Walking through the tunnels on his way to the Indianapolis base, which was set to become the ACTF's new center of operations for this new phase of their battle, Sean found that Ryan hadn't been exaggerating the sheer monotony of the tunnels. The freshly-carved ones, at least; those that the ACTF had been working in had soundproofing, lights, and the occasional emergency backup power-supply to distinguish the tunnels that had been passed through by ACTF soldiers from those that hadn't. Sean had already left those parts of the tunnel behind, waving and calling a quick greeting to Alan Rookwood and Ivan Sumner as he ran past them.

Some people might have called putting soundproofing insulation this far underground paranoia, but as anyone who had dealt with their full attention had realized, nothing could be considered too paranoid when you were trying to deal with Chronos. The loss of Masaki Murakami had taught them what to expect if one of their allies who had worked for Chronos in the past was ever recaptured by the company.

Professor Odagiri may have been working on an anti-virus that would work to prevent those in the ACTF, and their civilian protectorates, from being processed in the first place, but he had plainly stated that he was at least a year away from any meaningful breakthroughs. Odagiri was a genius, so Sean was confident that he would be able to come through for them.

After all, this was the man who had managed to throw off Chronos' anti-rebellion virus while he was being killed by it. And he wasn't alone; a lot of scientists who had once worked for Chronos had sided with the ACTF after they'd been informed about the counter-virus that Odagiri had designed, the one that would free them from the virus at last. He didn't personally know just how many of Chronos' human personnel had defected for just that reason, but there were evidently enough of them for Atkins to consider their induction into the ACTF a viable option.

Sean was glad about that; those people deserved a second chance after all that Chronos had done to them.

Hell, even Aptom and his clones had agreed that they'd gotten a raw deal, after a bit of prodding. Speaking of Aptom, he was going to have a bit of apologizing to do when he ran into another of the guy's clones. He'd gotten a taste of what life was like for Chronos' Lost Numbers – or Lost Units, as they preferred to be called – and it had made him almost literally sick to his stomach.

He'd already known that Chronos was evil, anyone who'd fought them for even such a short time as he had would have known that just from seeing what they did to the innocent bystanders who had the bad luck to get between them and their enemy-of-the-day; terrorizing, kidnapping, and brainwashing murdering people was evil no matter who did it.

Thinking back on his first battles with Chronos, in that first year before he'd even heard of Aiden Atkins or the ACTF, he realized that he had to have been dealing with Lost Units without even knowing about it. Feeling some sympathy for what they must have been going through didn't make him any less aware of the fact that those things would have killed him without a second thought. They may have just been doing their jobs like any normal group of soldiers – and Aptom had said that even Lost Units were susceptible to Zoalord mind-control – but that didn't mean he was going to forgive them for what they'd done.

As he continued to run through the tunnels, Sean wondered just what this new year was going to bring.