The medical bay in Cincarion hummed with a quiet, controlled kind of activity, one that belonged in a place built for both healing and scrutiny. The rhythmic beep of heart monitors set a steady pulse for the room, while the quiet whir of machines collecting data formed a background murmur. Every corner of the room was illuminated by the soft clinical glow of holoscreens, casting a sterile blue light over polished steel surfaces. The faint smell of antiseptic lingered in the air—sharp and clean.
Blue stood at the edge of the sterile medical bay, his posture rigid, his hands clenched behind his back, eyes fixed on the array of holoscreens in front of him. From here, he could monitor everything—Red's vitals lay sprawled across one screen, each reading indicating stability, while other screens displayed the statuses of his scattered teammates. Rows of monitors displayed streams of data—vitals, cellular breakdowns, DNA scans—all linked to the four Rangers who now lay unconscious in secure facilities across different megacities.
Yellow had been returned to Auroralis, the Aquitarian colony beneath the Arctic ice under the watchful eyes of her people and her mother, High Priestess Delphine. Pink was housed in the coastal fortress of CoralVault, with its deep-sea levels and towering structures. Black was being held in Solari Delta, a command facility nestled along the banks of the Nile. In Cincarion, Red lay unconscious in a bed just feet from Blue, her body kept in an enforced sleep, her vitals steady beneath the constant surveillance of the doctors and technicians who moved quietly around her. Four Rangers kept apart in every way that mattered—separated by hundreds of miles but still connected by the thin thread of the mystery they shared.
The doctors had been relentless, running every test they could think of. The answers, however, remained elusive. Dr. Salinas, the chief geneticist overseeing Red's condition, adjusted her glasses, her eyes darting over the holoscreen in front of her, where a complicated array of DNA sequences scrolled past. She tapped through several layers of data, focusing intently on the genetic results. "What's most striking here," she began, "is that Red's genome is a perfect match for the pre-mission tests we ran before the Ceres mission. Every sequence is identical—no variation, no sign of environmental impact, no cellular degradation."
She zoomed in on a detailed section of Red's DNA, highlighting the comparison. "We've cross-referenced her current results with the baseline data from ten years ago, and everything is identical—telomere length, cellular markers, even the micro-fractures and scars she had before she left. It's as if no time has passed for her body." She turned slightly, adding, "But this isn't cryostasis or any known preservation method. In cryo, there's always some level of degradation—even if minor—cells require recovery afterward. Here we're not seeing any of that. Red's biology is exactly the same as it was just before the Ceres mission. There's no sign of aging, no wear, nothing."
Salinas shook her head slightly as she flipped through more screens. "And the same is true for the others. We've run remote comparisons using their pre-mission data as well, and it's the same across the board—no biological changes, no aging, no deviation from their original tests."
Blue narrowed his gaze. "What about her hormone levels?" he asked, his voice calm but probing. Salinas turned, mildly surprised by the question, but quickly brought up another set of data.
"They're within normal ranges," Salinas replied, scrolling through the biochemical stats. "A slight elevation in cortisol and adrenaline—what we'd expect after a traumatic event—but nothing extreme. Her overall hormonal profile is consistent with what it was before the mission. No red flags."
No surprises there, Nova's voice echoed in Blue's mind, confident yet measured. Cortisol spikes in response to trauma or stress. Normal reaction after what they've been through... or at least, what they think they've been through.
Blue gave a slight nod, acknowledging the information. Time travel had been one of the more plausible theories, but deep down, he hadn't believed that the mystery would be solved that easily. This was something else—something that fit no known paradigm.
Dr. Salinas continued, "We've been running environmental scans on their suits, checking for any external factors that could have played a role." She pulled up a series of readings related to Red's suit and gear. "The suits themselves have no anomalies—no foreign materials, no signs of extreme radiation exposure or elemental residue. We thought perhaps their suits had been modified to protect them from whatever they encountered, but there's nothing out of the ordinary."
Blue's expression remained unreadable, but his mind whirred behind his calm exterior. He acknowledged the data, but nothing was leading them closer to understanding what had happened to the Rangers during their absence. They were physically perfect, preserved—but how?
Salinas shifted in her seat, glancing over at Blue. "We've also ruled out temporal anomalies," she said. "We ran exhaustive tests for chroniton particles, time distortions—anything that could suggest they passed through a temporal rift or were caught in some kind of loop. But there's no evidence of time displacement."
Good call on the AI lockdown, Nova chimed in, her digital tone tinged with approval. It would've been risky to let them sync up before we've sorted all this out. If something's wrong, it could spread, ripple through their systems.
Dr. Niles, the lead physicist, chimed in from the secondary console, his frustration evident as he scrolled through dimensional scan results. "We've been monitoring their neural activity as well—neural activity shows no sign of manipulation or external control. If their minds were affected during those ten years, we're not seeing any evidence of it. No implanted memories, no disruptions in normal brainwave patterns."
Salinas tapped a button on her console, and a 3D model of Red's brain appeared on the screen overlaid with streams of data. "Everything looks normal, Blue. Neural responses are within expected ranges for someone sedated. We've even checked for signs of interference from their AIs, just in case—again, nothing."
The room had fallen into a contemplative silence, the weight of unanswered questions thick in the air. The morphers had been their constant companions, the source of their strength, but the uncertainty surrounding the Rangers' condition had prompted extreme caution. The morphers, locked away in vaults, were now kept far from the Rangers' reach as a protective measure.
Nova's voice cut through his thoughts, low and methodical. "The ship is the key. The Aquitarian cruiser shouldn't exist. It was destroyed, and yet... there it is. If we find out how a destroyed ship made it back to Earth, we'll find out what happened to them."
Blue's brow furrowed as he considered this. "If the ship was intact enough to be repaired," he said aloud, "why did it crash-land instead of making a controlled descent? Even if it wasn't damaged enough to burn up during re-entry, it would still have required extensive repairs. And for Aquitarian ships, the water used in repairs must be both abundant and extremely pure. It would also require specialized Aquitarian engineering knowledge."
Yellow was Aquitarian, and she had some knowledge of structural engineering and ship mechanics, but reconstructing an entire cruiser was beyond her abilities alone. However, if Echo had helped, it might have been possible. Echo was excellent at understanding complex systems in motion—how they interlinked, adapted, and operated dynamically. But following a strict, linear step-by-step process wasn't Echo's strength. Together, they might have managed part of the reconstruction, but could they really have pulled it off?
Blue narrowed his eyes. "It's possible, but even if Echo and Yellow knew exactly what to do, it wouldn't be enough. They'd still need more help to accomplish something of this magnitude. Could the other Rangers have contributed?"
Nova's tone grew sharper. "Building or repairing a starship wasn't like managing an aquarium. The team's four AIs—Echo, Aegis, Bastion, Prism—are powerful when synced, but even they would be stretched thin rebuilding an Aquitarian cruiser. The math had to add up, had to be perfect—one microfracture or structural imbalance and everything could fall apart. This level of coordination and collaboration was unlike anything we've ever seen from them. Constructing something so intricate demanded absolute precision and flawless teamwork, far beyond just technical expertise."
Blue let the question settle in his mind. "To my knowledge, they've never had to work at a level of coordination where every single action had to be perfectly aligned and if they had all that... why now? Why reappear at this particular moment?"
Dr. Niles interrupted their inner conversation. "They simply vanished... and returned exactly as they were. No aging, no deterioration, nothing. We've been monitoring the Elvanurus' pocket dimension around the clock. There's nothing to suggest they were trapped there, nor any fluctuation strong enough to account for their ten years of absence. Whatever energy fluctuations we've detected recently don't match up with their return. But the bigger question is how they arrived in that Aquitarian ship—one of the four we know was destroyed on the Ceres asteroid. How did a wrecked ship get from the asteroid to Earth? And why did it reappear now?"
Nova whispered, hesitating for a moment, "Some kind of transport relay? Energy tethering?
Blue stopped pacing, his mind flashing back to that day. He had jerry-rigged a teleporter to get off the asteroid, targeting the command center's teleport pad. But something had gone wrong. He ended up on Sangara's teleport pad, across the planet.
"Nova... what if they never died? What if the reactor explosion caused the spires to flood the entire area with a teleport field, trapping them in transport?"
The silence in his mind was filled with a sudden burst of calculations. Nova processed the idea. "It's possible," she said slowly. "The reactor explosion could have interfered with their teleport signatures. We were rushing, rigging the teleport systems on the fly. If their energy patterns weren't fully reconstituted... they could've been suspended. Caught in limbo for ten years."
Blue's heartbeat quickened, though he kept his voice steady. "When we first saw them," he began, thinking back to the moment they found the team, "they looked severely disoriented. We assumed it was because of the crash... but what if it wasn't?"
Nova's voice sharpened. "If they were stuck in transport for ten years, it would explain everything. To them, no time passed. One moment, they were on Ceres. The next... Earth. The only problem with that theory is that we haven't encountered any of the Elvanurus that would have been caught in the field either.
The likelihood that no one's reported a random elf corpse, toolkit, weapons platform, or one of our people in a random location is unlikely. At the very least, all of the gear we took had locator beacons. We would have detected them.
Could the Rangers have just been the first group that rematerialized?
Still doesn't explain the ship, though.