"We have a problem." Kristet dropped a reader onto the kitchen counter and pulled up a stool on the other side. Zhane lifted his head just long enough to assess her expression before turning his attention back to the boy banging on the countertop beside him.

"Kae, don't take any lessons from this woman about how to greet a person first thing in the morning," Zhane told him. His tone was light, and he saw the amusedly exasperated look she gave him out of the corner of his eye. "We have enough people who don't know how to say 'good morning' around here," he added with mock-regret.

Kae was swinging his arms unconcernedly and Zhane rescued a plastic juice cup before it could tumble to the floor along with the various other utensils Kae had already put there. Nothing particularly dangerous about the occasional misplaced spoon, but he didn't feel like cleaning up spilled juice right now. Especially when the kid needed all the vitamins he could get.

"Zhane!" Andros' voice came from the exercise mats, and he sounded winded enough to make Zhane smirk. The rest of them knew better than to challenge Astrea for the sheer joy of it. Andros couldn't seem to resist. "I could use a little help here!"

"See what I mean?" Zhane asked Kae rhetorically. "There's no courtesy around here. A little politeness would go a long way."

He glanced over at the mats again, just in time to watch Andros go down hard in the face of Astrea's relentless attack. Astrea wasn't big on sparring, but she knew how to fight and she wasn't above practicing some of her more lethal skills on her teammates. She usually had the grace to wait until they were morphed, of course. But Zhane knew as well as anyone that Andros could provoke a person beyond all reason.

"I have that on camera," Kristet called in the general direction of the workout area.

"Yeah?" Andros rolled to his feet, holding his hands out in a gesture clearly meant to indicate his surrender. Astrea's staff vanished into violet sparkles as she folded her arms. It was hard to tell whether she was appeased or not, and Andros was equally inscrutable right now. Zhane deliberately ignored him as he left the mats and headed in the direction of the kitchen, hoping that fewer eyes might keep him from responding too sharply to Kristet.

Andros leaned on the counter beside their public relations agent. He leaned over to grab some of the fruit Zhane had been cutting up for Kae and remarked, "Well, I have you on payroll." He grinned at Kristet and popped the fruit into his mouth before he straightened up. "Thanks for the help, Zhane," he added, apparently as an afterthought.

"You know how much I like throwing myself into fights I didn't start," Zhane drawled, surprised and more than a little amused by Andros' relaxed swagger. He was in a good mood this morning.

"Speaking of which," Kristet said firmly. "I mentioned that there's a problem. Abersiia."

The word meant nothing to Zhane, but he saw Andros frown. "Where?"

"Keyota." Kristet gave the Red Ranger a meaningful glance that puzzled Zhane. "Outbreaks are centered in the southeastern part of the district. There have been cases reported in Chessa Brook, too. And among the military personnel on RS-42."

All places the Rangers went regularly, Zhane noted. But outbreaks? Outbreaks of what? He looked over at Astrea as she joined them, tugging her hair out of its ponytail as she commandeered the last stool on the outside of the counter. "What's going on?" she wanted to know.

"What's abersiia?" Zhane asked, looking from her to Andros and back again with a small shrug to indicate that he had no more idea than she did.

Astrea lifted one shoulder in return, starting to shake her head--and then she stopped. With a sharp look in Andros' direction, she interrupted him just as he started to answer. "The virus Kae came here with?"

Zhane frowned, looking to Andros for confirmation. Kae had been infected with something, Astrea had told him that when she first introduced them to each other. But DECA had treated him immediately and as far as Zhane knew he had been cured within hours. He had never even learned the name of whatever contagion the boy carried.

"Yeah." With one word, Andros' expression went from pensive to grim. "We did this."

"Now, wait a minute." Zhane moved Kae's juice out of the way of the plate he'd finally finished, pushing it within easy reach of the boy's impatient fingers. He didn't eat nearly enough, but what he did eat he ate fast and messily. "That's ridiculous. Kae hasn't left the hangar, and DECA vaccinated each of us as we came back."

"It's true," Kristet agreed. "I don't know how it's possible. No one here is sick--even I got the vaccine, and Kae hadn't been contagious for hours by the time I got here. But the timing seems too suspicious to be coincidence."

"The last time I remember hearing anything about abersiia, I was in school." Ty had raised his voice enough that it carried easily from the table where he had been keeping one eye on the morning news and apparently one ear on their conversation. "Primary school."

Kristet was nodding. "I did some research. There hasn't been an outbreak since before the invasion. They vaccinated most of the school-age children back then, but the virus is so easy to eliminate that the effort was a one-time deal."

"If it's so easy to treat, what's the problem?" Zhane wanted to know. "Send everyone to the nearest health center and cure them. Problem solved."

"Two problems," Kristet countered. "One, some people wouldn't admit they're sick if their lives depended on it--and they might. The early symptoms are pretty innocuous. They won't send anyone but the hypochondriacs scrambling for a cure, and by the time people realize they need help they may not be able to get it on their own."

"That's why it was so perfect," Astrea said softly. She might have been talking to herself, but she looked up at the silence that followed her words. "The slave traders," she clarified. "We thought maybe they were using Kae's blood to make a vaccine they could sell to infected areas."

Zhane got it before she could finish. "The symptoms are so vague that they could be anything," he guessed.

Astrea nodded, but her gaze flicked to Kristet as though seeking confirmation. "Tell someone their neighbor is sick and they don't need much proof before they're willing to pay for a vaccine," she said.

"What's the second problem?" Andros asked, his eyes on Kristet as well. "You said there were two."

Kristet gave him an apologetic look. "It didn't take me long to notice where the outbreaks are occurring," she pointed out. "The public's going to connect it to the Rangers soon, if they're not doing it already."

"But it wasn't us," Zhane protested. Kae was squirming, obviously bored with being on the counter. Since he'd finished off most of what was on his plate, Zhane gave his fingers a token swipe with the dish towel before swinging him down to the floor. "Stay out of trouble," he told the boy.

"I'm not convinced," Kristet was saying. "Kae brings a virus that hasn't shown up on KO-35 in almost a decade and suddenly we have the beginnings of an epidemic? It just doesn't make sense that the two events are unrelated."

"Sometimes the universe doesn't make sense," Zhane replied. "That's just the way it goes."

Andros shook his head. "We must have missed something," he muttered. He was clearly in agreement with Kristet. "Kae hasn't left. We're all protected. We haven't had anyone else in the hangar recently..."

Footsteps on the stairs interrupted his musings, and Zhane looked away from Kae to see Ashley descending from the catwalk. She didn't get to sleep in very often, and even if it wasn't that late he thought she had probably enjoyed the extra minutes. She certainly seemed to be in good spirits, laughing as she chatted back and forth with--

Karen.

Zhane caught Andros' eye and saw the same realization there. Karen was the only person who had come and gone from the hangar since Kae had arrived, and she had done it with the same freedom they enjoyed. She had been everywhere they had been. And she had never gotten the vaccine.

"Karen," Astrea said aloud, echoing his own thoughts. "But she's not sick."

"She was born six galaxies away," Ty reminded them. He made no move to get up from the table, but he too was watching as Ashley and Karen came down the stairs. "Of course she's not sick. The virus probably doesn't recognize her DNA."

"She's as human as we are," Andros argued. "Her DNA's the same as yours and mine."

"Andros, even you and Astrea don't have the same DNA." Ty sounded surprised that Andros would pretend not to know it. And Zhane had no doubt that that was what Ty thought Andros was doing: pretending. The former agrec geneticist just assumed that everyone around him was as smart as he was.

"Someone who can trace their ancestry to the other side of the local group isn't going to react to disease in anything like the same way you do," Ty continued. "I'm surprised she's even a carrier... but it sounds like she must be."

"But Kae had been here for days when she arrived." Zhane voiced what seemed like the most logical objection. "How could he have infected her then?"

"Blankets," Astrea said suddenly. "The first night Karen was here we took blankets outside to look at the stars. Blankets from the downstairs closet."

"That was fun!" Karen's voice was cheerful, but there was no mistaking her curiosity as she and Ashley came close enough to hear and join them in the kitchen. "Morning, everyone," she added, and Zhane lifted both hands in appreciation.

"Thank you," he said emphatically, only too happy to interject some levity into the solemn atmosphere that had settled around them. "Now here is a woman who knows how to say good morning."

"Taught by the best!" Karen winked at him before glancing around at the others. "So what's going on?"

"Hey, Kristet," Ashley added. "You're here early. Have you had breakfast yet?"

"Kae's virus has gotten into the city," Andros informed them. He did know how to break news gently; Zhane had seen him do it. But it wasn't a skill that he bothered to practice much.

"What?" Ashley didn't need to have it spelled out. "But how? He hasn't even been to the city!"

"No," Andros agreed grimly. "And we were all vaccinated." He was staring down at the counter as though it was somehow to blame. "All of us except for Karen."

"Who was wrapped in blankets from the closet where Kae slept the first night she got here," Astrea finished. "Can the virus live that long without a human host, Ty?"

"What do I know?" Ty said with a shrug. "Haven't thought of abersiia in years, let alone studied it. Some viruses can, sure, but I don't know about this one specifically."

"Wait, what?" Karen was looking at them with obvious confusion. "What am I spreading around? And since when?"

Andros apparently didn't consider it his duty to enlighten guests. He was already reaching for his digimorpher, snapping it into his hand like it had appeared out of the air. "DECA," he said, lifting his gaze from the counter to return Zhane's stare. "We're going to need some help."

Zhane had wanted to tell the truth. In fact, if Ty didn't know better, he would have said that Zhane would be uncomfortable with lying. He did know better, but he also knew Zhane, and until this very moment he would have said that he could tell. Of course he could tell. He knew when Zhane was lying and when he wasn't.

He was starting to think that maybe he only knew when Zhane wanted him to know.

Kristet had vetoed the idea of telling the truth immediately, involving as it did several major lapses of responsibility on the Rangers' part. The first was Kae: no matter what they did or didn't know about him, his presence should have been reported as soon as he arrived. It had seemed an acceptable cover up at the time, temporary and harmless, but in retrospect it was unquestionably illegal.

The second lapse was Karen. Ranger or not, she had no interstellar ID and as such had never been checked medically against any of the environments she had visited. It was only luck and her enhanced Ranger immune system that had kept her from catching or carrying something infectious before now.

So telling the truth was out, according to Kristet. Something about shining the light of public attention in the wrong place. And Andros backed her up. This was what they had hired her for, he said, and if she told them to lie then that's what they were going to do.

He hadn't expected Andros to agree to this deception either. But the moment Ty realized that Andros would lie was the moment he should have stopped being surprised that Zhane was so good at it. The two of them were like the decision and the execution, one right behind the other, always.

"Look, Marsie, I'm sorry," Zhane was saying, and only he and Ashley would dare to call the commander of the KPD by her given name at a time like this. Actually, Andros would probably dare, it just wouldn't occur to him. He would call her by her title because this was a professional discussion, not a personal one.

"If I knew more, I'd tell you." Zhane's tone was the perfect combination of sympathy and regret. "Obviously I picked up the virus somewhere in the system, since my scan was clean when I came back from Eltare. There's no reason to think I got it here. But you've all been exposed by now, and we're going to have to quarantine the base until everyone's been treated."

"Quarantine is an inconvenience," Commander Marsie informed him. "We're already locked down and we should be able to complete treatment in a matter of hours. We'll be behind schedule and we'll have to send the incoming Defense patrol home without a layover, but otherwise I'm not concerned about the implications.

"What I am concerned about is my pilots," she continued darkly. "The fact that it was you first and not your teammates, the fact that you've been here almost every day for the past two weeks, both point to a contagion that originated with the Planetary Defense."

"If anyone's sick, they're getting treated now," Zhane assured her.

She gave him a smile that Ty couldn't interpret. "If anyone's sick," she said, very clearly, "every outsystem hour they've logged is going to be checked against their med scans. Pilots get lazy sometimes. Nothing is going to be traced back to us unless it can be traced all the way."

"Marsie," Zhane said, and his tone was nothing but sincere, "We'll back the KPD whether someone was careless or not. And if no one was, I'll clear you to the cameras myself."

She gave a sharp nod, then turned away without the formality of dismissal.

"Let's go," Zhane told Ty.

Ty raised an eyebrow, but he didn't ask until they were out in the hallway. Even then, he was careful to keep his voice low as he asked, "Where are we going?"

"Conference room," Zhane said shortly.

That told Ty precisely nothing. He followed anyway, assuming Zhane would explain his goal at some point. There wasn't a lot they could do here with the entire base under lockdown. Anybody who had been cleared already was too busy clearing other people to get much done. Ty thought Marsie had been understating the situation slightly to call it an "inconvenience."

"Okay," Zhane said, heading straight for the system interface as they took over an empty conference room. "We need to beat that check."

Ty watched Zhane log in to the system and flip open his digimorpher simultaneously. "Excuse me?"

"DECA," Zhane said. He glanced over his shoulder at Ty, indicating that he had heard the question and expected this to be all the explanation Ty needed. "Would you sort through the KPD files and check for discrepancies between med scans and outsystem hours logged?"

"Please specify a timeframe," DECA's calm voice replied.

"From a year ago until today," Zhane said, after a brief hesitation. "Start with the most recent and work your way back, and show me any problems as you go."

"Certainly," DECA agreed. The terminal in front of Zhane shifted as the AI coasted into the system on Zhane's password. Not that she needed it, Ty was sure. But it must be quicker this way. Within seconds, the screens of data were flashing by too fast for him to follow.

"You want to know before Marsie does," Ty surmised. "Why? It's not like we're going to find the virus anywhere."

"Exactly." Zhane was frowning at the terminal as though he could actually read something intelligible in the flickering text. "I don't want anyone else getting in trouble for something we caused."

"But they'll come up clean," Ty pointed out. "Even if their records are out of date, or missed something, the odds that they'll actually test positive..." He trailed off as he tried to estimate some odds. The attempt only made him realize that actually, the odds could be against them. Karen had been introduced to a lot of people, and that had been days ago. The virus had had plenty of time to circulate.

"Doesn't matter," Zhane muttered, still watching the screen. "They wouldn't be under this kind of scrutiny if it wasn't for us, and if we're going to cover up our own mistakes then the least we can do is cover theirs too."

Something on the screen flashed, and a window appeared over top of the high-speed search taking place in the background. Zhane grimaced, but he didn't seem particularly surprised. His expression focused on the screen and then went curiously blank. Ty knew what he was doing.

After a moment, Zhane gave a miniscule nod. When DECA announced the results of her search, he logged into the Kerovan Security Network with two different passwords and set about changing the records she had flagged. Ty just watched, saying nothing.

It didn't take very long. Zhane was good at this kind of thing, and on some level Ty found that disturbing. Andros and Zhane... the decision and the execution. How many times had Andros asked his best friend to do something dishonest?

Was the computer hack really dishonest, Ty wondered? Zhane was only trying to help. He was breaking into the system to protect the very people his lie had compromised. Maybe, Ty mused, two wrongs did make a right. Or maybe they just made it more wrong. He wasn't an ethicist. Wasn't the point of laws to keep people from having to figure it out themselves?

"We're all done here," Zhane said quietly. The screen had reverted to its normal display, and Zhane's digimorpher was nowhere to be seen. "The PD's going to be busy here for another few hours. Want to do some another survey?"

Ty had to grin at the thought. "Try and stop me," he agreed. Taking their Gliders out over the mostly unclaimed land of RS-42, ostensibly to "survey" the area for hidden dangers, was his favorite part of work on KO-35's sister planet.

"Race you," Zhane offered, his eyes bright with a devilish glint.

As quickly as that, he was just Zhane again. Happy, sincere, mischievous; he laughed aloud when they played at shoving each other out of the way to reach the door. Whatever talents Zhane had, they didn't make him good or bad, honest or dishonest. Only the way he used them that could do that--and when had Zhane ever done anything but help the people around him?

Nothing about today had gone the way she expected it to. Ashley had woken up to the promise of a day off, a day she had planned to spend sleeping late, eating a very relaxed breakfast, and then maybe showing Karen around the Center some more, or going alone if she didn't feel like it. She had thought that the morning, at least, would be hers to do whatever she wanted with, even if some crisis came up by lunchtime that turned out to be her responsibility.

The crisis, unfortunately, was here ahead of schedule. It had interrupted her breakfast, and now it found her at Telekinetic Travels with a decidedly different goal than the one she had hoped to have. She hadn't even gotten to sleep late--Karen had knocked on her door with questions before the hangar had even cleared out.

Not that it would have cleared out, she knew now. Karen or not, someone would have gotten her up over the virus situation. Now Karen was grounded for the morning and she was at the Center with Kerone instead, spreading the word about treatment and vaccination.

Or she had been, up until a few seconds ago.

She wasn't sure who was more surprised to see Astronema: her, or the kids. And if she threw Astronema herself into the equation they would all lose, because Astronema looked terrified. Shocked, and wary, and angry of course, always angry, but it was all just a cover for the terror that Ashley recognized instantly.

It was a terror that could get them all killed, if she didn't fix this. Fast.

"Kerone!" she exclaimed, forcing her voice to a warmth she didn't feel. She swung around in front of Astronema and held her arms out to the sides as if for a hug. Astronema looked at her like she was the lowest form of life there was, but the position put her between that staff and the kids. "You did it! That's perfect!"

"Did what?" a voice piped up from behind Ashley. "What did she do, Ranger Ashley?"

The older kids were hanging back, but little Teisha was pressed up against her side and regarding Astronema with wide eyes. Ashley put one of her arms around Teisha's shoulders, patting her reassuringly without taking her eyes off of Astronema. Not a threat, she thought desperately, willing Astronema to understand. We're not a threat to you.

"She made a Halloween costume," Ashley said, with as much cheer and conviction as she could manage. "Doesn't it look like Astronema?"

Looking back on it, she wouldn't be able to say how she had known it was Astronema to begin with, let alone come up with such a ridiculously distracting explanation. It should have been Kerone, after all. There was no reason to think it was Astronema instead of Kerone-pretending-to-be-Astronema, but she did--and all the kids seemed to agree with her.

"What's a halieen costume?" Teisha wanted to know. She was staring up at Ashley now, craning her neck to see her face, and Ashley didn't know if that was because she trusted that everything was all right or if it was just because she was too nervous to look at Astronema anymore.

Either way, Kerone was going to have some explaining to do later.

"Well, Halloween is a special holiday on Earth..." She dared to look away from Astronema for just a moment, smiling down at Teisha. "It's the night when all the ghosts come out, all the spirits and magic and things that we don't usually see."

"Kerone is magic," one of the other kids offered hesitantly.

"That's right," Ashley agreed, her eyes back on Astronema. The princess of evil--from another dimension, unless she was totally wrong--was looking from one kid to the next as though she was trying to anticipate where the attack would come from. But...

She wasn't saying anything. And she hadn't lifted her staff since that abortive attempt when Kerone was first replaced by her alter ego. That had to be a good thing.

"That's why I thought she should try to dress up," Ashley continued, still talking to Astronema. "Cause Kerone is magic, so she'd fit right in on Halloween."

"Why does she have to dress up?" Teisha wanted to know. "She's magic just like she is."

Astronema was staring at Ashley now. She still looked tense and ready to bolt at a moment's notice, but she had stopped preparing for it. That much was obvious: she was waiting now, not getting ready. Maybe, just maybe, she would let Ashley cover and get her out of her without putting the fear of Kerone into the Center for years to come.

"Everyone dresses up on Halloween," Ashley told the kids without turning around. "You have to wear a costume to celebrate."

"But why?" Teisha asked, before she had even finished.

That was a good question. She had no idea. "Because... well, with all those spirits and ghosts and things running around, it's hard to tell which ones are good and which ones are bad, right? And you only have one night to figure it out. So people put on costumes so that the bad spirits won't know who they are."

"Ohhhh." The girl next to her made a long sound of comprehension, like that made more sense than anything else Ashley had said. "I want a costume too," she decided.

"Me too," said one of the other kids. "Can I have a costume?"

"You sure can," Ashley agreed, lifting her arm off of Teisha's shoulders and holding both hands out to her sides. "I'm just going to call one of the other teachers to help us with the costumes, okay? Just one person, to come over here and help you guys." She hoped Astronema understood that she was talking to her.

Astronema nodded, just once and very slightly. But she still tensed when Ashley moved, heading for the nearest wall comm, and Ashley slowed her pace immediately. "Teacher con," she told the unit. It lit up in acknowledgement, and a moment later she was looking at one of the on-duty staff.

"Hi Mehron," she said with what she hoped was a suitably embarrassed smile. "I'm awfully sorry, but we just got called in the middle of our walk. Would you mind sending someone out to take over for us?"

"Sure, Ashley." The teacher coordinator didn't look surprised. "There's a play group in Red Room, if you want to drop your kids there while I get someone out to them."

"That'd be great," she said, relieved. "They'll be there, all right? Thanks, Mehron."

"My pleasure," the coordinator answered.

The kids were understandably disappointed as she shuffled them across the courtyard to Red Room. "But why do you have to leave?" one of the boys complained, echoed immediately by another kid. "You just got here!"

"I know, and I'm sorry," Ashley soothed, looking over her shoulder at Astronema. She did feel guilty about that, but she was a lot more worried about what Astronema might do than she was about the kids right now. "I'll be back next week, okay? We'll go for a real field trip, then."

"Ooh, a Field. Trip!" Teisha chortled. No one here used the phrase "field trip" except for Ashley, but most of the kids knew what it meant by now. "Where are we going, where are we going?"

"It's a secret," Ashley told her, reaching for the chime outside of Red Room in case there was a game going on inside. "You all just make sure you come next week, and you'll see where we're going."

"Okay!" Teisha bounded into Red Room as soon as the door opened. Some of the older kids still looked disappointed, but the younger ones were easily placated by the promise.

"Teacher?" Ashley called, leaning into the room.

"Over here!" The voice came from the near side of the room, partially hidden by kids who were mostly older than hers. That was good, then, hers wouldn't feel like they were being shoved in with the children, she thought with a smile.

"It's Ranger Ashley," she called back. "I have to leave. Would you mind keeping an eye on my friends here until Mehron sends someone for them?"

Green-streaked blue hair burst out over top of the puppy pile on the near side of the room, and Carleis was instantly recognizable. "You got it, Ash!" he declared exuberantly. "We need some little ones to practice levitating on!"

"You keep their feet on the ground!" she shouted back, for a moment forgetting why she was there. "I want them all back in one piece next week!"

He unfolded himself from the ground, easily extricable now that most of his kids had pulled themselves free to see who the newcomers were. "You're no fun," Carleis told her, offering a hand to one of his kids.

"I hear that all the time," she retorted, already withdrawing from the door. "Feet on the floor, Carleis! See you next week," she added, smiling at her kids as they milled past her into the room. She winced as one of them brushed Astronema's hand, still confident in the belief that she was Kerone, who adored children.

Astronema looked like she had been poked with a sharp pair of scissors, but she didn't say anything.

Still, Ashley didn't chance walking back through the Center with her. "I'm going to ask DECA to teleport us," she said quietly. "Is that okay with you?"

Astronema just narrowed her eyes, assessing her without a word.

Ashley took that for assent. She flipped her digimorpher open and called the teammate who could respond the fastest. "DECA," she told her morpher. "We need an emergency teleport. Bring us back to the hangar."

DECA didn't bother to confirm, as was standard in emergencies. The air just shimmered into color around her, and the next thing she knew, she was standing outside the hangar with Astronema at her side. The doors were rolling open to discharge the zords before she could explain what was happening.

"No, don't shoot!" She knocked Astronema's staff aside without thinking. Electricity wouldn't hurt the zords, but it could sure hurt her and she should have been more careful about startling someone with reflexes like that.

"It's okay," she gasped, holding her hands up in surrender. She knew the zords would be able to hear her, no matter how quietly she spoke. "She's a friend! It's Kerone!"

A roar crashed to the ground around her ears, and she winced at Magic's rumble of disagreement. "It's not our Kerone," she shouted. It was a futile effort to be heard over the sound of the violet zord's displeasure. Why hadn't she thought of the zords? "It's JT's Kerone! She's from another dimension!"

She hadn't had time to think about it, but her subconscious must have been processing things as they happened. This didn't have to be JT's Astronema, after all. It could be anyone's Astronema. It could be their own, it could be a clone, it could be an imposter... it could be Kerone, having some sort of bizarre magic attack. There was any number of explanations, none of which she'd had time to sort through.

But her intuition told her this was Kae's rescuer. This was the woman who had come to them, to form a clandestine alliance with the Free Systems, to hand over a slave simply because she hadn't been able to let him die. This was the woman who had been about to threaten a group of children, and had stopped because Ashley got in the way. This was an Astronema who knew her.

"Let me up," she told Astronema, loud enough to be heard over Magic at this close range. "They're not going to hurt you, but they won't let you hurt me either."

Astronema looked tempted to try, but she withdrew her staff a few seconds later. She kept it at the ready. "Where am I?" she spat.

The first words she had spoken since she got here, and they made Ashley narrow her eyes in consideration. Surely she recognized the hangar. If she was who Ashley thought she was, then she had been here before. "You're at the Ranger base on KO-35," she said warily.

Another loud howl from behind them made her grit her teeth in frustration. "Magic, cut it out! We're trying to have a conversation here!"

The ground didn't even rumble as the zord ghosted up behind them, but she could see Astronema stiffen at its looming presence. A moment later, a head bigger than either of them was tall slid down across the ground to inspect the situation. Like Magic couldn't see at all if she didn't have her face in the middle of things, Ashley thought with a sigh. It was just posturing, a reminder that she was there: she must have learned that from her Ranger.

"Where's Kerone?" she asked Astronema, knowing that was the information Magic wanted most. "What happened to her? What are you doing here?"

Astronema's gaze darted from her to Magic, but she looked more haughty than intimidated. "I don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing here." She bit off each word like there was blame to be assigned and it lay with anyone but her.

"Unless this is another one of Dark Spectre's tricks," Astronema added with venom, and the sharp edge to her glare actually made Ashley flinch. "A worthless loyalty test that I do not have time for! When do you expect me to run your army if you keep snatching me out of whatever I'm doing to probe my head!"

Magic growled, a low rumbling sound that was deafening so close to her sound box. Her upper lip curled, and suddenly they were standing face to tooth with some very sharp incisors.

"She's not lying," Ashley told the zord with a sigh. "Dark Spectre used to do it to Kerone, too."

The growl resurfaced, more of a mutter this time, quieter but no less bitter.

"I don't know where Kerone is." Ashley studied Astronema, knowing they wouldn't get anything from her as long as she thought she was talking to Dark Spectre or his minions. On the other hand, the fact that she thought she might be meant that she didn't have any better idea what she was doing here than they did. And that wasn't going to help them find Kerone.

Ashley shook her head once before lifting her digimorpher again. "We'd better get the others."

"What do you think?" Andros asked, keeping his voice low as they rounded yet another corner in the old government building.

"I think that someday one of Kinwon's less flattering soundbites is going to show up on the afternoon news," Kristet murmured. "And I'd just like to deny all responsibility for or knowledge of such an event in advance."

Andros' mouth quirked upward at the corner. "Got it. You know and see nothing. Which a lot of people will believe, considering you have... what, four cameras running right now?"

"Three," Kristet corrected idly. "I could turn the other two on, though, if it would make you feel more comfortable."

Andros snorted, but otherwise he didn't bother to answer. He didn't trust Kristet to obey the rules, but he did trust her intent. She didn't always do what she was told. She did do what she thought was best--and she only did her own thing when she had reason to think that her idea of "best" was clearer than that of anyone else around her.

He heard comm beep, and saw her gave it a dismissive glance out of the corner of his eye. When she stopped, though, he paused too and gave her a questioning look. "Problem?"

"Maybe." She waved him on, already focused solely on her comm. "Go ahead, I'll catch up with you in a moment."

He nodded, heading on down the hall. They were done with the Council, somewhat to his surprise. Things really did go faster with Kristet and her cameras there. He still needed to check in with DECA, though, and that would be easier to do if he wasn't talking over whatever their media liaison was trying to listen to.

Andros stepped out of the building and kept on walking, knowing that everything in the immediate vicinity of the structure would be monitored. He stopped halfway between the building itself and the gate that surrounded it. That was about as secure as any place around here got, and he wasn't going to say anything that required absolute privacy anyway.

His digimorpher chimed before he could flip it open. He acknowledged the signal--Ashley--and smiled to himself. He and Ashley used to joke that the rest of the team had preternatural timing... and it was true. It was as true of the two of them as it was of any of the rest. They knew when to call each other with an accuracy that had nothing to do with telepathy.

"We need you back at the hangar," Ashley's voice told him. "Are you busy?"

"No," he said, frowning. "We're mostly done here. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine." He didn't miss her subtle emphasis on the first word. "Come as soon as you can get away."

That didn't sound good. But it wasn't an all-out emergency call, either, so he tried not to worry. "What about the others?"

"Zhane and Ty, if they're free. Otherwise don't worry about it."

"I'll be there soon," he promised. She was calling in all the Rangers, but she hadn't had DECA alert them? What could possibly be going on?

Unfortunately, he could come up with a lot of answers to that question. And most of them were very, very bad.

He turned at the sound of someone coming out of the building behind him. Kristet didn't look any happier than he felt, and his frown deepened. "Problem?" he repeated as she joined him.

"Abersiia," she said succinctly. "It's showed up in Sai Kung, and it has new symptoms."

"Sai Kung?" He didn't even have to think about it. "None of us have been there recently." Karen hadn't been there at all, but there was no reason to say so where anyone could overhear. Zhane was their cover story, and Zhane it would stay.

"No," Kristet agreed. "Which means that either the virus is circulating that quickly, without any of the transit authorities noticing it, or that we aren't the original carriers of the Sai Kung strain."

That didn't make any sense, and they shared a long look that didn't tell Andros anything. Kae was patient zero. He had to be. It was beyond coincidence that the virus could have shown up in two different places at the same time after more than a decade of dormancy.

"What new symptoms?" he asked abruptly.

Kristet tilted her head the slightest bit, managing to express her bafflement without a word. "People are... seeing things," she said at last. "Hallucinations, maybe. Maybe something else, it's hard to say. But three different people, all of them infected with the abersiia virus, have reported seeing things that they say can't have been real."

Hallucinations weren't the most common pseudo symptom, nor were they something that people tended to imagine. And Kristet was right--they had all been briefed on causes, symptoms, and treatment of abersiia. Hallucinations didn't come into it.

Andros lifted his digimorpher again. "Ashley."

"Go ahead," her voice replied a moment later.

"How many people are with you at the hangar?" he wanted to know.

There was a pause. "Three," she answered. "Karen, Kae, and... Kerone."

"Have DECA scan you," he told her. "I want a full medical check any time someone comes or goes from the hangar. I'm going to have DECA check me and Kristet, and tell Zhane and Ty that they have to do the same if they try to come back before we get there."

"Okay--" He could almost hear her frown. "What are we looking for?"

"Abersiia. The virus may have changed since it got here and that vaccine won't mean anything if it's mutating already.

"DECA," Andros added, knowing she monitored every morpher. "Kristet and I are together. Scan us both and if we're clean, teleport us back to the hangar."

"Acknowledged," DECA's voice answered calmly. "Scanning now."

He exchanged glances with Kristet, and there was a tense moment of waiting. Then DECA's voice informed them, "I am not detecting any sign of the abersiia virus. Teleporting."

The hangar doors were open when they materialized outside of it, but that wasn't unusual. What was unusual was that Kerone had chosen to look like Astronema today, and that the rest of the Rangers seemed to be holding an outdoor conference of some kind. Andros glanced around for Zhane automatically, but he came up empty.

He didn't bother to keep his digimorpher open. *Zhane,* he called silently.

*Yeah,* the familiar voice came back.

*Ash wants us all back at the hangar,* Andros told him. *As soon as you can. Have DECA do a medical scan first.*

Zhane didn't ask questions. *You got it,* he said easily.

"This is Kristet," Ashley was saying. "She's a friend of ours. And Andros, the Red Ranger... I think you know him?"

The way she asked the question set off warning bells in Andros' mind. He opened his mouth, looking from her to Kerone--and he stiffened. This wasn't Kerone. Not at all. He knew his sister; he knew her as Kerone and as Astronema, and this wasn't any Astronema he'd ever known. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Who are you?" the fake Astronema retorted. "You don't look like any Red Ranger I've ever seen."

"Ashley?" he said dangerously. "What's going on?"

Ashley only sighed, and that didn't make him feel any better. "I wish I knew," she told him. "Kerone and I were at the Center when suddenly she was gone and Astronema was here. She has to be from JT's dimension, but she says she doesn't have any more idea how she got here than we do."

"JT," Andros muttered. "How did you ever survive having him on your team for an entire year?"

"I don't think it was his fault," Ashley said, not as though she was convinced. "All his interdimensional experiments were with morphers, Power sources... Rangers, not--" She gestured in a sort of all-encompassing way.

"Kerone's a Ranger." Andros was thinking out loud, not actually objecting, and Ashley seemed to know it.

She replied as though they were following the same train of thought. "And Astronema's not. But she's jumped between dimensions before. She brought us Kae."

"They tell me you're my brother," Astronema challenged. She was looking him over, somewhat scathingly, he thought.

Andros felt his lips quirk, and he gave her an equally contemptuous look in return. He knew this game. He'd played it with his own Astronema time and again. "Can't choose your relatives," he taunted, and her eyes widened a little.

"Andros--" Ashley looked worried. "Kerone's gone. At best she's lost. At worst..."

She didn't have to spell it out for him. "She and Astronema have switched places," Andros said grimly. "I know."

The incoming whine of supernaturally fast machinery heralded the arrival of the Black and Silver Galaxy Gliders. Astronema looked defensive, Kristet surprised, and Ashley relieved. Andros just threw them a wave as he lifted his digimorpher again--they would have to get DECA some outdoor projection equipment.

"DECA," he told his communicator. "I need you to scan for Kerone's magic, anywhere on KO-35 or RS-42, and then anywhere in the system after that. If she's here somewhere, I want to find her. I also want you to contact Justin for me, see if he can get JT to confirm that he doesn't have anything to do with this. Then we're going to have to start looking for dimensional distortion: at the Center, on the planet, out in space. Got it?"

"I have already initiated scans," DECA responded smoothly. "I will communicate with Eltare momentarily, and switch magical scans to dimensional ones if I am unable to locate Kerone."

"Good." He lowered his morpher in time to meet Zhane's questioning gaze as the Silver Ranger demorphed. "We have a problem."

Zhane and Ty arrived in typically dramatic fashion, and Karen didn't have too much trouble coaxing Kae away from his hiding place to join them. She had been left in charge of Kerone's kid that morning, and when the zords bounded out of the hangar to greet Ashley she had hauled him along out of curiosity. Now he was getting twitchy with the open space and she was stuck following him as he wandered farther and farther away.

Just as she'd suspected, Karen thought with a sigh. Free baby-sitting.

Although to be fair, he was Kerone's responsibility. Usually. It was just that today, with her being stuck at the hangar anyway...

Yeah, Karen scoffed. That was how it started. She hated baby-sitting. She really didn't like kids, and she had thought she was beyond the stage of her life where she had to pretend that she did. Apparently not. Especially if Kerone was going to disappear without warning and send her evil duplicate back in her place.

"When did that become a greeting?" Zhane was complaining, if somewhat warily, when she came within hearing range of the other Rangers. "'We have a problem.' It's not 'hello, how are you,' that's all I'm saying."

He was eyeing Astronema while he said it, though. If Karen had to guess? She'd say Zhane already had a pretty good idea of what the problem was.

That was when Astronema startled them all. The name was quieter than any normal conversational tone, but perfectly audible in the lull between comments. "Zhane?"

Zhane gave her a sharp look. "Astronema?" he returned, with an almost obnoxious politeness.

It made Astronema stiffen, and she asked the same thing she had asked Andros when he first appeared, just as Kae was first wandering off. "Who are you?"

For some reason, that brought a smile to Zhane's face. "Well, that's a complicated question," he drawled, looking as relaxed as any of them in the face of their former enemy. "I'd ask for your identity in return, but I think I've already got a pretty good idea. So let's try this: where's your counterpart?"

"My... what?" Astronema was frowning at him, Karen realized. Kae trembled beneath her hands, and she pulled him a little closer instinctively. She'd be scared of Astronema too, if she was him.

"You," Zhane said impatiently. "Our you. The person you kidnapped to be here."

"I didn't kidnap anyone," she snapped.

She was so vehement that she almost drowned out the voice coming from just in front of Karen. A small voice, one that Karen had never heard before, and it actually took her a second to figure out who it belonged to.

"Kerone?" Kae said, very softly. As quiet as it was, the word was perfectly distinct, and they all turned to stare at him in surprise.

Zhane found his voice first. "That's not Kerone, Kae. That's someone who looks like her, okay? She's gone for a little while, but she'll be back soon."

For a moment, no one said anything. Then Kae opened up his mouth, and Karen could feel him drawing breath. Zhane must have seen it too, because he had already started toward the boy when Kae started to scream. And he just kept screaming, shrilly, incessantly, hitting Zhane when the Silver Ranger tried to pull him away from Karen. Zhane took him anyway, picking him up and holding on while Kae kicked and pounded and screamed at him.

It was a short temper tantrum, at least by Karen's standards, even if it seemed to go on forever when they couldn't talk over him. It was a sad testament to how little strength Kae really had, that he couldn't scream for more than a few minutes at a time. In her experience, screaming fits like that were really only getting started by the time Kae collapsed into tears.

Zhane just hitched him up a little higher in his arms and rested his head against Kae's briefly. In the growing quiet, an electronic sound made Kristet take a step back and activate some kind of communicator. Astronema looked like she couldn't decide which was the bigger threat, that noise or the sobbing child in Zhane's arms.

In the end, they all just stood there awkwardly, waiting for Kristet to finish whatever she was doing.

She looked around at them when she put her communicator away. At Andros' nod, she offered, "Twelve abersiia patients have reported hallucinations. Ten of them are in Sai Kung... two of them are here, in Keyota."

"Do we know anything about the virus itself?" Andros asked, frowning. The news must have meant something to him. "Is it mutating? Where are these new symptoms coming from? Is the treatment still effective on these new cases?"

"So far, the treatment is effective, but no one who's reported hallucinations has been under medical care long enough to recover all the way." Kristet looked apologetic. "We won't know for another day, at least. I don't have any word about the virus, whether it's mutating or not."

"Okay, stop," Zhane interrupted. His voice immediately silenced Kae, and he patted the back of the boy's head gently. "This," he said, nodding toward Astronema, "is a big problem." He turned to indicate Kristet and declared, "That is not our fault. So could we focus, here?"

Karen closed her mouth, not about to risk Zhane's wrath. Especially when she didn't know anything. She had never heard him so short with anyone, let alone his friends.

"What do you want us to do?" Andros asked quietly. She thought it was supposed to be a rhetorical question, but Zhane answered anyway.

"I want you to use your super-telepathy to try to reach Astrea," he informed Andros. Catching Ashley's eye, he added, "I want you to get DECA scanning the place where you were when this happened--" Here he jerked his head at Astronema before continuing, "And I want you to tell me how you know my name."

Then he seemed to reconsider. "And," he declared, before anyone else could jump in. He shot a stare in Kristet's direction, a look that she would have called a glare on anyone but Zhane. "I want you to go do whatever it is you do to prove this new virus thing has nothing to do with us, so we can worry about more important stuff. Okay?"

"Zhane." Andros didn't look at all disturbed by Zhane's string of orders. "We're going to get her back."

"Yeah, no kidding we will," Zhane snapped. "Any time now. How about now? Or now? Is now good for you? Because now is good for me!"

"Yeah." Andros didn't flinch, perfectly calm in the face of Zhane's uncharacteristic frustration. "Now is good," he agreed quietly.

Zhane held his gaze for a long moment. Finally his eyes closed, and he might have taken a deep breath. But all he did was nod, press Kae a little closer to him, and turn away from them all for a long moment.