It was a lovely afternoon when they got the call. Eric reported to the loading bay where the Guardians kept their black SUV’s with mixed feelings. He was glad to finally be going into action again, it was a distinct improvement over sitting around in idle waiting. It had been too long, for the last two months Ransik and his buddies had been quiet. It had gotten to the point that Eric had gotten worried that Collins would decide the Guardians were no longer necessary.
But now, they had gotten an urgent summons to one of the local parks. Another suspected mutant attack. Perhaps it might give him a chance to show what he could do, to impress Collins at last into giving him command. Steve Miller was still their temporary leader, but no one thought he would be there permanently. Now the rumor was that someone would be hired from outside, someone they didn’t know or trust, someone who might not be qualified, who had done nothing to deserve the position he would get.
A lot like Wes Collins… Eric spent a few moments wondering if the Rangers would show up today, if he would run into Wes again. Their encounter at Commander Porter’s funeral all those weeks ago had left him both angry and disturbed. And feeling a little guilty… although he told himself there was no reason. Mr. Collins had every right to know what his son was doing. And if telling him would help Eric, so much the better. Not that it had done him any good so far.
And not that Wes deserved to be a Ranger anyway. Not for the first time, Eric wondered exactly how he had managed that. Not through ability or hard work, certainly. It must have been luck. Wes had always been a lucky bastard, born into money and privilege, good health, good looks, that easy charm that had made everyone at school like him. And what had Eric been born to? He had health and looks, true, but he had sure missed out on the rest of it, even on parents who gave a shit about him… He had always had to look out for himself, no one else had ever cared, why should he give a rat’s ass about Mr. Wesley Collins or any of his Ranger friends…
Shaken out of his thoughts, Eric glanced around as the line of cars skidded to a stop just outside Hillside Park. He climbed out with the others, and formed a line, unable to help staring into the park.
Gently rolling hills, carefully kept lawns, groves of trees, an outdoor café, small round tables, chairs… and people. Not strolling along the pathways or sitting enjoying a snack. Bodies lying scattered around the park, among the tables. Others bending over them, or running from whatever invisible attacker had done this, fear on every face he could see.
“Spread out!” Miller shouted from his position in front of the line of Guardians. “Help any victims you can, and find out what happened here!”
Eric headed for the nearest victim he saw, a young man huddled miserably on the ground just outside the café. He bent over him, reaching out until he saw them. Irregular bluish blotches on the man’s skin, seeming to deepen in color as he looked. Eric pulled his hand back.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “What did this?”
“Don’t know…” The young man’s voice was weak and shaking with fear. “Something scratched me, and then I started feeling sick…” He turned his head, indicating a reddish mark on his neck.
“Did you see what it was?”
“No… saw something moving, but it was too fast… help me…”
“Hang in there. We’ll get you to a hospital. You’ll be fine.” Eric smiled as reassuringly as he could, and got to his feet. Looking around, he saw other Guardians, exchanging confused and frightened glances.
“Venomark.”
“What’s that?” Wes looked up from the television at Alex’s profile. They were all standing or sitting in the ‘living room’ of the clock tower, watching a news report. His eyes were drawn back to the screen, which showed people, dozens of them, sick and disfigured with strange bluish marks, being loaded into ambulances at Hillside Park.
“Not what. Who.” For once the subtle hostility was gone from Alex’s voice as he answered, showing how distracted he was. For the last two months, after Alex had moved in with them, the relationship between him and Wes had been strained at best. Wes wasn’t sure whether to be sorry or glad that things were almost as bad between Alex and Jen. In fact, the general atmosphere in their little ‘family’ had become distinctly uncomfortable. And he knew exactly who to blame.
Their inactivity hadn’t helped. Ransik, Frax, Conwing, and even Nadira seemed to have disappeared. They were stuck with waiting, not knowing what to expect, trying to cope with tension on top of boredom, on top of their personal conflicts.
Alex went on. “Venomark is a mutant. He was being kept in miniaturized cryogenic containment in the prison ship Ransik took when he escaped. Ransik must have taken him along and set him loose, although I can’t imagine why. Venomark was never one of his followers.”
“Venomark’s one of the worst of them. Genetically designed to be a living biological weapon. He’s crazy,” Lucas said, his tone bitter. “He’ll attack anyone, human or mutant. Ransik must be just as crazy, to let him out.”
“What did he do to those people?”
Jen answered him. “His body manufactures a substance that acts both like a disease and a poison. It isn’t transmitted from person to person, only directly from him. He has tiny claws or barbs in his fingers, and needle-sharp teeth. All he has to do is touch a person, barely scratch their skin, and they’ll get sick. Like that.” She nodded at the television. “And it’s worse if he bites you. He’s also extremely fast. Most of those people probably didn’t even see him.”
“What’s going to happen to them?”
They all seemed to avoid his eyes, as Alex said softly, “Without treatment, they’ll die.”
“What? There must be something we can do!”
“There’s an antidote. A serum.” Alex looked around at all of them. “We knew Venomark would be here, and I brought the serum with me. Enough for all of us.”
“The serum? I’m surprised you could find any,” Trip said.
“Yes, it’s rare, but Time Force has a small supply.” Alex looked at Wes again, and to his surprise, continued the explanation. “The serum was invented by a doctor. Dr. Louis Fericks.”
It was strange, finding one of them here. Nadira was sure it hadn’t been there before, she would have seen. It was as if someone had left it there deliberately, for them to find. She picked it up and went in search of her father, finding him in the main control room, staring at the monitor he had adjusted to pick up television. Without even glancing at the screen, she held out her hand.
“What’s this doing here, Daddy?”
“Umm?” He didn’t even look.
Wondering what could be so fascinating, she faced the screen. It was a news show. Lots of humans swarming around, no surprise there. But wait… there was something familiar about the bluish marks on their skins…
“Where did you find that?” Ransik’s voice demanded. He was looking at the object in her hand. A cryogenic containment unit, one of the small, jar-like containers Time Force used to shrink prisoners and keep them in suspended animation, this one marked with a warning sign.
“It was in your study, Daddy. Someone must have dropped it…” She stopped at the expression on his face.
“Someone…” he said softly. “Someone who’s brought my greatest enemy here… and now he’s set him free, to mock me!”
“Daddy?”
“Venomark.” His face was darkened with rage, so intense it frightened her.
“Who?”
“Venomark and I go way back… since before you were born. When I was alone and abandoned, living on the street, he attacked me, for no reason. Bit me, with those poisonous fangs.” Ransik raised a hand to the disfigured half of his face. “I still bear the mark of that bite. He has some sort of acid in his mouth, it created deep scars, and medical treatment to remove them doesn’t work on my mutant metabolism. I would have died, if not for a human doctor…”
“Dr. Fericks sympathized with mutants. And he built robots. People said he liked them better than humans. He originally developed the serum to control the side effects of certain mutation-inducing drugs. But it also cured Venomark’s victims.” Alex sighed. “He was a great man. But he had a weakness where mutants were concerned.”
“What do you mean?” Wes asked.
“He tried too hard to help them. Maybe that’s what destroyed him in the end.”
Ransik’s face was distant as he went on. “His name was Louis Fericks. He found me, dying in an alleyway, in terrible pain. Took me to his laboratory, and gave me the serum he had developed. It cured me. But only temporarily.”
His eyes focused again on Nadira’s face as he went on. “He explained that my body reacted differently to the poison than a human’s does. The cure was not permanent. The sickness would come back, and I would have to keep taking that serum for the rest of my life. The rest of my life, I would be shackled to those little blue vials…
“But that wasn’t all the good doctor was up to in that laboratory. He built robots, too. Remarkably useful, human-like robots. He showed them to me. We talked. He claimed that he considered humans, mutants, and robots all to be equal, all the same.” Ransik smiled ferociously. “What a fool.”
“What happened then, Daddy?”
“I knew I could use his robots. He was glad to show me the specifications, all his engineering records. I took them. And all the serum he had stored. He tried to fight, but he was no match for me.”
“But, Daddy,” Nadira said very softly. “He helped you…”
Ransik seemed not to have heard, his eyes drifting back to the monitor screen. “I took everything I could use, set his laboratory on fire, and left him there.”
“Dr. Fericks disappeared. It was maybe twenty years ago. His lab was burned down, the body was never found, but he must have died in the fire; he was never seen again.”
“He was a fool to trust mutants the way he did. One of them probably killed him,” Jen said, her voice as bitter as Wes had ever heard it.
“Not all mutants are bad,” Trip protested.
Jen gave him a quick and perhaps guilty glance. “I know, Trip. Katie. But some are. Just like some humans are bad. Ransik certainly is, and Venomark.”
Wes glanced at the television again. “We have to do something. Is there any way to make more of that serum?”
“Well… I suppose it could be synthesized, even with present-day technology. But I can’t allow it,” Alex responded.
“Why the hell not?”
“That serum has other applications. In the long run, it’s dangerous. Too risky to let anyone in this time have access to it.”
“So you’re just going to let all those people die?” Wes glared at him, his fists clenching. “What kind of cold-hearted-”
“Wes, please,” Jen interrupted. “Alex, I think Wes is right. We have to risk it.”
“It’s my decision, Jennifer. And I say we can’t interfere with the timeline-”
This time it was Katie who interrupted. “Alex, none of those people were meant to die. All of this, Venomark’s attack, is part of Ransik’s interference with history. Maybe the death of one of those people, or all of them, is what could prevent Time Force from existing! Don’t you see; we can’t not save them. That’s the greater risk.”
Seeing Alex hesitate, Wes jumped in. “I can take the serum to Bio-Lab. Get my Dad to make enough to save everyone, and then… I’ll ask him to destroy the rest.”
“How do we know he’ll do it?”
“I -- I don’t know, I’ll get him to somehow. It doesn’t matter, Katie’s right, we have to help those people!”
Alex nodded abruptly. “All right.” He turned, moved away, and kept talking as he began to search through the supplies he had brought from his ship. “I’ll give you a container of the serum. And a printout with the procedure for making it. Take them, get started, meanwhile we’ll go to the park where Venomark was last seen. If he’s still there, we’ll find him. Put a stop to this, right now. And no one needs to die…”
All of them looked relieved, Wes saw with a quick glance. And then Alex was holding out a small plastic tube of bright blue liquid and a folded computer printout. Wes took them, and shot a grin at his double, seeing him return it with a brief, restrained smile as he turned to run for the stairs.
Ransik held up a small tube of blue liquid, gazing at it for a moment, smiling, but not in a friendly way, as he tucked it into his belt and glanced at Nadira. “I’ve waited years for the chance to repay Venomark for what he did to me,” he said with quiet intensity. “Now, it’s time to settle our account.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Find him. And when I do… With the serum, I’m safe from him. But he will not be safe from me!”
“Daddy, wait! Take Conwing with you…”
“This is between me and that diseased lunatic! No one will interfere!”
Nadira watched him go, biting her lip fearfully. She didn’t like the idea of disobeying, but she was frightened for him... After only a moment’s hesitation, she was running to find Conwing.
“I need to see my father. Now.”
“Wes…” The secretary at the desk in front of Alan Collins’ office hesitated. “I’m sorry, but he’s in a meeting. We have an emergency, you know.”
“I know that! That’s why I’m here!” Wes took a deep breath. He had run into nothing but obstacles since he got here, one person after another informing him that he had no business in Bio-Lab anymore. They had slowed him down, but they hadn’t stopped him.
He tried a big smile, the smile that had usually gotten him what he wanted, especially from women… “Please, I really need to talk to him.”
“Well…” She was already reaching for the phone. After a few soft murmurs, she put it down. “Okay, go on in.”
“Thanks.” He went to the door, pausing just for a moment before opening it, memories flooding back, an unexpected nostalgia coming over him.
He had come to Bio-Lab as soon as he got his business degree. Five years here, five years of working in a job he didn’t really like, that he now felt he wasn’t suited for. Five years of doing what was expected of him, instead of what he wanted to do. But it hadn’t been all bad. How many times had he walked into this office before, smiling, seeing his father’s face brighten at the sight of him?
But not today. Collins was sitting at his desk, looking up, his face betraying a complex of emotions; tension, anger, curiosity, maybe even happiness as a hint of a smile appeared and vanished. Wes realized this was the first time they had seen each other in months; the last time had been at Commander Porter’s funeral. When his father had offered him another job… when they had argued again...
“Would you excuse, us, please,” Collins said now to the two men standing in front of the desk. With quick nods and glances at Wes, they collected a few piles of paper and left.
They stared at each other until Wes broke the silence. “Dad, I need your help.”
“I don’t see you for months, and now you come here looking for help?” He watched coldly as Wes tried to find an answer. “Well, what do you want? Money?”
“No! The city’s being attacked. People are sick, dying.”
“I know that. The Guardians are trying to help.”
“This can cure them.” Wes pulled the vial and the papers he had brought out of his pocket, and set them down.
Collins stared at them for a moment, then up at Wes’s face. “Where did you get this?”
“Doesn’t matter. What matters is helping those people. Bio-Lab is the only place that can make enough of this in time.”
His father’s blue eyes were boring into him again. “You’re asking me to take this stuff, spend company time and money on it, and hand it out to the people of this city, without knowing where it came from or how you got it?”
Wes returned his gaze steadily. “I know this is safe. I know it will work. This serum is the only chance all those people have. I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you any more.” As they continued to stare at each other he added, “I hope someday I can explain everything. But for now, you’ll just have to trust me.”
Another moment, his father searching his face as Wes held his breath. And then Collins said softly. “Okay. Son.”