Chapter Two
After CRIME's Fall
All across the world, breaking news announcements had only one major headline to report. "Representatives of EAGLE have officially confirmed that the terrorist organization CRIME has fallen after a year-long struggle," one news anchor reported. "Earlier today, a coalition of both Power Ranger teams and EAGLE moved on CRIME's island headquarters, taking the group known as the Crime Big Four into custody and shutting down their operations. None of the Power Rangers were available for comment, but I'm sure they, like us, are relieved to know it's finally over."
"Your coffee, sir," a waitress said as the news report played from the corner behind her.
"Why, thank you, my darling," her patron said in a smooth, silky voice. He accepted the cup, his arm clothed in a pure white suit, a rainbow dress shirt sticking out slightly underneath. Benito Santori raised the drink to his lips, taking a sip as he turned his attention back to the TV. He smiled slightly. "Good for them," he said.
Back at EAGLE Headquarters, the JAKQ team weren't particularly focused on their victory. The four rangers sat together in a waiting room outside the base's medical bay, their support team Yoselin Jimenez and Princess Higueras sitting with them, their EAGLE liaison Commander Roberts standing against the wall. They all looked up as a doctor stepped out.
"What's going on?" Gordon asked. "Is she alright?"
"Agent Tennyson is currently stable," the doctor said. "She's resting now. You'll be able to go in and see her in a few minutes."
A collective sigh of relief swept through the room. "So, you got all the shrapnel out?" Commander Roberts asked. "She'll be back on her feet in no time?"
The doctor bit her lower lip. "Not exactly," she said. She looked around at them all and looked down. "The damage to her spinal cord was severe. We did everything we could, but she may never walk again."
Back in her hospital room, Agent Ten opened her eyes to see her team file in. "Hey, beautiful," Benton said with a gentle smile, stepping up and giving her hand a gentle squeeze. "How are you doing?"
"I'm good," she said, grasping Karen's hand as the pink ranger said down beside her. "The hole in my stomach stopped bleeding." She looked around at them all. "They told you?"
Gordon nodded, keeping his arms crossed. "They did."
"Is there anything they can do?" Karen asked.
Ten shrugged. "There's options. They might work. They might not. They're going to see how I heal up first."
"What about nanites?" Rio asked. "Like the ones inside us. Those brought Benton back from the dead, and me almost from death."
"Our scientists have been trying to recreate the doctor's formula," Commander Roberts said. "But without him, and no more available samples, we've been unable to reproduce an effective serum."
"One of my options is a nanite treatment," Ten said. "It's not as good as Kuchar's. And I'll have to be reinjected with them every month."
Benton looked back at her. Ten looked up at him, putting on what he could tell was a fake smile, and shrugged.
"How's Agent Ten?" Joshua asked.
He and his wife Katie stood as Gordon and Karen stepped into the interrogation center. Both Gordon and Karen looked rather less than relieved. "She's alive," Karen said. "Doctors said she's paralyzed from the waist down. They're deciding on her options now."
"How's she taking it?"
Karen shrugged. "She's putting on a brave face, but I can tell she's scared."
Gordon nodded at the heavy steel doors nearby. "They through there?" he asked.
"Yeah," Katie said. "Come on in."
She led them through into the next room, where General Kenpachi stood watching through a one-way mirror. Four separate cells on the other side held four people in orange jumpsuits, every single one unrecognizable without their over-the-top weapons and gear. "Well, they don't look so impressive anymore," Gordon said.
"Big guy on the left is Baron Iron Mask," General Kenpachi said. "Apparently chased our blue ranger Sean Cassidy across most of Eastern Europe when he first went on the run. Turns out, he was a postman from Vienna before signing up for the Black Cross. Guy next to him was General Sahara. He was a failed political candidate out in Nairobi. Our team actually fought him a few times during the war."
Joshua raised an eyebrow at him.
"Called himself the Lion Mask back then," Kenpachi explained. "Next is Captain UFO."
"The creeper," Karen said.
"He was a Venezuelan doctor stripped of his license for illegal human experimentation. He only lasted as a Mask two years until an embarrassing incident involving a lizardman of some kind. This according to his own account, anyway. Finally, we have the Hell Boxer, originally from China, and, as it turns out, never a professional boxer."
The general held out a pad showing an old video of him as a crazed boxing fan trying to launch himself into the ring during a match. "He worked directly with General Hallstrom while he was first designing the androids that would become Devil Machines."
Katie shook her head. "The Fuhrer had a knack for finding the crazies everywhere, didn't he?" she said.
"Mmhmm," everyone else around the room said in unison.
"So, what now?" Gordon asked.
General Kenpachi shrugged. "Well, we've gotten all the information out of them we can," he said. "They'll be transferred from here to a high security prison, and then they'll be the government's problem. After that, I suppose you can all go back to your lives and enjoy what I hope can be a lasting peace for once."
He tipped his hat to them, revealing his bald spot. "It has been a pleasure working with you all one last time."
"Same to you, General," Joshua said. He grasped the general's hand and shook, as did Katie.
Once back out in the corridor, heading out to the commons area, Gordon nudged his fellow red ranger. "So," he said. "How's that new house treating the both of you?"
Joshua and Katie locked eyes, both smiling a slightly naughty smile. "Oh, it's great," Joshua said, his ears turning a little red. "What about you two? Both of you still living in apartments in JAKQ HQ?"
Both Gordon and Karen looked a little awkward at the question. "More or less," Karen said. "I found an apartment outside that I might move into, but I'm . . . not sure yet."
Her eyes shifted just for a second as she paused in Gordon's direction. Joshua caught the glance but didn't say anything.
"I'm still just there," Gordon said. "I'd rather be immediately available for action if anything happens."
"But with CRIME down," Katie said. "You might not need to be on call anymore. You might be able to start moving on with life outside of ranger work."
Gordon seemed to pause for a second. "Yeah," he said, a strange look crossing his face. "Moving on."
Both Joshua and Katie noticed the look on his face and glanced at each other. They reached the commons area just then, so decided to shelve the conversation for later, pushing open the door to find Dayton, Peggy, and Sean lounging on a set of couches, having a lively discussion with Rio, Yoselin, and Princess.
"So, I was thinking we order about forty pizzas," Dayton was saying. "Then put on some music. Sean's got a whole set of old CDs—"
"CDs?" Rio said, looking offended. "This is not an occasion for CDs. Look, Princess and I have a couple of friends back in Vegas. I think we can get a couple of them out here on short notice."
"What's this all about?" Joshua asked, cutting them off.
"Oh, hey!" Dayton said, his face lighting up as the four walked in. "We were just making plans for a party tonight."
"A party?" Gordon asked.
"Well, yeah. We just took down our second terrorist cabal. I'd say that's cause for a celebration, wouldn't you?"
The four considered, looking at each other. Joshua shrugged. "I don't see why not," he said, sliding down onto the couch beside Dayton.
"Okay," Peggy said. "But we've got to get better food in than just pizza."
"Please," Karen said, sitting down beside Princess. "There's nothing better than pizza."
Across the base, Benton sat alone in an old lab once used by Doctor Kuchar. He blew out a long, frustrated breath, his head resting on the table as he flipped aimlessly through the doctor's old notes. In the corner of his eye, the Shine floated inside a glass canister, faintly glowing.
"Come on, Doc," he said, running his fingers through his hair. "Give me some of your brains."
His mind kept going back to Agent Ten in that hospital bed, the forced smile on her face, the words "never walk again" bouncing around in his head. It didn't seem fair. By all rights, he should be dead, at the bottom of the ocean. But here he was, alive and walking around like nothing had ever happened. Meanwhile, now, because one person had to up and die, they couldn't even repair one single spinal cord properly. It wasn't right.
"Come on, dang it!" he shouted in frustration, tossing a bunch of notes on the floor and putting his head in his hands. He let out another long breath, shaking his head and trying to focus.
A faint whistling met his ear. He looked up, unsure where it was coming from. He rubbed his ear with his pinky, but nothing changed. He looked around, looking for the source. As he did so, his eyes passed over a section of the notes he'd tossed. He stopped.
He focused on a small section in the middle of the page he'd been particularly frustrated by, a section of calculations that felt incomplete, like there was something missing but he couldn't figure out what it was.
The whistling got slightly louder. A faint memory triggered in the back of his mind. Something vaguely familiar about those calculations.
He got up and crossed to some old cabinets. He dug through it, pulling out some files containing notes on the Shine, back when it had been inside Rio after it was first discovered. He scanned through the notes, finding a passage of data on the attributes of the Shine's energy and how it functioned.
"Wait a minute," he said, carrying the page of notes over to the equation page he'd been looking at, holding up the two pages together and comparing them. His mind started to race, faster and faster, as he ran through calculations in his head. All the while, the whistling grew louder and louder, making it hard to think. He shook his head, forcing himself to focus and pushing through until he was certain what he was seeing was correct.
He looked up at the Shine, still floating in its capsule, still glowing faintly, looking almost . . . harmless. Innocent. "Could it be possible?" Benton said, reaching out his hand to touch it.
"Um, whatcha doing?"
Benton jumped and turned to find his fellow green ranger standing in the doorway. "Kenny!" he shouted, shaking his head and fiddling with the papers in his hands, feeling guilty but unsure what about. He dropped them to his side and put on a smile. "Wh-what's going on?"
"Our teams are planning a party later. I figured I'd find you here."
"Party?" Benton asked.
"Yeah, you know. Since we beat CRIME?"
"Oh." Benton looked down. "Right. Yeah. That sounds great. Sounds fun."
Kenny stepped into the lab, side-eyeing the glowing orb in the capsule. "What were you doing?" he asked. "It looked like you were about to touch that thing."
"Oh." Benton glanced at the Shine. "Right. Yeah. I was. Um." He looked at the papers in his hands and hung his head. "I was trying to complete Doctor Kuchar's work. You know, so we could possibly use it for Ten."
Kenny raised an eyebrow. "With the Shine?"
"No," Benton said quickly. "Well, maybe. I mean—"
He held up the two note pages in his hands. "I realized that the Shine's properties filled in some of the flaws and errors in Kuchar's notes. So, in a way, I think, I might be able to."
Kenny crossed his arms, looking suspicious at the orb. "Didn't CRIME use that thing to create an evil AI?"
"Well, yes. Technically. But, like, they were also trying to create an evil AI. I'm not doing that. I'm just using it to complete my friend's life's work that he never got to see truly used in the way he wanted it to be, and I'm going to use it to help one of my other friends, in the exact way Kuchar wanted the technology used in the first place."
He looked up at Kenny, pleading in his eyes. "I've got to at least try, right? For him? For her? For them?"
Kenny stared at his friend for a second, looking uncertain. He glanced at the Shine, then back at Benton. He ran his hand through his long hair and let out a breath. "Yeah, I guess." He held up his morpher. "But be careful. Anything goes wrong and I destroy the entire lab with my boomerang. Deal?"
"Deal!"
Benton rushed around, hanging up the two note papers and gathering up everything he thought he'd need. All the while, the strange whistling maintained a steady hum in their ears, and the Shine floated patiently in its tube. Watching. Waiting.