Disclaimer: Saban owns Power Rangers...*sigh*. I only own what you don't already know from TV.

A/N: Thanks for all the response to that last chapter! That felt really good. For those of you who feel a little lost, don't worry - last chapter was a long but necessary diversion from this story's main plot. We're really getting back into that here. Enjoy!


In Transit
Angel Grove, CA
July 10, 2012
11:00 AM

"Who the hell was this guy?"

"Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks it's a bad idea leaving Rocky at your house with all your food." Tommy leaned forward and pressed his palms against the curved edge of the backseat of Jason's truck, thrusting his face between his two colleagues in front.

"Dude. Chill," Jason replied absently, glancing up at a passing street sign. "He knows better than to start grabbing shit out of someone else's kitchen. Besides, I'm sure everyone's gone or asleep by now. Couple of 'em looked about ready to drop where they stood. Was that the turn?" He turned to Kim, who was currently enthralled with her phone's GPS. She dropped her hands to her lap in frustration and rolled her eyes, glaring sidelong at Jason.

"Are you sure you've lived here your entire life?" Kim asked as she flopped her head back against the seat. "This place is three blocks from the park; you've probably walked by it a thousand freakin' times. Why the hell do you need me to give you directions?"

"I don't," Jason answered, smiling wryly without taking his eyes off the road. "I just wanted to make you feel useful."

Kim snorted and turned to Tommy. "See what I have to live with?"

Tommy chuckled and leaned back in his seat. "To be fair, you did kinda walk right into that one."

Jason laughed loudly as Kim shot both of them death glares. She raised a finger and started to speak but he never gave her the chance. "We're here."

The truck slowed to a stop and the three of them piled out, flashing their respective IDs at the officer who ran to meet them. As he led them to the site of the accident, the three former Rangers took a moment to examine the scene they now found themselves in.

A dark red Mitsubishi sedan sat half on and half off the curb, its front end wrapped around a light pole that now stood at nearly a forty-five degree angle with the ground. Pieces of shattered glass littered the surrounding pavement; a thin wisp of smoke was still rising from the destroyed vehicle's hood. The driver's side door hung open. A quick look inside revealed that the airbag had deployed, the car's entire interior sparkling with the tiny remnants of the windshield. Jason whistled softly as he walked around the car, studying the wreckage intently.

"Why did they call us out here?" He asked, glancing up from the crash to address the AGPD officer who'd met them on the scene.

"Crash happened around 3 this morning. Six different eyewitnesses reported seeing someone exit the vehicle and run off in the direction of the park – someone who matched the description of the John Doe they found there today."

"Wow," Kim said quietly, accepting the pair of latex gloves the officer handed to her. "Two new leads in five hours? This has to be some kind of record."

Jason pulled on his own pair of gloves. "Not to mention that this is the first time any of our alerts turned up a damn thing." Kim met his eyes and nodded. In every one of the other cases, any calls for witnesses or requests for information had come up empty. It was as if the victims in these cases had been invisible – as though they hadn't even existed until they'd been murdered.

"Car's got no plate," Tommy noted, pointing to the rear bumper. He frowned, squatting at the back of the car. "Any cars of this model reported stolen?"

The officer just shook his head. "The VIN's been scratched out, too. Whoever was driving this thing was in some deep shit." There was a soft chirping sound and the officer pulled a phone from his pocket. He turned away from the three former Rangers and began conversing with someone in hushed tones.

Jason raised an eyebrow and leaned into the driver's seat. There was a streak of blood on the inside of the open door in the shape of a hand. He moved past that and pushed further into the car, sweeping his eyes over the interior. The driver's seat was nearly completely covered in shards of glass; a small puddle of blood had formed on the edge of the seat and the floor mat. Jason put a hand on the center console and leveraged himself across the divide to open the glove compartment, but the grass under his feet was damp from the rain the night before. He felt himself suddenly lose traction and slide forward, his hand slipping off the console and landing in the passenger seat.

"You all right over there, Jase?" Tommy grinned at him through the back window. Jason shifted his weight and raised a hand to give Tommy the finger; as he did so, something brushed against his hand. He glanced down at the seat and saw that a small pocketknife that had been lying in the seat had fallen against his hand. The blade was open, the dull gray metal caked with a reddish-brown crust.

"Whoa," Jason breathed as he picked the knife up and gingerly extricated himself from the car. "Guys? Come take a look at this."

Tommy and Kim quickly joined him, staring at the knife in bewilderment. "Is that blood?" Tommy asked, tracing a finger down the length of the blade.

"No, it's maple syrup," Jason retorted. Kim stifled a giggle.

"OK, smartass, then whose blood is it?" Tommy eyed Jason expectantly and put his hands on his hips.

"Well we have six concurring reports that our John Doe was the only person in this car. You do the math."

"What, he cut himself with it?" Tommy asked incredulously.

"He did have that head wound when they found him," Kim pointed out.

"No way," Tommy interjected, shaking his head. "Have you ever seen a head wound bleed that little? There's no way in hell he did that to himself while he was still alive."

Jason tore his gaze away from the knife to look Tommy in the eye. "It's the only theory that makes even the slightest bit of sense, bro."

Kim stepped away and put her hands on the doorframe of the car. "Where was that thing?" She asked over her shoulder.

"It was just lying on the passenger seat," Jason answered. "I was about to open the glove compartment and I just sort of brushed against it."

Kim turned back into the car, nodded, and leaned inside herself. Jason and Tommy moved back toward the rear bumper. Tommy continued to examine the knife; after a moment, Jason nudged him. "What?"

"Look," Jason said, gesturing to the road. "Notice anything odd?"

Tommy frowned and turned to face the road. "Not really. What's up?"

"There are no skid marks," Jason replied, pointing. "Which means the guy never even tried to stop." He handed Tommy the knife and folded his arms over his chest. "This guy wrapped his car around a light pole at full speed, jumped out, ran three blocks to the park, of all places, and somehow wound up dead. And he has a knife in his front seat with dried blood on it. If I didn't know any better I'd say he was either on some heavy shit or he was running from someone."

Tommy scrunched up his mouth and studied the knife again. "This thing wouldn't really do much as far as self defense. Why bother with –"

Suddenly, a soft click caught their attention from the trunk. Jason whirled, locking his gaze on the car. "What was that?"

"Kim?" Tommy said. "Did you do something just now?"

"I just opened the glove compartment. It's empty, by the way. Why?"

Jason approached the rear of the car. "Could you do me a favor and pop the trunk?"

"Uhh…sure." Kim shifted her weight awkwardly from one hand to the other, grunting softly with exertion as she stretched toward the floor of the driver's seat and tugged on a lever with a pictogram of the trunk opening. Jason felt the lid give a little and lifted it the rest of the way. The trunk's interior was empty, the upholstery practically spotless. It was almost as if the thing had never been used.

That was when he noticed the small lip that ran horizontally across the floor of the compartment. Jason reached out and ran a hand along it, feeling a solid surface beneath the fabric. He tried to force a finger into the small crack, but the seal was still too tight. It seemed far too obvious – opening the glove compartment unlocks a secret panel in the trunk? – but then again, the car had no plates, no form of ID that was clearly visible…clearly the guy had never intended anyone else to be inside it.

On a hunch, he said, "Kim? Is the glove compartment still open?" During the puzzled silence that followed his question, Jason felt Tommy come up beside him.

The two of them stood beside each other staring into the trunk for a moment before Tommy quietly said, "We should have shotguns for this kind of deal."

Jason smirked knowingly. "How many up there?"

Hearing Jason catch on to his reference, Tommy smirked back. "Three or four."

"That counting our guy?"

"Not sure."

"So that means there could be up to five guys up there?"

"It's possible."

Jason turned to Tommy, his grin widening. "We should have fuckin' shotguns."

The two of them burst out laughing as Kim finally seemed to realize that Jason had spoken to her. "Hey Travolta!" She called out over the laughter. "You wanna run that by me one more time?"

Jason stifled another round of laughter and called back, "I asked if the glove compartment was still open. If it is, could you close it? I got a hunch."

There was a brief pause before Jason and Tommy heard another click and a panel popped out of the trunk floor, about a foot square. The two men's eyes widened.

"Think that's where the spare tire goes?" Tommy asked, his tone showing that he already knew the answer.

"In a secret hole in the floor of the trunk that you open with the glove compartment? Seems a little elaborate." Jason leaned into the trunk and slowly pulled the piece of floor free, staring down into the hole. "Holy shit," he whispered, taking a step back in surprise.

"What?" Tommy leaned in and peered into the hole himself.

It was a veritable armory. There were at least seven firearms immediately visible – Tommy could identify three Sig Sauer pistols, a shotgun and at least one semi auto. They were stashed under the floor of the trunk, each one occupying a rack that seemed to have been built specifically to accommodate it. He whistled through his teeth as he examined them before something else caught his eye. Frowning, Tommy reached behind him and blindly gestured to Jason to come forward. "Jase? You might want to take a look at this."

Jason's head suddenly appeared next to Tommy's; the former White Ranger lifted a hand and pointed into the hole. Jason followed his finger and narrowed his eyes in bewilderment.

"The hell is that?"

In the midst of all the normal weaponry, there was one that neither of them knew what to make of. It appeared to be a single piece of metal colored a bright silver; a thin handle with four depressions for grip widened and flattened into a round, smooth barrel about six inches long. The muzzle of the weapon was a hole the size of a golf ball, perfectly round and attached to the barrel seamlessly. The only thing remotely resembling a trigger was a small button on the back end of the barrel, the only part of the weapon that appeared to be detachable. Jason was reminded of the guns they gave you when you played laser tag.

Just as Tommy reached out a hand to pick the thing up, Kim came up behind them. "What you guys got back here?"

Neither of the two men responded; Tommy simply cradled the weapon in his gloved hands and lifted it gently out of the trunk. "God, it weighs almost nothing," he muttered, turning to present it to Kim.

Kim's face immediately darkened. She ran her eyes over the strange shape of the object in Tommy's hands and said softly, "Who the hell was this guy?"


Unknown Location
Somewhere Outside Angel Grove, CA
July 10, 2012
10:50 AM

Billy rested his elbows on the desk in front of him and leaned forward, pressing his chin into his hands. He blinked rapidly, his eyes growing watery and sore from staring at a computer monitor for the last half hour straight. Toward the end of his conference call with the others gathered at Jason and Kim's, Billy had wandered back into his lab and began working on accessing the facility's self-contained server network. That photo he had seen Blaylock carrying had stuck in his head, and he couldn't resist at least making an effort to figure out how his boss had gotten his hands on crime scene photos – and such bizarre ones at that.

As he groaned softly and rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand, the image he'd happened to get a look at floated back to the forefront of his mind again. Something about the man in that picture and the strange wounds to his torso had seemed so familiar to him…Billy hadn't been able to see the face of the corpse for more than a single fleeting glance, but the itch at the back of his mind that he knew more about that picture than he realized refused to go away. He let out a breath and raised his head to stare into the monitor again. Searching the conventional way had gotten him nowhere. He'd had no expectations, but he was reluctant to attempt the alternative; hacking into Blaylock's personal account in order to access the general's private files wasn't just immoral and sneaky, it was a thousand different kinds of illegal. Not to mention the fact that the last few people who'd been caught doing something similar had never been heard from again. Privacy was something the Defense Department generally tended to value highly, a policy not lost on the Extraterrestrial Research and Containment Agency, or ERECA, the top-secret organization in whose headquarters the former Blue Ranger now found himself employed.

Sighing softly, Billy straightened in his chair and rolled his shoulders. Normal channels had uncovered exactly nothing; it was time to put up or shut up. Cracking his knuckles and wiping his moist palms on his pants, he glanced furtively at the security cameras that sat perched in every corner of the ceiling like hungry bats, waiting to pounce at the slightest hint of shady activity. He had positioned his monitor here deliberately, angled it so that none of the cameras could see what he was working on. Blaylock had been pissed when he first found out, but Billy had been insistent, and the results he'd produced must've spoken for themselves – Dr. Cranston had been granted an unheard of level of professional privacy within ERECA's walls.

The extra privacy might've seemed too good to be true for most, but to Billy it was simply a condition of his work. Jason hadn't been wrong – several of the machines in this very room were things Billy had smuggled back from Aquitar with him, and while he could explain away their odd appearances, it was much harder to do so for the impossible feats of scientific prowess they enabled him to perform. Not only that, but he was blessed with a supply of resources – he referred to them cryptically in his notes as "raw materials" – that could never be allowed to see the light of day. Thus Billy had required the maintenance of a bubble of isolation that separated his work from access by anyone without his say-so. The arrangement had run smoothly for a while, but now, with what he was about to do...moving forward from here would, from the Agency's perspective, constitute treason. He was literally risking everything by doing this.

Another thought occurred to him then, staying Billy's hand as he reached for his keyboard. What about Jason? Out of everyone in their group, he was the one in the best position to help his friend, and he would need the Agency's resources to do it. If he did something stupid and got caught, he wouldn't be the only one to suffer; Jason and everyone around him would be placed in steadily increasing danger by something they had no idea how to combat.

But would Jason approve of receiving assistance from a group with a malicious ulterior motive? Billy knew the answer to that question. Before he could help Jason, he had to make sure that going through the Agency was the best, safest – and most trustworthy – route to take. The thought steeled his resolve, and the former Blue Ranger exhaled slowly, raising his hands to the keyboard again, and took the plunge.

Billy's fingers flew across the keys, moving almost too fast for the human eye to register. Finding a way around the compound's self-contained security was far too easy; he'd have to find a subtle way to clue them in on it later. If there was a later. Blaylock's personal firewall, on the other hand, was much more imposing. Billy wasn't surprised – the guy was in charge for a reason – but still, as he prepared the series of commands that would activate a program to tear down the firewall, he found himself hesitating.

Something's wrong here, Billy thought, watching as the cursor blinked on the screen as if urging him to continue. Sure, the personal security around Blaylock's account was far more robust than the general Agency security, but that wasn't saying much. If this program worked, he'd have gotten full access to Blaylock without hardly batting an eye. Was there something he was missing? Something he didn't know that he needed to consider before proceeding?

After a moment of anxious indecision, Billy finally shook off the uneasiness. It was logical for Blaylock's security to be somewhat porous – after all, he was a very busy man, with a lot of other things on his mind, and like the others here he probably figured the facility, as top secret as it was, would provide protection enough.

Maybe from outside, Billy thought, smirking in spite of himself. But someone initiating a security breach from within? There shouldn't be any need. Nobody would see it coming.

Growing more and more certain by the second, Billy charged forward, finding himself scrolling through General Blaylock's private files before he had long enough to second-guess himself again. It didn't take him long to find what he was looking for – a whole series of photographs nearly identical to the one he had seen in the hallway. All of them showed corpses with nearly identical wounds to the chest, those two perfectly round holes that looked so familiar, so –

Oh my god.

Faces had been visible in a few of the pictures, and Billy realized with mounting dread that he recognized them. They had all been ERECA employees, scientists mostly, people who'd helped him on several different projects, brilliant minds with whom he felt a rare camaraderie he'd only found in one other place. He'd thought these people had quit, taken sabbaticals or vacations or…his mind whirled, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, when something else clicked.

I know what caused those wounds.

It had been three years ago, just after Billy had joined ERECA. They had told him they were developing a new way to perform surgeries and amputations that didn't require blades or metal tools that could become contaminated and lead to infections. Cutting down on sterilization time would also be a valuable timesaver during emergency situations. What they'd ended up with was a small tool that fired a concentrated burst of unearthly energy that cut through skin, bone, and cartilage like they weren't even there. The only problem was that they had found no way of controlling the strength of the energy bursts or how long they lasted, which meant that they would cut through any human tissue they came in contact with.

He thought they'd scrapped it, thrown the thing out as something too dangerous to fuck around with. Clearly he'd been wrong.

If Billy was going to help Jason and his friends, he needed to act fast. Someone was killing his colleagues, using a weapon he himself had helped design. Blaylock was probably launching his own investigation outside the law, the stress of which more than explained his erratic behavior earlier. Silently cursing himself for ever doubting the man's loyalties – or his sanity – Billy leapt up from his chair and began moving rapidly around his lab, making preparations. The contents of this lab were far too valuable, far too powerful, to be allowed to fall into the wrong hands. If he wanted to ensure the safety of his friends and the Agency, certain things had to be taken care of first.