-The Depths of the Dark-
She'd have to be careful; every step needed to be planned and methodical, performed under the meticulous veil of secrecy. Almost every move K made would either be watched or could be traced back if even a hint of suspicion was aroused. Even all but the most top-secret of her files could be examined at a moment's notice.
But K's escape was beginning to form.
Surprise was still her strongest asset, the fact that Soup had no reason to suspect an impending breakout made it possible for certain arrangements to be made. But that didn't make them invisible; one wrong move and her captors could well uncover everything K hoped to achieve.
The window she had available to act would be tiny. Not only would K have to install the firewall to keep Venjix at bay, but she'd have to choose her moment carefully. For example, running to an exit during a peak transition would be all but impossible. But K had lived in the Soup for years, and her recall was nigh-on perfect. The Soup always moved like clockwork, machinelike in their adherence to routine. Its strict adherence made it predictable, and with just a little preparation, it was also a vulnerability she could exploit.
Then, when she was gone, they'd finally have a taste for how it felt to be manipulated and controlled.
But the first step was the most important; to act like nothing was different at all. K had only pretended to sleep through the night, her mind too busy swirling with the pieces as she locked them into place. But by the time the lights switched and the sickly sweet voice had greeted her for another morning, K was all ready to go. She knew exactly what she had to do.
"Good morning, K." The woman was every bit as nauseating as ever, the sign of an ordinary morning. This meant, so far, that K's unauthorized jaunt into unsupervised levels had remained undiscovered.
"Good morning," K replied with her usual blunt disinterest. "What will I be working on today?"
"We're so glad you asked," said the woman. "There is a bank network that enhanced their security measures. We would like you to test it for flaws so that we can report back to them and help them keep their money safe."
K didn't need a butterfly to help her see through those lies, she'd stopped believing them years ago.
"Of course," she replied. "Once I've done that, can we talk about me going outside?"
It was the part that she'd agonized over the most, the uncertainty of how much to lean into her charade. K knew all the risks; her voice could falter, betray the truth she could no longer forget, alerting the Soup to the previous day's events. But saying nothing carried equal risk, that a change in her behavior could lead to greater interest in her movements. Saying nothing could mitigate her only true advantage.
But the woman seemed none-the-wiser to the nature of K's query. "K we-"
"K, you know what she's about to say."
A smarmy voice cut in behind her, oozing tones that curled at K's spine and crawled along her skin. Any other day, K would have simply sat there and endured the discomfort, but a fleeting terror stabbed at her heart as its source announced the unexpected arrival.
Entering the room with a cold, overly friendly smile was the man with the ultimate authority. The man responsible for overseeing the day-to-day operations of K's confinement.
The Director of Alphabet Soup.
-3 hours to Judgement Day-
They landed hard at the bottom of the pit, but they were still in one piece and breathing. It had been Carter's quick thinking that had saved them at first, diving in front of Benson to take the brunt of the blast. It had thrown him out of morph, knocking him cold as the ground gave way beneath and the three of them plummeted into the open shaft. But the alternative was not worth thinking.
Jen had been luckier, avoiding the direct impact as the walkway crumbled beneath her. She fell with them, but she was still morphed, still conscious. With all three of them falling, it had been down to her to save them.
The all-consuming darkness of the shaft met them moments later.
Benson was flailing, limbs waggling helplessly in all directions as gravity grabbed and dragged him, his eyes wide and paralyzed with terror. But if he was conscious, then he could still move and act, and that was something Jen could work with. She steered herself through the air, wind beating their bodies as they plunged, Jen's gloved hand desperately reaching toward him.
"Grab on!" she barked, voice cutting through Benson's frightful daze as she yanked and hurled him over her shoulder. Then Jen narrowed her body and dived. Benson's arms had barely thrown themselves around as Jen flattened into a spear tip, profile rocketing down like a peregrine intent on its prey toward the tumbling, unconscious Carter.
Come on… Come ON!
Her arm stretched as far as it could, desperately reaching for Carter's rippling clothes as Jen's eyes shot to the winding cable beside them. The elevator's winch was their only hope, but it'd be useless if she couldn't reach Carter before he hit the ground.
It was like her shoulder was ready to pop from its socket, pushing the muscles and skin to extend well beyond the limit. If only she could reach him! Jen's fingers brushed the flapping edges of his coat that taunted her hope, snatching, pulling, yanking, before letting go immediately to reach further.
Pull him up or pull her down; Jen didn't care which. So long as she got a grip. The rushing air battered Carter's limp limbs, waving them up and down and making them an impossible target. But Jen wasn't going to miss; she couldn't.
She swiped, palm slicing across the air as it slapped his wrist and Jen's fingers scrunched into an iron grip. Then she twisted, heaving Benson around her body as the one spare hand grasped the iron cable and Jen squeezed for dear life.
Her gloved hand wrapped around it, sealing on the pulley and doing the same to their fate. The surface of the glove ground against the steel, sparks of friction bursting between them as it seared against Jen's hand through the material. And yet she squeezed harder, anything, everything she could muster to slow their fall.
And then she stopped.
The velocity continued, grabbing down and yanking as gravity demanded Jen continue, pulling the felled Ranger even further. But still, she held, even as her arms threatened to escape from their sockets, even as her eyes filled with tears from the burning at her palm. The force was so strong it shot through her, down her over-extended arm, and rippling into Carter. He was no longer unconscious after that, yelping in agony as he looked up to realize the safety of Jen's grip.
Then they bounced back, the spiteful relent of inertia as, at last, the three of them hung in place, all attached to Jen as she danged from the elevator's winch. They hung there in silence, Jen's breathing at last releasing as the adrenaline demanded heaving puffs. On her back, still wrapped tight and clinging for dear life, Benson's heart was racing, pounding against her back as he too tried to calm. And Carter continued to hang there, inert in his trained, calm stillness as he awaited Jen's direction.
Then, fighting the frightened freeze response of her instincts, Jen slackened her grip. It wasn't a complete relinquish, just enough to slide into a controlled descent, and slowly but surely they began to lower to the bottom.
She'd barely made out the darkened floor when Carter's feet made contact, almost crumbling at the unexpected landing. He stumbled to remain upright, but Jen had already let go, accepting the drop of the last few feet as she sunk like a stone and slammed into the rough and darkened earth. She hit the ground and collapsed, breathing heavily, heart pounding, palm searing as the suit finally gave out in a flash of pink and returned her to the starch-white fatigues.
For a long time, Jen lay there, staring at the light of the open cavity above, watching it light up with a flash of flaring flame, basking her in the distant glow. Her only hope was that it was the sign of Wes making his escape, that he'd manage to make it out with Dana and Kyle Mason. That they could continue with the mission.
Then, as Jen's heartbeat flushed the final remnant of adrenaline from her system, she rose to sit upright, staring at comrades as, at last, her spinning mind took stock. Trapped down a shaft, no idea where they were or even where the asset was, every enemy on the base was out looking for them, and down to two injured rangers and a non-combatant civilian. How, how could this have gone so wrong?
If only… if only she hadn't had to babysit!
Nearby, Benson had taken to sitting on the ground, staring into the sprawling pitch-blackness ahead of them, face too shocked to look anything but slack-jawed.
"I'm sorry…" he said distantly, his voice soft and fading like it had been drawn into a dream that was trapping him.
He could have stayed quiet, could have continued to stare, and left his regret unvoiced. Just kept it to himself in the silence. And yet he'd said it, and as he did, those two little words cracked a spark inside of her. Right beside a leaking pool of gasoline.
"You're sorry?" Jen hissed, venom dripping from her voice as her gaze locked dead in fury. "Now, you're sorry?"
Benson whipped around, eyes wide in panic and horror. But the fear was not of her, or even what she was capable of doing to him. He was still consumed by the terror of what had just unfolded. But then Jen rose to her full height, and he was afraid. Benson staggered back, a quivering crawl, dragged by slapping hands as he tried to desperately distance himself on instinct. But Jen kept moving forward.
"I warned you not to come," she snarled, her steps in time with Benson's flight. "Ordered it! But, no! You had to be part of this. The fate of the world hanging in a window of five hours, and you decided that it was time to play hero? Well, well done! Look at what you've achieved!"
Benson could only stammer, jaws moving but unable to form sound as Jen o loomed over him. His silence only enraged her further, her fists curling to pierce her nails into the throbbing palm, her jaw grinding her teeth to hold back her hissing breaths. Her arms locking tight, like her own will was all that held back the fires of her instinct.
"Say something!" Jen demanded. "SAY SOMETHING!"
"JEN!"
Carter's voice cut through the cavern, breaking her focus like a gut shot that announced a silence. Slowly Jen turned to see him on his feet, back rigid with his gaze fixed upon her. His stance was neutral, but ready. Ready to intervene. But beneath Jen, braced to scamper further back and arms shaking, Benson stared with quivering, fear-filled eyes. Not of the chaos that had unfolded, not of their enemies of the end of the world in sight. It was fear of her.
"I'm sorry," was all Benson could manage, tears welling at the base of his gaze with both horror and regret. "I'm sorry! This is all my fault."
Jen wanted to bite back, to rip into him with righteous agreement. Beside her, she noticed Carter tense, anticipating that exact outcome. And as Jen stared down at the trembling programmer, the foolish civilian who'd insisted he had a place on a special operation, she couldn't bring herself to do it. The anger was still there, but it was fading, as if Carter's bark had to cut the fuse, stifling the boiling rage and stopping the spark from the lighting keg.
Because it wasn't Benson's fault. Not for their predicament, not for the ambush. Not even for why they needed to be there at all. Jen's body softened, shoulders, neck, and facial muscles relaxing in somber surrender as she slowly knelt before the panicked programmer.
"No," she relented softly, "It's not your fault. It's mine."
Because how else could all the ghosts of Silver Hills be there, were it not for her?
Benson could only look at her in confusion, slowly pulling upright as their eyes looked and he saw the sincerity behind them. "W… what are you talking about?"
The moment was burned into her mind. Lying in the pod, the halo on her head like a silver crown that hungrily awaited the meal of her memories. The lone heartbeat where Jen realized that she could not obey, that she had to fight against fate and choose for herself. To make the choice that had damned them all.
"I had the chance, once," said Jen, "to let the past play as destiny intended. We were home, the future had been saved. Wes had stood alone against Ransik's forces, and in one final attack, the entirety of his army was wiped away in a single blast. Along with Wes."
A lump was curling in her throat, her jaw quivering as her vision blurred and tears began to rise from the memory. At the horror and fear, the pain and regret, when Wes had trapped them in the Timeship and sent them home to keep them safe. When he'd gone to face Ransik alone and succeeded.
And all it had cost was his life.
"It shouldn't have mattered," Jen continued. "We'd accomplished what we'd set out to do; stop Ransik, save the future. Alex was alive again, and a man who had already been dead a thousand years had perished a few earlier than intended. As far as time was concerned it was the blink of an eye. Mission accomplished, just one standard protocol memory wipe and we could go on with our lives like it never happened. I could have removed any lingering guilt that I had about him, about what my survival cost. And I couldn't do it. I couldn't just… forget him."
At last, Jen's body surrendered to exhaustion, sinking to her knees before Benson as a wet trickle began crawling down her cheeks. At last, a confession of her selfish act. An act that had damned the world.
"It didn't matter that he'd still be dead if we came back," she confessed. "That I was from a time that I'd have to return to. I just didn't want him to die for me, not when I could act to save him. Not if I could buy him just a few more years. My battle wasn't worth his life, and his life was everything to me. So, I broke protocol, I refused the memory wipe and returned to a time that had already been saved. All to save a man who would still be dead when I returned to my own time."
She'd chosen to go back and save a single life, to take the power that she alone had access to and wield it for reasons both selfish and naïve. And because of that, the world was going to burn.
"You saved more than just his life," Carter insisted. "Because you went back, the damage to the city was minimized. You were able to bring Ransik to justice without killing him, allowing him to redeem himself."
"All so I could go back to the future and leave him behind," Jen rebutted sadly. "Going back changed nothing for my time, all it did was assuage my guilt."
But Carter wasn't letting up. "I know the two of you had it hard for a while, but you figured it out. And now you're in a place where you've found a balance between your times."
"And was that worth the world?" Jen snapped. "Look at what we just saw up top, Carter! Cyclobots, Doomtron! All of which would have been destroyed if I hadn't gone back! But because I chose what I wanted over everything else, these Alphabet creeps got their hands on technology from the future! This, all of this, is because of me!"
Jen had never been angry at Benson, only relieved to a convenient and easy target. Somewhere else to direct her rage and prevent her from turning it inward. Someone else to blame if it all went wrong. Because this mission, this operation; if they failed here then all Jen had ever worked for would have been for nothing. Worse, it would have been cast aside for some stupid, selfish choice.
If she failed, then she'd become the woman that ended the world for love. Ended the world that he would have died saving. She wouldn't have just trampled over his memory, she'd have tarnished everything it would have stood for.
Everything Jen had done, every mistake, seemed only to make things worse. And it always seemed like other people were paying for them. As if still, nearly ten years on, Jen was still paying for the night she failed to keep Ranisk contained. The night she'd had the shot and been unable to follow through. When she'd surrendered to her exhausted, battered body and lost the chance to end things before they'd even begun.
Alex, not that man she knew now, but her Alex would still be alive. Wes, his life unchanged without Jen's touch, would be safe in a time ignored by her own. Everything that unfolded now was because of her. Because every time she had the chance to leave well enough alone, she didn't. And the whole world was about to pay the price.
But as the sinking took hold of her, enveloping Jen with a crushing weight that dragged her spirit lower and lower, a comforting hand softly touched her shoulder. The shock of gentle touch snapped her from the spiraling daze, a moment of reality that pulled Jen upwards. She reached on instinct, assuming it was Carter carefully approaching to offer comfort. But as Jen's eyes lifted, she realized instead that it was Benson. He'd crawled closer, no longer in frightful grovel but sincere concern, the soft grasp on her am lightly swaying in solidarity.
"I watched my life's work fall into the hands of a madman," he admitted sadly. "I could have stopped him at any time, pulled the plug, reported what he was doing. But I was too consumed by my own brilliance to stop and think about what I was unleashing. By the time I did, it was too late, and when I was finally in a position to do something about him, I had to sit back and let five teenagers fight my battle for me. You don't have to tell me about regrets."
For a moment Jen felt guilty, having to admit that all she knew about him was what Wes had conveyed and what she'd read in the briefing file. She knew his story; of the failure of Project Digitizer and his role in mentoring the Data Squad Rangers. But to hear it now, directly from the source, it was like she'd never known any of it before. To hear the pained regret dripping from Benson's voice like a faucet that could never be fixed, was a pain Jen knew all too well. For a moment, the two of them sat there, silent in the bottom of the dark pit, a somber shared acknowledgment of their mutual regret.
"But do you know what I learned through all of that?" Benson asked finally. "What I realized while I sat on the sidelines as others fixed my mistakes? That even if I had a hand in their creation, I'm not responsible for someone else's actions. I may have provided them with an opportunity, even unknowingly, but they were the ones that made a choice."
Once, in Jen's early days in the twenty-first century, Wes had told her the sympathy he'd felt for Ranisk. Having heard of the mutant's past, he couldn't help but feel sorry for him. It almost made Jen smile, thinking of how wide-eyed and innocent Wes had been. And how right he ultimately was; the seeds of good that he'd seen even then. But Jen's answer to him had been just as true; even as Ranisk finally saw the horror he was unleashing and surrendered. For all of his hardships, Ranisk's actions were his own, and whatever the reason for taking them, he was still responsible for their consequence.
As the thought crossed Jen's mind, an accepting realization released the weight pulling on her chest, while Benson rose and outstretched his hand.
"Take it from someone who actually has unleashed a supervillain on the world," Benson assured her. "Whatever choices you made were your own, and the only thing it gave these people was the excuse that they needed, not the reason. You're not the only one to play a part in what's happening here, and you didn't make the people involved go down the path they chose. They chose to dig through the rubble of Silver Hills. They chose to fill their base, maybe even replace their staff, with robots from the future. And they chose to kidnap a little girl and keep her captive. That's on them, not you."
For a moment Jen stared at the open, awaiting olive branch outstretched toward her, feeling the resolve within disturb its stagnant stillness to return to a simmer.
"Now come on," Benson decided. "We've got a future to save."
He was right, they had a job to do. Future be damned, there was an innocent girl in this forsaken place that needed them. Whatever events that would unfold, Jen could wallow in her complicity later. And as Jen stared at the hand, she felt the spark again.
Like a shaving on a flint, it kicked within her, flitting inside to catch and ignite. A fury that drove her, burning away at her sorrow, rising like the warming air. No longer a rage, but righteous determination. Jen's eyes narrowed, her arm latching up to grab Benson's hand and allow him to hoist her up. Ready to get back to action.
"Thanks for the pep talk," she admitted. "Seems like your Rangers were lucky to have you."
"I certainly hope so," Benson admitted. "I definitely caused them enough trouble on my end of things."
Then Jen looked at Carter, patiently waiting just off to the side, close enough to intervene, far enough to give space. As she turned around, he snapped to attention, grinning broadly as he saluted.
"Orders, ma'am?"
With resolve hardened, her two companions ready to stand by her stride, Jen whipped around encroaching and motioned her intent to walk towards it.
"Move out," she commanded. "Let's go save this girl."