."
Meanwhile, in another room, Gemma was sitting with Hicks. She had gone into one of the rooms with him, taking the champagne with them. He poured them each another glass.
"There's something I want to talk to you about." He began, putting his arm around her. "I'm thinking of taking the Colonel up on his offer. I'm thinking of taking the job."
"That's great Hicks." She replied, looking into her glass. He didn't seem to notice that she was a little quiet. He took a sip of his champagne.
"Before today I never thought I'd feel like I was up to it." He admitted. "After what happened with Venjix, I never wanted that kind of responsibility."
"I'm glad you finally see what we've all been telling you." Gemma told him. "Vasquez seemed to handle it all pretty well too."
"She was great. I don't know if I'd have done it without her." Hicks agreed. "I'm going to talk to her. If she steps up too, I'll definitely take the job."
He pulled in closer, putting his arm around her. She really wished he hadn't done that. It sent the same shiver down her spine it always had. Her heart raced at his touch. It was only going to make this harder.
"The job comes with certain perks of course." He continued. "I'll get priority on the comm links. We'll be able to..."
"Hicks, could you just...listen to me for a minute?" Gemma asked him as she took some more champagne. She set down her glass and took his hands in hers. Hicks reached up, cupping her cheek and pulled into a soft kiss. Gemma just pulled away. "Hicks, I'm serious. Could you just listen for a minute?"
She looked away from him, unable to look him in the eyes as she prepared to begin.
"Hicks, there's no easy way..."
"Gemma, please don't say it." He begged her, putting down his own glass. He held her chin, trying to lift her face to look into his eyes. "You can't want this."
"I don't want to say this. It hurts more than anything else I've ever had to do." She whimpered. "You know as well as I do that there's no guarantee when I'll be back, or even..." She paused, not wanting to think about it, but more out of the thoughts of Hicks having to lose another woman he loved.
"Gemma, I love you." He told her, tears already beginning to form in his eyes. "I'm begging you, please reconsider."
"It isn't going to change anything Hicks." Gemma sobbed, wiping her nose with her wrist. She was finally able to look into his eyes. "You're going to be too busy here. I'm going to be out there. It isn't going to work. It's just going to tear us apart."
She held his hand to her face, struggling to find the strength to continue. He was the first man she had ever loved, but she was also painfully aware that the relationship was still young. Being separated for so long at such an early stage would only result in them growing apart. As much as it tore her heart in two, she wanted to spare them both the pain of a slow, inevitable end to their relationship.
"As much as it hurts now, you know what I'm saying's right. We'll just grow apart. We'll end up resenting each other. I couldn't bear that." She told him. "It's best we just end it now."
Hicks looked to her one more time, wordlessly begging for her to change his mind, but in his heart he knew she had a point. Neither of them was sure what to expect from their relationship. They hadn't been together for very long. Eventually, she pulled off his dog tags.
"Just make me one promise, and I'll not say any more about it." He sighed, looking at the dog tags. "I want you to have these. Bring them back to me one way or another. Promise me that you'll not just accept this as the end. Promise me that you'll believe that if we're going to work out, then we'll find our way back to each other."
Gemma just nodded her head sadly. Hicks put the dog tags around her neck, before kissing her cheek. He looked into her eyes once more, feeling every inch of his heart breaking. The door suddenly flew open, and Gem bounded in excitedly.
"Guys, there's been huge news! Summer's pregnant!" He screamed, firing a party popper into the room. "Come on out, we're celebrating!"
"That's amazing news." Hicks replied, wiping away a tear. "We'll be right out."
Gem turned and rushed back out into the main room. Hicks got up and made his way to the door, turning back to face Gemma.
"Are you coming?" He asked her. Gemma slipped the dog tags inside her t-shirt, feeling the metal still warm from his skin. She wiped her eyes dry and joined him, taking his arm one last time.
"Let's go." She sighed, before forcing a smile as she went to celebrate with her friends.