Eugene "Skull" Skullovitch's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Skull moved through the predawn wasteland, the journal tucked against his chest where his jacket used to protect things that mattered. The northwest perimeter wasn't far, but every step felt like walking toward something he couldn't take back. The apartment building rose from the rubble like a broken tooth. Peeling paint hung in strips. Windows gaped empty. In front of it, two skeletons in faded fatigues sat propped against the wall, positioned like they were keeping watch. Someone had arranged them that way. Someone had been here recently enough to care about sending a message. Skull's claws tightened on the journal. This wasn't random. He circled the building twice before he saw it. Scratched into the concrete beside the entrance, barely visible in the gray light: *K. HART*. The name hit him like a fist. Kimberly. The Pink Ranger. The one who'd told him the mutation could be controlled if he just trusted the process. The one whose data he'd believed over his own instincts. He'd seen the flaws in her research, questioned the timeline, felt the wrongness in his gut — and signed off anyway because she was a Ranger and he was just Skull. She'd promised him it was safe. He opened the journal with shaking talons and flipped to the technical notes. Her handwriting filled every page. Mutation vectors. Reversal theories. A morpher diagram sketched in the margins, the same iridescent shimmer he remembered from her belt. At the bottom of the last entry, eight words: *I was wrong. I'm sorry. I can fix this.* Skull closed the journal and looked at the skeletons, at the careful way they'd been positioned. She'd been waiting here. Maybe she still was. He didn't move toward the building. He turned around and started walking back the way he came. Some people didn't get to fix what they broke. Some trust, once spent, didn't come back just because someone finally admitted they'd been wrong. He'd come looking for answers, and he'd found one: he wouldn't let her judgment replace his own. Not again.