Chapter One: "You and I both know that that is impossible."

Ketana was crouching defensively next to her bed before her mind fully registered that she was awake again. This particular nightmare was nothing new, none of them were. Three years earlier, she had been ordered to kill a Kerovan prisoner.

She had.

She willed her heart to slow, straightened stiffly, and looked over at the clock. She had slept fitfully for close to three hours, just long enough to keep Alpha and DECA from threatening to sedate her.

A holopicture next to the clock caught her eye. It was of the four of them, laughing, in front of a fountain on the Imperial palace grounds. The picture had been taken the day before their world shattered. She stared at it for a long moment before putting it into the back corner of a desk drawer and heading for the shower.

Blisteringly hot water cascaded over her, loosening muscles and turning unnaturally pale skin red. She stood there for a long time, still trying to shake the aftereffects of the dream-memory. If she hadn't killed the prisoner that day, someone else would have. At least the death she had given him had been quick and painless, a far better end than any other he might have received. To this day she still was not sure whether or not it had been a test, or if she had really taken that man's life.

It didn't matter.

She had willingly slaughtered him because she could not bring herself to face the consequences of not following their orders. Their next assignment for her was easier to carry out. The assignment after that was easier still, until finally she stood on the field at Kerova with Sianna's blood on her blade.

Ketana reached for the soap, pulling herself away from the memory. She had come to terms with that day long ago, as much as one could accept the taking of another life. Hearing Sianna's forgiveness had also helped. Dwelling on the past wasn't going to accomplish anything, and she knew it.

The water clicked off, and she pulled a towel from the rack, with a vague feeling of gratitude for the simple joys. She wrapped the towel firmly around her body, the shower having done wonders. For two full days now, the absence of a persistent buzz from the back of her mind gave her a chance to finally start to absorb some of what had happened to her, to make sense of the new life she had suddenly been handed. The shattering of the last orb had given her a new sense of clarity, now that the memory spell was no longer trying to distract her and force her to believe things that were not true. When she had first awoke to a clear head her memories had threatened to overwhelm her, as thousands of things that had been pushed away for her suddenly clamored for attention. In the last few months of her captivity, while semi-aware of herself, she had been reacting more as the frightened eighteen-year-old princess whose pictures and favorite sayings crowded the mirror in front of her. A mere shadow of what she had become over the years.

She wasn't that person anymore, and memories of that innocence were painful. She began peeling things of the mirror, detachedly comparing her memories of herself and her friends to what they had become. Karone had matured into the competent, confident woman that there had only been hints of in the earlier pictures. The spark behind Zhane's deceptively flippant eyes had become a full-fledged fire. Today, though, it was still easy to see their younger selves peeking out behind these new eyes, not so removed from their former selves. Andros was another story, as was she. The last five years had made their mark on both of them, though neither seemed to truly show what they had seen. Andros had seen much more than he let on: there was a history written into his body that belied his age. He had many stories to tell. As for herself, she was, slimmer, harder, sporting a new scar under her left eye, and fairly certain that only those who knew her well would recognize their princess.

The pictures from the bathroom went into a neat pile by the door, followed shortly by trinkets, pictures and memories that littered the walls and made the desk unusable. This pile, and all of her old clothing, went into a laundry chute with a polite request to DECA that it be recycled or put into ship's stores as needed. The ship's arguments were silenced when Ketana pointed out that very little of it was practical now that she didn't have any ambassadors to entertain or dignitaries to impress, and probably didn't fit her now anyway.

She went to the desk with the intention of sending the fountain picture to storage as well, and stopped. Hesitantly, she set it back on the desk. As she pulled on her habitual black clothing and armor – the same that she had worn as Shadow – she could feel the picture, almost as if it were watching her. She couldn't quite bring herself to put it away, as much as it hurt that the girl in that picture was gone and would never return. Later, she resolved to find the time to move her few belongings from the scout ship over.

Before heading out the door, she grabbed a stimulant pack and slapped it on her wrist, welcoming the jolt of caffeine, adrenaline, and essential nutrients. Regular usage could destroy even a ranger's enhanced functions in short order. Without regular usage, she had difficulty functioning.

She picked up her work from the night before, losing herself in being busy. At Alpha's insistence, she went to the mess hall, and made herself some tea. The food replicators were down, and not particularly high on her list of things to fix.

It occurred to her, as she played with the half-empty cup, that there was something that she hadn't found in her cleansing of her room. Downing the rest of the tea, she headed for the storage bay.

It was there. She looked at the small, intricate box, and reached for it hesitantly. Cradling it in her hands, she sat back against the wall and looked at it for a long moment. The box had been a gift from her parents; its contents were from the rangers. The day they had given it to her, it had contained a piece of nanotechnology, one of the great wonders of the Kerovan Empire.

The Earthborn would call it a morpher. The technical explanation was rather involved, but the concepts were the same. The chip would bond to the wearer, determine optimal weapons and armor, and supply or store the needed items as necessary. It was a small thing, virtually undetectable when implanted into the skin.

The box was empty, now. The space that the chip had occupied in her wrist was equally empty.

It doesn't matter. It's not as if I'm exactly worthy of the mantle of a ranger anymore.

---

She was sitting cross-legged, with her back against the wall. Perfectly still, she was staring at the wall in front of her, unseeing. A small box was cupped in her gloved hands, the one he had put in storage five years earlier, unable to deal with the memories. She was still wearing the clothes of Shadow, the pale skin of her face standing out in sharp contrast. The scar on her cheek drew his eye, and Andros wondered how it had happened, and why it hadn't been fully healed.

As he looked at her, he could still feel the touch of her lips and the heat of her body pressed against his. He could still remember the perfection of their bond, the unity of their movement during the fight on the beach. He could still remember being completely whole for the first time in years. That was gone. She had closed herself off completely, for her protection, and, he suspected, for his. On her return and the restoration of his memories he had made sure to reinforce his own mental barriers, embarrassed at how lax they had become. He had left the faint link to her open, in hope.

"It's empty," she said quietly, giving no indication that she had seen him. "Somehow I had hoped..."

"What?"

"Nothing," she said, carelessly throwing the box back into the storage container. "One of the primary lines running into the communications array is fried, and I can't fix it alone."

"Ketana—" he started, wishing that his brain wasn't quite so fuzzy. He was still having dreams that he couldn't explain, it had, in fact, been a nightmare that had driven him awake.

"There are more than enough unimprinted chips for your friends. We'll need to start training them immediately," she said, removing four smaller silver boxes and slipping them into a jacket pocket.

"They're still with their families," he said. So this was how it was going to be. Fine. He could do this. "They still have one more year of regular schooling here on Earth."

"I believe Zordon's emphasis was placed on training," she said coolly, leading the way to one of the upper access tubes.

"Karone wants them to lead as normal a life as possible," he said, desperately searching for a rationalization, and realizing that he didn't believe in it himself. He was struck by his inability to read her, to see even a trace of the girl he knew, the girl he remembered.

"You and I both know that that is impossible."

That stopped him cold. He couldn't think of anything to say to that, and chose to change the subject instead. "I think that, at this point, you are the most qualified person to train us."

"Are you sure?" she asked quietly, and a shared memory flashed through their bond.

The smoking ruins of Kerova's capitol city went by in a blur as he ran after Sianna's murderer. He paid them little mind, all of his attention was on the retreating figure of the killer. Her lithe form disappeared behind a fallen statue, and he followed. The barest sense of danger was all the warning he got, but it was enough. Shrapnel from a grenade exploded around him, but he was able to shield himself against the worst of it. A few shards dug into the side of his left arm, but he ignored the pain. When he stood, she was waiting for him.

They fought, while around them the battle for Kerova raged on. Finally, his opponent made the tiny mistake he had been waiting for, and he seized his opportunity.

The memory – her side of it – cut off there. His continued. The victory had been hollow. At the time, he hadn't been able to explain it. He had thought Ketana and the others long dead. All that had remained for him was Sianna, his one link to that past; and the nameless assassin that had killed that link, the assassin he had been obsessively tracking for a year. Even as he stumbled back to Sianna's body, having avenged her and many others, the rebels he'd been fighting with for the last three years were pushing back the enemy – and yet he knew that it had all been in vain. Something had gone terribly, terribly wrong. He remembered kneeling next to Sianna's body as the first cheers went up, when a great wave of energy had suddenly burst from the Imperial Palace, engulfing everything in its path. He had surrendered to it, and the world had gone dark. When he awoke he had no memory of any of it, instead he knew that his sister had been kidnapped as a toddler and his best friend lay critically wounded in the med bay after taking a hit meant for him.

"I see you still carry the scars," she said, nodding at the faint white lines that traced across the top of his arm. He looked up at her, still reeling.

"I..." was the only thing he could force out of his tight throat. Seconds ticked by, his body paralyzed with shock, his mind detached, analyzing what had just happened. Dimly, he was aware of her watching him, arms crossed, face impassive.

"I am sorry, this was not the way that I wanted to bring this up," she said finally, and for a split second, he thought he saw his Ketana again. "But yes, I was the one who, among other things... I killed Sianna."

"And I murdered you," he whispered hoarsely.

"No," she said, sharply, her words bringing his mind back into focus. "You killed Sianna's murderer. You killed a woman who had..." her voice caught, and for a brief moment, he could see guilt and pain in her eyes. She looked away, taking a deep breath before continuing. When she looked back, her gaze was even, and the familiar things he had been searching for were gone. "You killed someone who had done unspeakable things."

"You were under their spell," he said, desperate to take some of that pain away. He couldn't believe that she was capable of such things.

Offering no explanation, without looking back, she walked away.

She wasn't, was she?

He leaned back and against the wall, and slid to the floor, still trying to pull his mind together. A short, bitter laugh escaped from his lips when he found himself thinking about how they weren't going to be able to repair the communications array rather than anything that Ketana had just revealed. He was still having trouble finding a unity between the two halves of himself, the one that had spent the last two years living in a lie, and the one that had spent the three years before living through hell.

Certain that in his current mental state he would do more harm than good with repair work, Andros closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, slipping into a deep trance. He had to find his balance again.

Kerova faded as the Viator limped away, filled to capacity with survivors. Distress calls had already been sent out, the surviving rangers working hard to contact each other and set up a safe meeting place. Andros sat in silence on the bridge, as other moved quietly around him.

They were gone. They were all gone.