Ryan's meal, which Sean had watched him consume with a sense of vague amazement mixed with mild nausea, had consisted of two quarter pound steaks, an entire plate of corndogs, a bowl of strawberries about the size of his head, and three full pitchers of water to wash the entire mess down. Now the two of them were making their way back to their respective rooms; they were just a couple doors down from each other, so that was a welcome development.

"Where the heck do you put it all, Ryan?"

"What'd you mean?"

"All that food you just ate—where do you find the room for it?"

"You know, sometimes I wonder about that myself," the red-haired Guyver said, laughing.

Sean laughed as well, wondering for a minute if Ryan was hiding something, but then he shrugged it off. If the guy wanted to try and bulk up – not something Sean thought he needed, since Ryan seemed to have a wiry muscularity about him already – it wasn't really any of his business. When they started nearing the corridor leading to their respective rooms, Sean paused as a thought came to him.

"Hey, Ryan?"

"What?"

"Are you tired?"

"Digesting, mostly. Why'd you ask?"

"I was thinking we could maybe run a patrol of the city," he said. "We could get to know each other a bit better, and I could give you a rundown of the situation here."

"It'd be nice to get your perspective on that," the other boy said. "We're heading out now, right?"

"That's the idea."

Slapping a companionable hand on the redhead's right shoulder, Sean turned him around and started back toward the cafeteria. That was closer to the main exit than their rooms, at least in this makeshift base they'd set up. It was more of an outpost than anything, but they'd needed to be closer to Chronos' center of operations if they were going to be able to do any real damage to the company.

The blood tests that they'd been doing on the soldiers prior to attempting to recruit them into the ACTF had shown that several of the soldiers had undergone Zoanoid processing. The markers were all there—easy to spot with the tests that Odagiri and their other scientists had developed. He personally didn't know very much about them, just that they worked and that there were certain telltale signs in the blood that would indicate whether someone was a Zoanoid or not.

"Are we heading back to the cafeteria?"

"Do you want to?" Sean asked, raising an eyebrow. He knew now that Ryan could pack it in with the best of them, but that would be ridiculous.

"No; I've had my fill for the night."

That's a relief, Sean thought wryly. "We'll make it to the main concourse soon. From there it's just straight ahead to the main entrance."

"We're heading out the main entrance? Isn't that kinda dicey?"

"Don't worry," he said, glad to see that Ryan had at least some concern for security. "Everyone here knows us. Well, they know me, at least. I'm sure they'll find out about you soon. If we were at the main base we'd have to be more careful," Sean mused aloud, "but since we're all the way out here, the only people we really have to worry about are the Zoanoids and the scientists who work for Chronos."

"What about the Sleeper Units?"

"What's a Sleeper Unit?"

"You mean you don't know about them?"

"I'm asking, aren't I?" he said, slightly apprehensive about what Ryan's answer was going to be.

"Oookay," Ryan said, sounding shaky and slightly unnerved by the situation. "Sleeper Units – that's what Chronos calls 'em – are people who've been made into Zoanoids without knowing it."

"What?!"

How could Chronos – even as sick as they were – think of doing that kind of thing?!

"Yeah; just when you think those scum suckers can't sink any lower."

He sounded like he was talking more to himself than anyone else, but Sean agreed with him implicitly. Anyone who could do that kind of thing to innocent bystanders deserved to be shot.

"So, aside from-"

"Crouger! Atkins wants to see you back in the infirmary!"

Sean turned as Ryan did, looking over his shoulder at David O'Neil. "What for?"

"He didn't tell me exactly what it was, Barker," O'Neil said tersely, "but I can tell you that he wants the kid back in the infirmary five minutes ago. He didn't sound happy while he was saying it, either," the man added, his warning obviously directed at Ryan.

Ryan's eyes glazed over for a few seconds, probably spacing out again, then he made a face. "Well, might as well get this over with."

With that, the three of them made their way back to the infirmary. Sean wondered just what Atkins could want with Ryan—O'Neil had made it clear that the Colonel was angry rather than worried. Even as he walked Sean was wondering just what could have made him feel that way about Ryan.

Ryan was a Guyver, after all, someone who could do a lot of good for them in their battle against Chronos. He didn't know what would make Atkins angry at someone who could give them that much of an edge in their future battles – and there were bound to be plenty of them – against Chronos. But now that they were all standing outside the infirmary, he was probably going to find out.

"Crouger," Atkins said, his voice carrying undertones of a snarl. "You think you want to tell me what this is?"

"It's an X-ray of my back," Ryan said, the lilt at the end of a sentence almost making it a tentative question.

"Real funny, wiseass," Atkins growled. "Take a closer look."

Sean watched as the younger Guyver strode calmly over to the screen and took a closer look. "All right, I'm stumped," he said, after making a big show of looking over the image on the screen. "Care to share with the rest of the class?"

"First off, Ryan, that isn't an X-ray," Dr. Greymalkin said, sidling up to the redhead and pointing at the image on the screen. "It's a map of your nerve endings." The man looked grave, and Sean wondered what was going on. "You have more nerves in your spine than I have ever seen on any human being in my entire career. Even Sean, with the alterations that the Guyver made to his body to accommodate itself, doesn't have as many nerves in his back as you do. I've also determined that some of them extend down the full length of both your arms and terminate at your fingertips; there are also others that extend down both your legs. There's also this." He pressed a button, and the image of Ryan's spinal cord switched to what was presumably his DNA. "Your genetic code shows clear signs of tampering," he said seriously.

Just then starting to realize the full implications of what Dr. Greymalkin had said, Sean turned to Ryan. The other Guyver was still looking at the image on the screen. He was pretty calm, and he looked confused enough that Sean might have been willing to believe he was as innocent in all this as he looked. But that… how the hell had he not noticed that there was another Guyver-Zoanoid?! And now… he was the one who had brought Ryan into the base.

That meant that he was going to have to be the one to deal with him.

"According to your DNA profile, you should look like this."

The image on the screen changed to something that Sean could only describe as a humanoid eel. It had the broad shoulders of a human, but the neck was longer than any human's had a right to be. Then there was the head, with its gaping mouth that looked like some ungodly cross between a catfish and a lamprey. The inhumanly round, yellow eyes, and the round pebble-like structures on the back of the neck didn't make him feel any better about bringing Ryan into the base, either.

He was just thankful that this was a temporary base.

None of the others in the room tried to stop him when he grabbed Ryan's collar – not even Ryan himself, though that could have just been because he knew he wasn't getting out of this base alive – but the Zoanoid had a weirdly calm expression on his face. It was as if nothing Sean could do would faze him. As if he didn't care if he lived or died.

And, combined with what they had been talking about just before Atkins had called them back to the infirmary… How could I have been so stupid?! Sean berated himself. Ryan must have been able to find out that he was one of Chronos' Sleeper Units, probably after he'd come into contact with the Guyver. He'd been trying to warn them all about what Chronos was doing to people, and Sean had been all but ready to kill him!