Although he had witnessed the beating the Megaship had taken from the outside, TJ was unprepared for the level of damage within. Emergency power was obviously failing, for the lights flickered unpredictably and the doors had frozen halfway open when DECA tried to override their automatic lock.

Even the air recyclers, usually contributing only a barely noticeable background hum, were now stuttering, letting out intermittent hisses and pops as they labored to keep the intact portions of the Megaship pressurized. DECA would alert them if the air quality fell to dangerously low levels, but so far the environmental systems were keeping up. The Medical bay was a little cool, but the temperature had achieved a precarious stability since it started to drop. They wouldn't freeze in the next few minutes, at least.

*The only things that don't seem to be malfunctioning are the coolant seals,* TJ reflected wryly. The phenomenon was unusual only in that the seals had a strange habit of failing at the slightest sign of trouble and covering the decks in a thick white fog.

Turning one of the independent medscanners on Saryn, he motioned for the other Ranger to hold still. "The fight's over, you know," he pointed out. "There's nothing to run off after, so don't move."

In truth, though the battle was effectively over, he knew the Dark Fortress and the Defense wing were still engaged in "mop-up" operations. The Parikat fleet had started to flee as soon as the tide turned in favor of the Rangers, but the Rysian occupation force refused to either surrender or retreat. The Mega V zords as a whole were in no condition to fight, and the Aquitians were about to be severely undermanned. Excluding the Megaship, which was worse off than any of them, that left only the Defense wing and their new ally to take and hold the Rysian system.

"Where are the others?" Saryn asked impatiently, even as a rustle of air and the static sound of teleportation announced Zhane's arrival.

"You called?" The Silver Ranger immediately stepped forward to look over TJ's shoulder. "What's wrong with him?"

"What's wrong with *you*?" TJ countered.

A second teleportation stream appeared in the Medical bay, this one bright red, and TJ's eyes widened. Carlos stepped out of it, carrying Aura in his arms. Almost simultaneous with his arrival was the sudden presence of Cetaci and Delphinius, sparkles of black falling away from them as their water molecule shapes vanished.

Cetaci was at Aura's side in an instant, laying her hand across her teammate's forehead and pushing Carlos toward the second patient bed. He obeyed without hesitation, until she motioned to him to let go of Aura. "But she's cold!" he protested, his voice more forlorn than rebellious.

"She needs water more than she needs warmth," Cetaci told him firmly. "Set her down. Delphinius, can you...?"

A flicker of movement by the door caught TJ's attention, only barely registering out of the corner of his eye. "Saryn!" he exclaimed, turning. The Phantom Ranger froze in the doorway, shooting a slightly guilty look back into the Medical bay. "Where do you think you're going?" TJ demanded.

Saryn actually sighed a little. "Where do you think I intend to go?"

He hadn't been asking about the "others" earlier, TJ realized suddenly. He had seen Saryn's face pale when Linnse mentioned Cassie, and it should have occurred to him that the other would put Cassie's well-being first, as he had so many times before. "She'll be here," TJ told him. "You won't help anything by searching for her. What would you do if you *did* find her, walk her here yourself?"

"I could help," Saryn muttered. He didn't step back inside the Medical bay, but neither did he continue down the corridor.

A glow from the second patient bed distracted TJ for just a moment, and he saw Delphinius withdraw his hand from Aura's chest. "What did you do?" Carlos was asking.

Delphinius braced himself against the bed for a moment, and TJ saw Cetaci's hand touch his shoulder briefly. "I infused her with water," Delphinius said, his voice even. "It depletes the giver, and it's a temporary measure at best. But it may be enough..."

He trailed off, and TJ saw the prone figure on the bed stir. "Aura?" Carlos murmured, and the quiet word was all but drowned out by Saryn's exclamation.

When TJ glanced back at the doorway, it was empty, and he strode forward to see what had caught Saryn's attention. He wasn't surprised to see Linnse and Cassie making their way down the corridor, the one supporting the other as Linnse tried to brush Saryn aside. "You're not helping," she snapped.

To TJ's surprise, Cassie was also frowning at Saryn. "Don't touch me! TJ, get Saryn away from us, would you?"

"You're hurt," Saryn insisted.

Cassie positively glared at him. "So are you! And I know what you're thinking, so don't even try it!"

"What's going on?" TJ demanded, taking Cassie's other arm and helping her into the Medical bay. He felt terrible for the wince his motion elicited from her, and he saw her bite her lip as Linnse gently maneuvered her toward the patient bed Saryn had vacated. "What's wrong?"

Linnse took the medscanner from his hand and turned it on Cassie. She frowned, doing something to the display and then glancing around the Medical bay. "Do you have osteo regen capability here?"

"Emergency power will not support osteo regen for more than three minutes and 42 seconds," DECA replied calmly.

"That'll have to be enough," Linnse said, tossing the medscanner back to TJ. Off guard, he only barely caught it, and he started as Saryn appeared out of nowhere at Cassie's side again.

She pushed him away as he reached for her. "I swear, Saryn, you're worse than mosquitoes! Leave me alone!"

"What's going on?" TJ demanded, startled to hear her snap at Saryn like that. "Cassie, are you all right?"

"I'm fine," she retorted. "And turn that scanner on Linnse before she does anything drastic. She probably needs the regen more than I do. Saryn!"

"Delphinius," Cetaci's voice said loudly, cutting into their conversation. "Sedate Saryn if he does not comply."

"There is *nothing* wrong with me," Saryn growled, glaring at TJ as if it were somehow his fault. "There is no reason I should not be allowed to help."

"Cassie, turn around," Linnse instructed. "You know how it works, right? No moving."

"Not until you get scanned," Cassie insisted. "The Power will heal me quicker than you."

"This is not necessary," Saryn tried to protest.

"Zhane, make yourself useful and distract Saryn," Cassie said. "And TJ, if you're not going to scan Linnse, give me that so I can do it myself."

He turned the medscanner on Linnse, letting it run through her vitals and recalibrate for Eltaran physiology. "Two bruised ribs, but nothing broken. DECA can give you something for the pain, if you want."

"You see?" Linnse said, looking at Cassie. "I'm fine. You've got a broken sternum and you're going under regen for as long as it will run. End of discussion."

"I--" Saryn started.

"No!" Cassie exclaimed, pulling her legs up onto the patient bed. "You were unconscious half an hour ago, Saryn. You can't heal me."

TJ stepped forward to help Linnse with the regen setup, suddenly understanding what the argument was about. To heal Cassie would significantly drain Saryn, even under the best circumstances, but that hadn't stopped him back in the Sirus dimension on Earth.

"Cetaci," Delphinius interjected.

Past Linnse's shoulder, TJ saw the White Aquitian Ranger look up. "Tell Cestria to--" Aura, now sitting on her own but looking none too steady, turned toward her carefully, and Cetaci cut off. Swallowing, she amended, "Yes?"

Something must have passed between them, but TJ's attention was drawn back to Cassie as Linnse stepped back. He caught Cassie's eye and asked, "Ready?"

She rearranged her position once more and took a deep breath. Exhaling slowly, she nodded at him. "I'm ready. I hope. I hate regen," she added, almost as an afterthought.

He gave her a sympathetic smile. "I know. It's only for a few minutes."

She smiled back, but her eyes slid past him. He didn't have to glance over his shoulder to know Saryn was hovering behind him. "DECA," TJ said, looking up at the computer's nearest camera. "Start osteo regen."

He saw Cassie tense a little as the double blue beams swept across her chest, bathing her in an eerie sapphire light. She took a shallow breath, obviously trying to stay relaxed--and, more importantly, as motionless as possible. He could practically feel Saryn fidgeting behind him, and he stepped out of the way without a word.

Saryn flowed into his place, reaching out to touch Cassie's hand gently. She turned her hand over and he squeezed her fingers, careful not to disturb the regen process. TJ smiled a little, then glanced over at Cetaci just as she looked in his direction.

"Does the Megaship still have shields?" the White Ranger asked, as soon as she caught his eye.

"No," Linnse interjected. "We're lucky we have lights, let alone shields. What's wrong?"

"Ecliptor hit something," she said, glancing up at DECA's camera. "Its destruction caused a pulse wave that's increasing in intensity as it expands outward."

"That's impossible," TJ said, frowning at her.

"I am not detecting any such wave," DECA informed them.

"What kind of pulse wave?" Saryn wanted to know, ignoring the computer completely.

Cetaci shook her head. "Neither Cestria or Billy can obtain any more information on it."

"Can the Mega V zords detect it?" Zhane asked. "Maybe DECA's scanners were damaged during the battle."

Cetaci and Delphinius exchanged glances. "The wave has already engulfed the Mega V zords. They are no longer responding."

"DECA," Zhane said quickly. "Can you raise the Mega Vs?"

There was an unnaturally long silence.

"DECA?" TJ asked at last.

"Looking for me?" a familiar voice asked from behind him.

TJ spun, startled by Tessa's sudden appearance and inexpressibly relieved to see her standing there. "You're all right!" He reached out and pulled her into a fierce hug. "You have no idea how worried I was..."

"Were you?" she murmured.

He frowned, pushing her away a little to search her expression. "Yeah, of course I was."

"You didn't act it," she said, staring back at him impassively.

"What?" His frown deepened. "Tess, what's wrong? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, shrugging out of his embrace. "No thanks to you."

Stung, he tried to suppress a flash of guilt. "Look, I'm sorry you got dragged into this. I know it was wrong of us to ask you--"

"'Us' again," she interrupted. "It's always 'us' when you're talking about your Ranger friends, and 'you' when you're talking about me. Am I not part of 'us', TJ?"

"Of course you are!" He reached out, hoping to soothe her obviously frayed nerves. He shouldn't have suggested her when Andros was putting together his "Earth team", but he had honestly thought she would jump at the chance. And the team was never supposed to fight--he had thought she would be safer with Cassie's Power than without.

She drew back further, narrowing her eyes at him. "I'm tired of always coming after your friends, TJ."

"You don't!" he protested. "Tessa, you know how important you are to me. If something had happened to you today... I never would have forgiven myself."

"Maybe you should have thought of that before," she told him. "But your team came first, didn't it. They always come first, and I've put up with it long enough. Time to choose, TJ."

He stared at her in shock. "What are you talking about?"

"It's me or them," she informed him calmly. "Give up your Ranger powers, or break up with me. It's your choice."

***

"What's going on?" Cassie demanded, watching TJ talk to thin air. "TJ?"

He didn't answer, didn't even turn to acknowledge her question. Her fingers twitched, and she tried desperately not to fidget. She hated regen, but she hated the pain more, and the Power would take hours to even start healing a broken bone.

Saryn's hand slipped out of hers, and her fingers twitched again as she just barely suppressed the urge to reach for him. "Saryn--" She glanced up, and her breath caught in her throat as she struggled to swallow.

The Phantom Ranger's expressionless visor stared back at her.

"Saryn?" she asked, hoping he hadn't noticed her surprise. She hated it when he did that. "What's wrong?"

"Saryn's dead," he told her flatly. "I do not wish you to call me that any longer."

She did swallow this time, managing a weak frown for his harsh words. "Don't say things like that. You're Saryn. And you're not dead."

"Saryn died on Elisia," the other Ranger said, his tone completely unreadable. "The Shadow Ranger is only that--a shadow of what once was."

It disturbed her more than she wanted to admit to hear him calling himself the Shadow Ranger again. That had been a life born of pain and suffering, absent of any joy and something she had thought him long past. After all, if he still was that person, how could he care for her now?

"I care for no one," he told her. "Not anymore."

She could only stare at him as he turned and walked out of the Medical bay. "Saryn! Wait!" The regen released her at last, and she scrambled off the patient bed.

She thought she was only seconds behind him as she reached the door, but when she burst out into the hallway she found it empty in both directions. The slightest hint of darkness to the left made her turn that way, and she darted down the hall after him. But the hallway grew no less deserted as she chased a shadow down the empty, arching corridors of the Megaship.

***

"The wave has engulfed the Aquitian zords," DECA announced. "They are not responding to hails."

"Try them again," Zhane ordered. "Can you get a visual of this wave thing? And the other zords?"

"Rerouting scanner feed now," DECA told him. A screen on the other side of the Medical bay flickered to life, showing a computer-generated graphic of the wave superimposed over the positions of the Aquitian zords. "Still no response to comm signals."

"DECA, talk normally," Zhane said irritably. He hated it when the computer spoke without pronouns.

"Unable to comply," DECA answered, none of her usual expression in her tone. "The wave is approaching the Megaship's current location. Recommend immediate retreat."

"But what about the others?" Zhane exclaimed, frustrated. "We can't just leave them here!"

"There is no other viable alternative," the computer informed him.

"Can we at least teleport the others?" he demanded. "Can you get a teleportation stream through the wave?"

"Affirmative."

A sparkle of red on the nearest patient bed was the only precursor to Andros' arrival, and Zhane's heart clenched at the sight of the other's still form. "Andros?" Two steps put him at his friend's side. "DECA, what's wrong with him?"

There was no answer.

"DECA?" he demanded, glancing up at the camera. The red light was dark, and no response was forthcoming.

"Andros," Zhane said urgently, clasping his friend's hand in his and reaching for a medscanner with the other. "Come on, Andros; you have to wake up. You can't do this to me."

The medscanner had to be malfunctioning. He knew it was wrong; there was no way that flatline could be correct. They had sworn to stay together. Andros wouldn't leave him now. Not again. Not after everything that had happened...

He swallowed hard, feeling a tear slip down his cheek as he tried hastily to recalibrate the scanner. It had been set for Eltarans; that was the problem. Of course it wouldn't read right. It would be all right if only he could get the scanner to function properly, but his fingers couldn't remember which keys to press.

Finally he dropped the scanner and clasped his friend's wrist, pulling Andros off the bed and into his arms. "Please," he whispered, sinking to the floor with his best friend in his embrace. "*Please* don't leave me, you know I can't take that. You know it, Andros..."

He hugged his friend's still form harder, ignoring the tears dampening the blond-striped brown hair. Andros had thought him on the verge of death for almost two years, but Andros had always been stronger than him. There was no way he could survive without the one person who had been friend, brother, teammate, and the other half of his soul for longer than he could truly remember.

***

"Astrea." Andros' voice sounded stern in the small confines of Delphinius' Zaal zord. "Are you in contact with Ecliptor?"

"No more than you just heard," she answered, frowning at the odd flicker on her tactical map. Billy had called it a "pulse wave", as though that was supposed to mean something to her, and it had passed over Zaal some seconds before. Nothing seemed to have happened, but she had all the zord's systems running internal checks just to be sure.

"But you knew he was going to be here," Andros pressed.

She frowned, gaze flicking across the diagnostic reports. They were all coming back normal so far. "No. I'm as surprised as you are."

There was a slight click of static as another voice joined the link. "I don't think so."

She looked up, a little surprised. "Zhane?"

"Astronema?" he mimicked.

She frowned again, but if he wanted to call her that, she wasn't going to stop him. She didn't appreciate it, but she couldn't go around bullying her brother's team the way she did quantrons on the Dark Fortress. Their opinions mattered too much. She respected them.

Turning her attention back to her console, she started the scanner diagnostic once more. She wanted to be absolutely certain she knew what was sneaking up on her, if and when it came. Who knew what else the Dark Fortress's mission of destruction might unleash, however accidentally. The next "wave" might not be so benign.

"Zhane?" She might as well make use of him while he was listening. "Did you get any correlative data on that wave when it passed over the Megaship?"

"So you can pass it on to Ecliptor and use it against us again?" he countered.

Clamping her jaw down, she tried to stifle a gasp. "That wasn't funny, Zhane." Though she would never admit it, that accusation hurt, whether it had been made in jest or not.

"It wasn't supposed to be funny," he shot back. "It's what you've always done before, isn't it? Taken whatever weapon you could find to destroy the good guys?"

"You weren't the good guys then," she said, through clenched teeth.

"The good guys don't change, Astrea," Andros' voice told her. "You're either good or you aren't. And you obviously aren't."

She felt her heart seize, and she glared at the comm as though she could somehow strike back at him through it. "What right do you have to tell me that! You've never seen more than one side of a fight in your life! You don't know what it's like!"

"There *is* only one side," Andros said. "There's right and wrong, and the right side is the only one that matters."

"Which side are you on, Astronema?" Zhane wanted to know. "You might as well tell us now."

Until only a few seconds before, she would have said she was on their side. But they were no more consistent than she was, turning on her like this and making her question everything all over again. "I'm on the side that cares," she muttered, remembering her earlier conversation with TJ. It seemed so long ago, now. "Because it's the caring that makes things happen."

And there was only one person who truly cared, one person whose affection and loyalty she knew were not false. She turned her zord around and headed for the Dark Fortress.

***

It was cold. So cold. A bone-numbing chill had seeped through her body while she slept, and it refused to release its grip no matter how she shivered. She was too tired to shiver anymore, really, and finally she just let herself stop.

It wasn't *that* cold, she reasoned, if she could stop shivering. She knew Delphinius was the only reason she was awake, just as Cetaci had been her means of survival on Dark Spectre's ship. She knew too that if she was denied water much longer there would be nothing more they could do. But at least she was starting to feel warmer... that was something.

"You're not warm," a voice insisted, as though he were somehow reading her mind. "You're only getting colder--fight it, Aura. You have to fight!"

The world warped in the most bizarre way, twisting the walls of the Megaship's Medical bay into some distorted version of the garden dome on her homeworld. Nighttime, she thought absently, watching phosphorescence swirl in the water above. The dome was pleasantly warm, as always, and she welcomed the feeling after the chill of only a few minutes before.

"You never fight anymore." It was Cetaci's voice, emanating from the shadows, and she turned to face her leader as the White Ranger regarded her critically. "This offworlder has made you weak."

"You have betrayed us," Delphinius added, stepping forward to stand at his lover's side. "You tell him our secrets. You fight for him now, not for the team."

"I don't," she protested--or tried to protest. The dome was spinning somehow, a lazy but uncontrolled motion that threw her off-balance. She sat down hard, pressing her forehead against her hands in an effort to force her mind into thought. "I haven't..."

"He doesn't want you," Cestria told her. She and Billy appeared, off to one side but far closer to their teammates than to her. "Stay with us. We will take care of you."

"I don't... need--" Her head was pounding, but she couldn't remember if that had just started or if it had always been like this. The air was so warm, and she was so tired. It would hurt less if she could just lie down for a minute.

"You were one of us, once," Billy's voice told her. "Things are different now."

She rested her head against her knees, feeling the world tilt precariously as the ground bumped against her shoulder. She relaxed a little, feeling sleep ready to pounce at the edges of her awareness. It leapt in as she closed her eyes, milling about her mind for only a few seconds before completely overwhelming her with darkness.

***

"Come *on*, Aura," he whispered. "You can beat this; I know you can. You've never given up before; don't start now. You have to fight!"

"She can't hear you, you know."

He whirled, at once startled and immediately guilty as he recognized the voice. "What are you doing here?"

"I should be asking you that," Karen observed, glancing pointedly at the hand he had wrapped around Aura's fingers. "Girl on every planet, Carlos?"

"No!" he exclaimed, knowing he should go to her. But he couldn't make his hand let go of Aura's. "It's not like that!"

"Oh, so it's just the two of us. I guess you would need one girlfriend for space and another one for Earth. I'd just embarrass your outer space friends, but she'd be really hard to bring to soccer games."

"Aura isn't my girlfriend," he protested. "She's just a friend who's in trouble. I'm worried about her; I don't *love* her!"

Karen gave him an oddly knowing look. "But you'd like to, wouldn't you. The dreams are more real than you want to admit."

His eyes went wide, and he could feel his cheeks flush. There was no way *anyone* could know about that. "I don't dream about her!"

She smiled a little. "You talk in your sleep, Carlos."

He clenched his fingers on Aura's as he tried desperately to stammer out some kind of response. He did have the weirdest dreams about her from time to time, but they had started only a few days after he had first met the Aquitians. He had figured it was the delayed shock of meeting alien Rangers, and then, when the dreams had turned inevitably more romantic, he had put it down to the amount of time they were spending together.

Besides, they always faded with the light. Each dream prompted him to remember the others, but only in the grey twilight area between sleep and wakefulness. As soon as he was fully alert, the odd vision would vanish from his mind as though it had never been. He wasn't even quite sure why he was remembering them now.

"Ask Ashley," Karen suggested flippantly, and when Carlos looked up again, the Medical bay was still and deserted.

His hand was empty. He closed his fingers into a fist, dreading what he would see when he turned around. But he turned anyway, to find Aura gone as well. He had never truly expected her to stay.

The walls rippled, and the air twisted in a way he couldn't see, let alone explain. The room darkened like a movie theater before the previews, but when he blinked, the Medical bay was gone. The Aquitian Rangers stood around Aura's crumpled form and he started toward her just as Ashley appeared at his side.

"Carlos?" she asked tentatively.

Something in her tone made him stop and blink, frowning a little. "Yeah?" he said, turning toward her slowly. "Ash?"

***

"We can't let that wave reach the Megaship!"

Andros' words rang in her ears even as she watched the battleship that had been their home for months on end crumble, the structural support torn apart from within as the wave wrenched its way through the damaged hull. *We failed.* The words echoed through her mind again and again, numbing her to the pain, to any kind of caring.

"We failed..." She heard Andros' grief-stricken voice mirror her own thoughts. Their teammates were on that ship, their friends, their home, their lives. The Megaship was a symbol of everything they had become together, and without it... what else was there?

"Sometimes your best just isn't good enough," she whispered, a tear streaking down her face. "Andros, what have we done?"

The cockpit wavered before her eyes, yanking her out of the spacefaring vessel and into the middle of a cloudless summer night. She blinked rapidly, trying to force her tears to wait and shove her mind into some kind of coherence. This couldn't be real--but there was Carlos. He had died on the Megaship, but he was here. She said his name softly, as though just the sound might make him disappear.

He turned with such a Carlos-like expression of puzzlement on his face that she just wanted to throw herself into his arms. "Yeah? Ash?" he asked, looking as though he was waking from some kind of dream.

"Are you real?" she had to ask, and he frowned a little.

"Are you?" he asked at last.

She felt a hand on her back and she turned instinctively--straight into Andros' embrace. "I was so scared," he murmured, just loud enough that only she could hear. "Was any of that real?"

"I... I don't know," she said, wrapping her arms around him and hugging him hard. "Don't leave."

***

He squinted out at the heat haze, welcoming the oppressive warmth after the chilly air of the--

The thought dissolved into incoherence. He hadn't been here a moment ago, but where he had been was surely of little importance. What mattered was Kris' sudden and inexplicable absence, a mystery since midday that he had not been able to solve to his satisfaction.

"Looking for something?" Timmin's voice asked from behind him, and he did his level best not to jump.

"Kris," he replied, refusing to turn. "Have you seen her?"

Timmin uttered a dramatic sigh. "Not as often as I'd like, unfortunately. Why?"

He frowned a little. If Timmin didn't know where she was, it was more serious than he had thought. "No one has seen her since before midday."

"So?" Timmin didn't seem unduly concerned, but then, Timmin never did. "She's probably holed up with Jenna somewhere cool. Why not check the girls' rooms?"

His expression must have been horrified, for Timmin laughed. "Coward! Come on; they won't chase us out."

Timmin led the way into the girls' wing as though he knew it by heart, stopping in front of Jenna's door and yelling for her without inhibition. "Jenna, Saryn's here to see you!"

He felt his cheeks flush red, but the cloth was flung aside before he could add anything. Jenna smiled brilliantly at him, not seeming to notice his discomfort. "Hey Saryn! What's up?"

She didn't seem at all disconcerted to find him in the girls' wing, but he barely managed to stammer, "We're... uh, we were looking for--Kris."

Jenna raised an eyebrow. "We?" she repeated.

"Timmin--" he glanced over his shoulder, but Timmin was nowhere to be seen. He frowned. "Timmin was with me a minute ago."

"He set you up," Jenna said with a grin.

He shook his head, confused. "He wouldn't... he was looking for Kris, too."

"Hey guys!" Lyris poked his head in, ignoring the restriction of the girls' wing as completely as Timmin had. "Breaking rules after midday? Well, better late than never."

"Have you seen Kris?" Saryn asked, trying to suppress his concern.

"Or Timmin?" Jenna added helpfully.

Lyris leaned back, making a point of looking down the corridor in both directions. "No. Why, where have they gotten to now?"

"That's what we're trying to figure out," Jenna said, and Saryn glanced over at her. She was wearing a small smile, the one that said she was just humoring him, and he tried not to sigh.

"You think I'm overreacting," he said.

She only shrugged, but her eyes danced with amusement.

This time he did sigh. "All right," he said at last, glancing back toward the door. "I admit--"

Lyris was gone.

"Where did Lyris go?" he demanded.

He felt the slight movement of air that meant Jenna had moved, and he turned back to her. She shrugged a little, peering toward the door as though it didn't matter much to her. "I'm not sure. He probably remembered something else he had to do."

He reached for her hand, wrapping his fingers around hers and drawing her a little closer. If they were going to disappear one by one, he wasn't going without Jenna. "Let's find out."

"All right," she agreed amiably, allowing him to tug her back toward the door. "Are you planning to take me into the boys' wing, then?"

He smiled a little at her teasing, letting go of her hand to lift the curtain out of her way. "Somehow I think you've been there before."

She didn't answer, and he glanced back.

The room was empty.

***

"Where *are* we?" TJ demanded, staring around the harsh desert landscape.

"Elisia," Cassie murmured.

He frowned at her. "How do you know?"

"I've seen it before," she said quietly. "This is Saryn's planet."

"So what are we doing here?" another voice asked. Zhane's black uniform stood out in stark contrast to the windblown sand and oddly white sky. "Assuming either of you are real, of course."

TJ glanced over at him. Zhane looked back, surreptitiously wiping his sleeve across his face. It smudged the tearstains there rather than erasing them, but after what TJ had seen so far he decided it would be better not to ask. "I think we're real. I'm not so sure about all *this*." He waved his arm to indicate the landscape around them, and Cassie shook her head slowly.

"It can't be real, any of it. I don't think we're even real, exactly." She looked down as she spoke, and TJ frowned again.

Before he could ask, though, Zhane interrupted. "*I'm* real. It's you guys I'm questioning."

Cassie gave him an odd look. "Zhane, flex your wrist."

He looked surprised, but after a moment he held his hands out in front of him. Flexing first one, and then the other, he stared at his hands as though he'd never seen them before. "It doesn't hurt."

"Me neither," Cassie agreed. "And I *know* the Power doesn't heal that fast."

"So what *is* this?" TJ wanted to know, shooting a quick look at his hands and noticing the absence of cuts and bruises for the first time. "Some kind of hallucination?"

"Something to do with that wave, maybe?" Cassie suggested.

Zhane nodded slowly. "Mine started right after the wave, I think. It was--hard to tell," he offered awkwardly.

Cassie nodded emphatically, but she didn't volunteer anything else.

"I know when mine started," TJ informed them. He paused for a moment, though, and finally he had to admit that it wasn't entirely outside the realm of possibility for Tessa to have teleported to the Megaship. "At least, I think I do."

Cassie gave him a sympathetic look. "I know. It's weird."

"But if this is because of the wave," Zhane put in, "why are some of us together again? And why here--wherever here is?"

"Saryn," an unsteady voice said from behind them.

They all turned to find Cetaci staring past them at the stone structures that were the only obstacle to the unending horizon. "He's too strong," she said, her voice shaking even as she lifted her chin defiantly. "He drew us into his vision."

"Are you all right?" TJ asked quietly, knowing Cetaci wouldn't appreciate the question but unable to keep from asking it.

"I'm fine," she said, blinking quickly. "We have to find Saryn. He's the only one who can get us back."

"How do *you* know?" Zhane asked suspiciously. "How do we know *you're* real?"

"The same way I know you're real," she answered after a moment. "You trust."

"And about Saryn?" Zhane prompted.

She hesitated again. "I do not know that either," she admitted at last. "But it's the best guess I can come up with."

TJ exchanged startled glances with Cassie. It was the first time he'd ever heard the Aquitian leader acknowledge weakness.

Finally, Cassie nodded. "It sounds good to me."

"Of course it sounds good to you," Zhane said, somewhat irritably. "You want to find Saryn anyway. But what about the others? Where are they?"

Cetaci swallowed. "I wish I knew that as well," she said softly. "I can only assume that they are either still trapped within their own visions, or that they have been pulled into Aura's or Cestria's experiences the same way we are inside Saryn's."

"Telepaths," TJ muttered, shaking his head. When three pairs of eyes turned on him, though, it occurred to him that he was seriously outnumbered. "Never mind."

"Unless you have a better idea," Cetaci said, as though TJ had not spoken, "I suggest we try to locate Saryn."

Zhane shrugged helplessly. "Fine." He cast about the seemingly endless desert once more before settling on the structures directly in front of them. "Let's go get him and get out of here."