Silver Hills was a perfectly normal city on the California coast until the strangers appeared. It was not a big city, and it could be called a company town, since a high percentage of the jobs there involved working for Bio-Lab and a large part of the business conducted concerned Bio-Lab. It had perfectly normal people, who went about their lives in the normal way. It was a quiet, cool, sunny day in early spring 2001. But that was about to change.

They walked into the town’s central outdoor mall, four of them, shoulder to shoulder, staring at the buildings, the cars, the shops, and the people as if they were from the most foreign of foreign places. They seemed rather strange themselves, all dressed in black and white one-piece uniforms with triangular insignia on the sleeves and stylized starbursts on the backs, and with hip holsters containing small weapons. Each of them wore an oval device on his or her left wrist, like a very large watch. They were all in their twenties, and good-looking enough to have attracted attention even without the uniforms.

They looked around like tourists for several minutes, pacing up and down the walkways, circling the central fountain and pausing to listen to the music drifting from some of the stores. Finally they stopped and faced each other in a tight four-person circle. A young woman with wavy brown hair pulled back in a disciplined ponytail and wearing a determined expression spoke first.

“They’ve got to be around here somewhere. We’d better split up. Lucas, take the north side.” A tall Asian man nodded.

“Katie, the west side.” A woman, very tall, with brown skin and gray eyes, acknowledged.

“Trip, you go east.” This was to the second man, also Asian. He looked a little younger than the others when you got past the distraction of his startling bright green hair.

“I’ll take south. Use your scanners.” Each of them took out what seemed to be ordinary sunglasses from the pockets of their uniforms, put them on and touched a control on the side of the frames. “If you find anything, call for help. Don’t try to take any of them on alone.”

“Right, Jen. We’ll find them,” Lucas answered. They started off in their assigned directions, attracting some curious glances as they went.

Minutes later Jen was pacing along the sidewalk a block away, intently watching the display of data in the lenses of her scanner-glasses. She stopped, startled, when her hip collided with something hard. Looking down, she saw that she had walked into the helmeted head of a young man on a motorcycle as he bent over to pick up something on the ground. She had been too focused on her task to notice him.

“Excuse me!” she said.

“Sorry ‘bout that,” he replied casually. She glanced back as she walked away. Something about him had reminded her... but she must be imagining it. And there was no time for memories.

Her wrist device beeped softly, interrupting her thoughts. Turning away from the other people in the area, she pressed a tiny button on it, and a three-dimensional image of the green-haired young man appeared, floating just above it. His voice came from the device.

“Jen! It’s Nadira and a bunch of cyclobots. It looks like she’s robbed a store, near that big fountain we passed.”

Jen answered, “I’ll be right there.” She dashed back the way she had come, dodging through the groups of shoppers. As soon as she was in view of the fountain, she saw a crowd of frightened people milling in the walkways, most of them running away, out of the mall. She recognized the cause of the disturbance instantly.

With an angry jerk Jen pulled off her scanner-glasses and put them away. She didn’t need a DNA scanner to know her enemy now. A pretty, very young woman with long, bright pink hair, dressed in black leather, trotted through the confusion. She was skipping, really, with a joyful attitude. Her slender wrists were covered with expensive-looking jewelry, which Jen knew was certainly stolen. A group of strange creatures surrounded her, humanoid but with silvery metallic bodies and round helmet-like heads with no faces. A few of them wore holstered blasters. They viciously attacked anyone who happened to come near the pink-haired woman, driving them away.

A moment later Jen’s companions were running to meet her. The pink-haired woman and her creatures were retreating through the mall toward the main road. Together Jen and her friends raced to head them off and confront them. When they appeared in her path the woman stopped, staring at them in disbelief.

Jen stepped closer. “Time Force,” she said, holding up a badge displaying the same triangular emblem as on their uniforms. “You’re under arrest, Nadira.”

“What are you doing here?” Nadira asked indignantly.

“We followed you. And we’re taking you back.”

“Who’s going to make me? You?” Nadira scoffed with a laugh.

“You’re up against the Time Force Rangers now!” Jen said. She nodded to the others. In unison, they held up the devices on their wrists and tapped them. Nadira’s eyes widened in alarm. But nothing happened. They tried again, looking at each other in dismay.

“What’s wrong? Why don’t they work?” Lucas cried.

“I don’t know!” Jen responded.

Nadira laughed again. “That was so impressive! Cyclobots... get them!” Her robotic drones charged, and Jen and the others were immediately fighting for their lives. They showed impressive hand-to-hand combat skills, and held their own against the odds, with the help of their small blasters. But the cyclobots outnumbered them, and they soon were separated, each under attack by two or three of them.

Jen kicked one of the robots attacking her in its metallic midsection, ducked past the other, and ran at Nadira, who fled, laughing, into an adjoining dining courtyard dotted with small tables. There she turned to face her pursuer, and the two circled for a moment before Jen hit her with a kick. Nadira blocked it and came back with a kick of her own. She was considerably stronger and faster than she looked. After a brief struggle she knocked Jen over a table.

Two cyclobots moved in to grab Jen’s arms. Nadira stepped back as she struggled. They heard sirens rapidly approaching. “It’s been fun, but I have to run,” Nadira said. “Cyclobots, finish her off!” She touched a control on her belt, and disappeared into nothingness in a twinkling of light.

The cyclobots threw Jen against a wall. One of them drew a blaster and aimed it at her. She glared at them defiantly, feeling more anger than fear.

Suddenly there was the roar of an engine, and a motorcycle sped into the courtyard and at the cyclobots, hitting one of them. Jen recognized the same young man she had bumped into earlier as he jumped off and faced the other robot, showing some combat skills of his own when he drove it back with several kicks before knocking it spinning to the floor. Then he turned back to the first as Jen shot it with her blaster. Both cyclobots lay twitching and sparking.

The man walked over to Jen, asking, “Are you all right? What was that all about?” He removed his helmet, revealing a boyish, attractive face that fell naturally into a smile, blue eyes, and dark blond hair. Then he stopped, eyes wide with surprise at the expression on her face.

Jen stared at him, reeling with shock, disorientation, and renewed grief, feeling her eyes start to fill with tears. For a brief moment she wondered if she had gone insane, if her mind had betrayed her by summoning up the face she most longed to see. She brought up trembling hands to cover her mouth.

“What’s wrong?” The man smiled uncertainly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

The others came racing in, providing Jen with a much-needed distraction. Katie grabbed her shoulders, anxiously asking, “Are you okay?” She glanced at the man, and gasped aloud, looking almost as shocked as Jen felt. Beside her, Trip looked at him and gaped open-mouthed. Lucas stared in astonishment.

“Unbelievable!” Lucas said.

“He looks just like Alex!” Katie exclaimed.

“Wow! Who are you?” Trip asked.

“My name’s Wes Collins. What’s going on? Who’s Alex?”

Jen had recovered enough self-control to hastily take over. “Nobody. Nothing. Thanks for helping but I’m fine now.”

Dismissed, the young man grinned at them with a shrug. “Okay. It’s been a blast.” He walked back to his motorcycle and left with a casual wave. The small group of friends watched as he drove off.

“Let’s go,” Jen said as calmly as she could. She caught the others exchanging a concerned look before they followed her.

Piles of scorched, scattered rubble, the remains of some large machine, disfigured the white sand of a deserted beach outside Silver Hills. Jen, Lucas, Katie, and Trip searched through it, Katie lifting the heavier pieces with unnatural strength. They had a small pile of equipment collected, near five odd-looking motorcycles. Trip and Katie were excited to find a case, undamaged, with what appeared to be five toy airplanes inside. But otherwise, their movements showed both exhaustion and discouragement. Jen avoided the others and spent part of her time simply staring out to sea. She saw her friends watching sympathetically but none of them approached her.

As dusk fell they moved to the shelter of an empty lifeguard station and shared the few edible supplies they had salvaged. It was a quiet and depressing meal.

“We’ve got a communicator that doesn’t work, morphers that don’t work, a medical unit, some tools, our vectorcycles, and you’ve found the flyers -- which we can’t use without the morphers,” Jen said with a sigh. “We’ll have to see if we can find anything else.”

Trip fiddled with a large and beautifully designed mechanical owl he had carried in. After some time, he smiled as the owl seemed to come to life, blinking at them. “Hey, I got Circuit working. At least now we have a computer,” he called to the others.

“Great. Find out why these morphers aren’t working.”

The ‘owl’ promptly answered her aloud, “The four Chronomorphers you are wearing are linked to the Red Ranger’s morpher. They must be activated together the first time they are used.”

“But the red morpher is locked to Alex’s DNA.” Trip glanced at Jen, then quickly away. “And the equipment to unlock it was destroyed with the ship. We’d need to find someone with the same DNA.” Silence fell for a few moments.

“What about that guy on the motorcycle?” Katie asked. “You saw how much he looks like Alex.”

“Just because he looks like Alex doesn’t mean he has the same genetic code,” Jen said curtly.

“Alex’s family came from around here. They could be related. But it still wouldn’t be a genetic match,” Lucas said.

“It might be good enough!” Trip exclaimed. “I can make some adjustments to the morpher with these tools. I can’t release the DNA lock, but I think I can widen the parameters and focus it on the genes for appearance, so that the morpher might accept a relative of Alex’s. Especially one who looks like him.”

Jen stared grimly at the floor, feeling a reluctance she knew was not entirely rational. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. That guy may look like Alex, but who knows what he’s really like? And I don’t like involving a local civilian.”

Lucas replied gently, “It’s our only chance, Jen. And his world is in danger almost as much as ours.” After a moment he continued, “One of us can talk to him if you don’t want to.”

“No. I’ll do it. It’s my responsibility,” Jen said with a sigh. “What did he say his name is?”