"Daddy!" Opal yelled as she struggled to get out of Conner's arms. He placed her on her feet and she then sprint toddled over to Tommy. The kids were going to stay with Kira and Conner for the night, but all of them had been insistent on seeing their parents. It was like the Oliver children knew that something wasn't right and that the surprise spend the night party was a cover. "Where Mommy?"
"Mommy's got a big ouch that Uncle Billy is fixing," Tommy replied as Opal nodded while snuggling into his chest. Tommy looked up at his older children and saw that it was sinking in a bit more with Landon and Sean that this was not a normal sickness. They knew what Billy did for a living and Landon had even been stitched up by him a time or two. "Hey boys. You having fun with Kira and Conner?"
"We got pizza. The good kind," Sean emphasized as he skipped over to the seat next to him and plopped down in it. Landon drug his feet as he walked over to him and then locked eyes with Tommy. Landon was the quietest of their children, but that didn't mean that he missed anything. No, Landon picked up on everything that was going on.
"Where's Ollie? We were going to go for a hike this afternoon," Landon said as Tommy gulped. How did he explain this to them? He only really had a hunch that Ollie had been turned into someone he wasn't, but how did he explain that to the rest of his children? They loved their older brother and Ollie had always been the best older sibling for all of them. He went on hikes with Landon, played the wild games that Sean came up with, and even had princess tea parties when Opal insisted that there needed to be one more guest. Hayley hadn't just hurt him and Kimberly, she had hurt their other children as well.
"Ollie…someone…" Tommy shook his head. Landon would see through any lie that he tried to tell him. He was going to have to go with some version of the truth, even if it hurt all of them. "I don't know where Ollie is right now, but Uncle Jason and Aunt Trini are looking for him while I wait for Uncle Billy to finish patching Mama up."
"He'll be fine, right?" Landon pressed and Tommy looked up to see Jason, Adam, Rocky, and Aisha walking towards the waiting room. He squeezed his eyes shut, knowing that it must be bad if Jason thought it necessary to bring along reinforcements. This was the only group that had any hope of containing him if he completely lost it and they all knew that the hope was still slim. Kim was the only person that could really talk him down if his powers overtook him. "Dad?"
"I don't know. I've got to go talk with Uncle Jason. I'll come over to Conner and Kira's tomorrow morning, promise," Tommy said as he stood up and passed Opal back to Conner before giving Sean and Landon hugs. "I'm going to get him back."
"Tommy…" Jason started as Tommy continued past him and they spun around to fall in line behind him. "Where are we going?"
"The chapel. It's one of the few places where we can get a little bit of privacy," Tommy muttered as he looked over at Jason. "You brought back up. You don't have good news for me. Was I right?"
"You're right, we need privacy," Jason stated as Tommy stopped and the pain flooded his face. He felt his world tilt and Jason caught him as his knees gave out. He had been holding it together all day, but he didn't have anything left in him to keep it together now. He had been right when his gut said that Hayley had a long term plan and no one had listened to him. "We're going to get him back. You don't have to do this alone."
"I can't do this alone," Tommy whispered as Jason nodded. He was one of the few people that knew how much Tommy feared losing Kimberly. He had gone nine long years without her in his life and the last ten years had been amazing for him, but Tommy had always had it in the back of his mind that he might lose her again. "Jason, she…they…"
"We got you, come on," Rocky said as he slid an arm around Tommy and Tommy let him and Jason carry him towards the chapel. Adam, Zack, and Aisha silently walked behind them, they knew nothing they said would help. What could they even try to say to comfort him? His wife was in emergency brain surgery and his oldest son had been taken by someone that had once been one of his best friends, but had tried to kill his wife and had aligned herself with Mesogog. They had nothing that could comfort him.
Rocky and Jason deposited him in a chair and then pulled over a few other chairs near him. The others sat down across from him before Jason and Rocky settled. The five of them exchanged glances, trying to figure out who should talk first and what they should even say.
"Was I right?" Tommy asked as he looked over at Jason and Jason forced himself to nod. "So Trini's not here because she's setting up the surveillance we'll need."
"Yeah," Jason said as Tommy nodded and they watched as he pulled himself back together. It wasn't easy and it took him a solid ten minutes before he looked at them again and they saw their leader back with them. "Tanya pulled the results from Ollie's latest tests and the markers are all over the place. We don't really have a timeline…"
"Over the summer," Tommy supplied as he stood up and shook his head. He imagined if he had long enough he could even pin it down to a specific day, but he didn't want to think about it that much right now. He needed to give them the basics so that they would be able to look into this without him there. There was nothing he could do to get to Ollie until he was in a place where he felt Kim was safe and Hayley knew that. Hayley knew that he wouldn't come directly after her until he could make sure he'd get Ollie back. "We just thought it was a bit of teenage rebellion. Anytime we talked to him about it or asked if something was going on, we got nothing that would have indicated this. Why didn't he say…"
"There's a good chance that he didn't know," Billy said as he walked into the chapel and Tommy spun around to face him. The fact that Billy looked tired, but positive settled him a bit. If Billy had called in Katherine, he would have lost it. He would have known without Billy saying a word what had happened. "She wasn't smart about some of the compounds she used to knock him out- they showed up in his bloodwork. Those days that he was sneaking off, she probably implanted a need for him to come to her so that she could finish what she started."
"Manipulating his DNA," Tommy muttered as he shook his head. The tests had always been inconclusive, but his gut feeling from years ago bubbled back to the surface. Turning Ollie on them had always been her endgame. "It must not have completely worked though. She didn't, doesn't know the final things we did to get it to stick. That was research I never published. I never even wrote it down because I recognized that it shouldn't be replicated. I should have never…"
"It's a good thing you didn't. What interval would she have to reinject him?" Billy asked as Tommy started doing the mental math. Ollie was young, so it meant that he could throw things off more easily, but his DNA was already compromised because of being the child of Power Rangers. Their DNA was affected by the powers that had bonded with them and the more powers a person had, the more they were compromised. Kim and Tommy were some of the rangers that had the most powers, ever and they knew it had changed things fundamentally in their children.
"A week would be ideal. Two weeks would be a stretch. Anything after two and a half weeks and she'd have to do a significant amount of work to get it back into his system. If her goal is to keep him alive and use him as a weapon against us, she's not going to risk that interval. I have things to break those kinds of compounds down faster, but we have to get him back and then we have to keep her away. I think it's safe to say that I'm not going to confront Hayley to try to persuade her to leave my family alone," Tommy said as the others looked at him and he heard the collective sigh. This was the other thing that all of them were worried about. How did they go about ending this permanently? "How is she?"
"In ICU. We got the extra blood off her brain and I've left room for it to swell without putting additional pressure on her brain. There's a cot for you, but I wanted to warn you that she's got a lot of tubes and other things connected to her right now and we're keeping her sedated for a couple of days to give her body as much of a chance to recover and rest as possible," Billy said and Tommy stood up as he nodded for him to lead the way. "You're not going to go after Hayley?"
"Right now? No. It would be stupid and it is also exactly what she expects from me. She'll expect all of my emotions to push me to act. If we're going to pull this off, I'm going to have to outsmart her."