When Jason had told her that there was a full house downstairs he hadn't been kidding. If anything, he'd been somewhat mild in his assessment of the amount of bodies gathered in the large family room of Mark's home.

When the busy murmurs and chairs shuffling across a hardwood floor met her ears on the stair landing, she felt a mild moment of panic. Much more than the embarrassment of Jason likely informing all gathered that he had interrupted something intimate between she and Mark, Princess felt a harsh sense of awkwardness at having to jump into an evening of explanation and assurances of being okay. She found herself looking up at the room with her daughter while entertaining the idea of slipping the both of them out of the window and back into oblivion.

At the sound of Mark's laugh at what must have been a hell of a joke, the feeling dissipated. There was no way he would allow anyone to put her through any of that tonight – at least not until he had held the privilege of hearing any and all explanations first.

She held her breath and let her exhale guide her into the room. She let a smile dance across her freshly glossed lips as she breezed into the room.

"Wow. Quite the party we have in here. She tugged her shirt lower and skittishly tilted to one side in a typical display of shy innocence. "Did my invite get lost in the mail?"

The words barely left her mouth before she was accosted by her partner, who actually managed to hug her, pick her up, and spin her all in one movement. "Cassie, baby. Your invite goes without saying." He set her feet on the floor but kept his hands on her hips as he looked into the small crowd. "Why have you been keeping these guys a secret from me? They're totally awesome."

She let out a short snort of amusement and cast her eyes at the gathering. As she had expected, the entire G-Force team was in presence. Each member held his or her own expressions of question at the way her partner so affectionately greeted her. At least one of them appeared to believe there was something more than just a working relationship between she and Damien, but the question was quickly put to rest by a hard grunt from her Squad leader.

"Anderson, you wanna look into that whole sexual harassment thing yet, kid?"

Damien pulled back with a groan and held his hands up in defeat. "I didn't grab her ass, Sarge."

"I was preempting it, Knight."

Princess smiled as she slipped around Damien and wandered to the table. She ignored a rather crude comment from her partner that involved some form of retribution by an Eagle if he'd gone so far, and then pressed her finger curiously to her lip as she peered at the array of products on the table. "What do we have here?"

Mark looked up at her in total confusion as he held a device in his hand that she hadn't used in months. "I don't get it. What is this thing and how do I work it?"

Tiny looked up out of an instruction manual from his seat beside his commander and looked upon him with about the same expression. "Mark, it looks like some kind of torture device. Why the hell would a woman want to use something like that?" He looked down at a pair of batteries in his large hand and shook his head. "Does it have any other control on it than an on/off button?"

Mark shrugged and looked back down at the apparatus. "I don't even see that button, Tiny."

Princess coughed when she finally identified the device and cast her wide eyes over to Jason. "Where? Why? Who and how?"

He thumbed at Lisa, who was giggling over tying a ribbon around the neck of a teddy bear. "I told you, she took me shopping."

"You must teach me the secret," Princess managed with a smile as she picked up two jars of baby food from the table and analyzed the contents. "I've failed more times than won when it comes to dragging Jason into a mall."

Lisa giggled and pulled the bear into her chest as Damien flopped loudly onto the couch beside her. "I have my ways, Princess. And besides, I figured you needed a few things while you're here."

Tiny let out an "a-ha" and flicked his fingers against the page. "Here is it, Mark. Right here, it says: Place the suction cup over the nipple and …" Several disgusted groans blocked out the rest of the instruction and he looked up with complete innocence. "What?"

Princess face was red as she swatted the contraption out of Mark's hand. "I haven't used one of those since Mandy was three months old. Please put it away." Her eyes shifted to Tiny. "And, yeah, torture is an apt description for it."

Damien gave a snicker from his position beside Lisa. "Hey, you might be able to find a new use for it, Commander."

Mark's eyes rose in question. "Oh, such as?"

"Well, it is a contraption designed only to … You know."

"No, I don't."

Jason's eyes flared and he found himself almost gagging to laugh. "Oh, shit. That is just sick, Damien."

Barron grunted in absolute disgust at his investigator and made sure to give him a slap across the back of his head as he walked by to take up position beside Princess. "You're a sick asshole, Knight. I want to remind you that there are women present who really have no desire to have any insight into your back room filth."

Princess let out a small chuckle and set the jars of food back on the table. "Thanks for the supplies, guys. Just let me know how much I owe you."

Mark grabbed her hand and gave her a tug to sit down beside him. "It's okay, Princess. I've got it covered."

"But…"

"I've got it," he said again with a look to tell her not to argue.

Her lips pursed as she stumbled half onto his knee and half onto the seat. She tried to find her place on the chair, only finding comfort when Mark set his arms across her shoulder and pulled her against him. "So?" She asked softly with a rise of her face to Barron. "To what do we owe the pleasure of everyone's presence tonight?"

Barron folded his arms across his chest. "I don't know about G-Force, Anderson; but I'm here to make sure you're okay and to plan how we're going to handle this latest development."

Mark answered his concerns quickly. "She and Amanda will stay here with me and be under constant protection until we've neutralized this threat against her."

"Then I am sure you will appreciate that my department have their own concerns with her safety – and the safety of her fellow officers – and will therefore want to offer protection of their own."

Mark pursed his lips and gave a curt nod. "I'm sure we can come to a mutual arrangement, but I can assure you she's safe with me."

Princess tucked her hair behind her ear and pulled up from Mark to sit straight in the chair. "You bring up a good point about the force, Sarge. We don't know how much Zoltar and his armies know about my life and me now. If he has a fix on my involvement with the Bomb Squad then that puts you all in danger."

Barron gave a snort. "Exactly."

Jason flicked a tiny diaper onto the table, after having tried to decipher the apparent hidden meaning in the images, and dropped his elbows onto his knees to enter the conversation. "I think I speak for my Commander when I say that you'll all have G-Force's complete protection from herein."

Mark agreed with a nod. "That goes without saying." He rubbed at his chin. "I wonder if this has anything to do with the sudden rise in dispatch calls for your squad, Sergeant Barron."

Barron nodded. "I was wondering the same thing myself, Commander." He unfolded his arms to pass across a legal-sized manila folder across to Mark. "When you had your Falcon at our facility I began to look into the rise of incidents and the potency of the devices found." He watched Mark separate from Princess to take the file and check its contents. "There is a pattern, and I have to express my annoyance at your department not being exactly truthful in the reason for G-Force presence at my station."

Mark's eyes didn't rise from the file. "I assure you that Lisa's presence at your facility was for an unrelated reason."

"I find that somewhat hard to believe, when the second your operative arrived the shit began to hit the fan."

Mark's eyes rose slowly over the file to narrow at the sergeant. "Again. Lisa's presence at your lab was not …"

Barron let out a very low growl as his arm thrust out to point a large finger at the door. "I lost a man today, Commander. I would prefer not to know that this could have been prevented by a forewarning from your department."

"Just what are you accusing us of, Sir?" Mark snapped.

Princess rose quickly to stand in between the two heads of the teams. "Mark, Sir, please. Before we start flinging accusations and create a pissing war, how about we go through the evidence?" She looked at Barron and then back to Damien. "That's our specialty, guys. Let's look through this information and analyze the crap out of it before we start an all-out war."

Mark looked up at Barron. "I agree. I will assure you, however, that until yesterday I did not know that my Swan was part of your unit. Centre Neptune has been monitoring the latest rise in incidents, but have taken little interest in anything beyond the new compound."

Princess' lips pursed into a tired, but thoughtful "o" shape and she stretched up and ran both hands through her hair. As her arms dropped as far back as her shoulders would allow, she paused and tilted her head and body in thought. Her eyes glassed over and seemed to lock on the edge of the table.

Every person in the room, sans Lisa, knew the stance and sudden shut-off expression. They practically held their breath as she worked through the information at hand.

Lisa leaned over to Jason and whispered softly under her breath in question of what was wrong with the only other woman in the room. He answered her with a single "just wait" rise of his finger. Her question only grew as she watched Mark slip silently to a side table to retrieve a laptop computer. He set it on the table in front of Princess and moved back into his seat on the couch. He kept his eyes on her lips as she talked herself through her mind's filing cabinet.

As fast as the Swan's trance had begun, she snapped out of it. Her green eyes fired with life as she flicked her gaze to each person in the room. "I need a computer."

"In front of you," Mark said through a smile. "She's warmed up and ready to go."

Princess dropped to her knees and immediately set her fingers flying across the keys. "Federation access, Commander?"

"Of course."

Damien snuck up behind her. "Talk to me Cass."

Her voice was somewhat detached when she outlined her ideas. With her eyes on the monitor and her hands flicking between the keyboard and mouse, it was somewhat unbelievable that she was able to even talk and make sense.

"I have a hunch that we're looking in to this all wrong. We've been finding this black powder all over the city inside various city transportation outlets."

Barron grunted in the affirmative. "Which is why the investigation teams are suggesting the transit system is the target."

She twisted somewhat on her knees to look upward at him. "But then tell me. If we have found all of this explosive compound, where is the big bang?" She looked back down at the computer and tabbed between windows. "The compound we've found has all been in small quantities. There is never enough to have anyone actually consider them the primary weapon."

"Until you see the power of this stuff," Damien countered. "Cass. You know as well as I do that this shit doesn't need to be in large quantities to blow a building apart." He shot his head up to his Sergeant. "And don't bring it up, Sarge. I know you want to, but just don't. We are all painfully aware of me almost destroying the lab with it."

Barron snorted. "Why do I need to bring it up when you do it yourself?"

Princess allowed herself a moment to smile, but remained fairly quiet as she leaned her chin into her palm to analyse one of her report submissions to the Federation. "I'm not doubting that there is enough for a big bang, Damien. What concerns me is our assessment of the target."

Mark slid down off the couch and dropped on his knees beside her. "What are you thinking, Sweetheart?"

Her lips pursed at the scent of beer on his breath. She reached forward to take his bottle for her own swig. She answered as she swallowed, which made her have to clear her throat after the first word. "Well … The subway is a viable target. It would cripple the city, but ultimately end up little more than a major inconvenience that will result in a few lost productivity hours."

Barron dropped heavily into the seat that Mark had vacated and scratched at his nose. "Which, for a terrorist organization, is the main goal. Screw the city, make them lose some money, make their point."

Jason entered the conversation at this point. His forearms still sat on his knees and he slouched a shoulder to turn toward the conversation. "Spectra isn't a terrorist group. They are a bunch of asshole murderers and thugs, but their goals are much loftier than, say, that Muslim group from the turn of the century."

"Al Keda?" Lisa questioned softly.

Jason gave a nod. "This isn't a holy-war, let's fuck everyone up kind of thing. Spectra want to destroy everything and just take over."

Princess widened her eyes and nodded in complete agreement. "Exactly." She looked up at her squad leader. "Sir. This particular compound requires a secondary incendiary device to detonate. If any of these supposed targets were … well, targets, then there would be a complete unit, rather than just piles of black powder."

Barron nodded and rubbed at his chin. "And the subway thing?"

Damien opted to answer that one, and did so as he slid off the couch to his knees and shuffled over to Princess. "Couldn't have been more different. That beast had "amateur" written all over it." He looked at Princess as if to ask permission and waited for a nod before he slid the computer toward him. "Good girl, you hacked into the Police DB."

Mark smiled and brushed her hair over her shoulder with a gentle sweep of his hand. "That's my girl."

She chuckled in embarrassment when he dipped his head to lay a light kiss on her shoulder. She shrugged to the side to escape. "I didn't need to hack in, Damien. We have outside access."

"We do?"

Barron grunted. "Let me guess. You were sleeping through that particular seminar."

"Hungover, actually," he retorted as he scrolled through the network files for the report in question. "You really need to hold those things in a more appropriate venue if you want us boys to concentrate."

"Like where, Knight? A strip joint?"

Damien grinned a toothy smile as Jason expelled a "Yeah!" and double clicked an icon to open up his files. "Okay, here we are. Subway bomb. That one was an Astrolite mixture." He smiled at the sound of Lisa's inhale and held his hands either side of him as if to illustrate his explanation. "The bomber had Ammonium Nitrate in this chamber, and anhydrous hydrazine on this side." He threaded his fingers together to make an "X" shape with his fingers. "They need to combine to go boom. I call it the post-mix bomb. The compounds don't mix until right before detonation. There was, like a mercury switch…" He paused to seek confirmation from Princess to the actual construction.

Princess smiled and took over. "To put it simply, while the bomb itself sounds pretty professional, the construction of it was so poor that the electronic switch could have tripped at any time. Once we were able to isolate and then deactivate the lead wire, neutralizing the switch and the device itself was fairly text book."

Mark rubbed at his chin. "So Princess. You've disarmed more than a handful of Spectran bombs. Did it feel familiar to you?"

She shook her head. "Absolutely not. Spectran bombs are fairly easy to work through because the makers are professional and don't want to blow themselves up in the making process. They need to get it in place without a premature ignition." She found herself swaying gently to one side in search of Mark's side. She found his shoulder and rested gently against it. "In my time with the Bomb Squad I have only maybe encountered one or two actual explosives that gave me flashbacks to my time with G-Force."

Baron piped up. "I still can't believe you were the Swan."

Mark smiled. "Princess is the Swan."

"Was," she corrected softly. "I was the Swan."

Mark's head tilted to one side. "You're not going to rejoin the team?"

"Can we talk about it later, Mark? Please? We're troubleshooting here."

"Yeah," Damien grunted, his displeasure at the possibility of losing his partner obvious. "How about we get back to things that go boom?" He began to tap a little more aggressively at the keyboard. "So the subway thing was an amateur with big dreams, but this other stuff along the transit line is what has your shackles up, right Cass?"

She nodded and rocked herself backward off her knees to settle herself into a cross-legged position on the floor. She pursed her lips to one side. "I don't know why, but I'm getting this strange feeling that the explosive is being moved via the transit system to the target area."

"That's pretty odd method of transporting explosives don't you think?"

She shrugged. "Then I don't get why we keep finding bits and pieces of it along the way. That is what I find so confusing. Bombers do not just dribble little things here and there to keep the dogs happy, they blow stuff up."

Barron grunted his agreement. "As we learned today."

Mark's head jagged quickly toward to room's eldest member. "Have your teams evaluated that yet?"

"Too soon for a determination, Commander. CSU teams can't get in there until the SIU do their thing." He took a long breath. "When you lose a man, the entire investigation takes on a different, and much longer, process."

Mark looked at Princess. "What are your thoughts?"

She drew her knees to her chest and ran a hand through her hair. "After what happened tonight, I want to say Spectra."

"Why? What is it about the situation that felt Spectran?"

She shrugged and hugged her knees. "It didn't feel right. It didn't feel like it usually does when we storm a place. It was – felt – strange." She could feel the stares of her squad partners on her. "The only thing that doesn't feel right for an attack by Spectra was the timing. The timing was off. You know that's atypical for Spectran bombers." She caught Mark's nod and continued. "When we entered the warehouse, the LED timer said we had four minutes. That's plenty of time to neutralize. Before we even got our kits down it blew."

Damien shuddered at the recollection and subconsciously stroked at his casted arm. "It was like we tripped a sensor somewhere and it just…" He tilted his head to one side and grimaced. "All I remember is walking behind Eric, Cassie yelled to us to run, and then I woke up underneath the building."

Barron angled his head to one side and frowned. "Anderson, you knew something was wrong before it blew?"

She shrugged like an innocent child. "I guess it was intuition." She tapped at her temple. "It was like a buzz right here that told me to run."

Mark narrowed his gaze and moved in closer to her. "Is it too soon to ask you to think back on it?"

She bit on her lip and clenched her eyes shut as if to force the memory. "We walked in and I looked to my left because I thought I heard something. Eric and Damien were behind me."

Mark pressed for more information. "Did you see anything?"

Her head shifted to a low tilt as her breath held in her chest. "I don't know if I could say it was anything I saw, more than it was how I felt."

"Gut feeling?"

Her eyes opened and she stared at the laptop keyboard. "No. It was like walking into an electrical field." She looked at Mark as if she was looking for the answer from him. "The air was so dry. It actually hurt to breathe. I could feel every hair on my body stand on end."

Barron gave a low growl from his chair. "That warehouse was supposed to be abandoned a long time ago and was scheduled for demolition at the end of Summer." He flicked his hand in request for the computer, to which Princess complied quickly. "It had been taken over by the Menendez drug Cartel and used as a Meth lab. The city's been hanging on to it as evidence for about eighteen months." He appeared to find the appropriate file and flicked his fingers on the monitor as through it was a piece of paper. "There was speculation that Menendez was financing some terrorist organization, but it couldn't be determined, nor proven, just who it was."

Mark leaned his forearm on the coffee table to give him enough leverage to maintain a twist to keep his focus on the big man on the couch. "So now you think it might be Spectra?"

He shrugged. "To be completely honest with you, Commander, our role extends only to any incendiary devices suspected on the property. My team hadn't been brought in because there was no threat of explosion bar the actual still itself. They had the detection bots go in there for a sweep, but didn't find anything."

Jason shrugged. "Then this whole conversation is pretty moot." He caught a glare and raised both hands in a flippant manner to say he was backing off. "I know it's a big deal and all, but if you guys had no involvement in the original case, Spectra wouldn't have any reason to target you guys specifically."

Princess shook her head to disagree. "But we were there this time, Jase." She slouched. "If there is a bomb, then who else gets called in?"

Lisa nodded. "She's got a point. There is no jacking around with who goes and who doesn't when a Bomb call comes. These guys are dispatched the second a call comes through." She slid off the couch to sit her ass on the floor and leaned her forearms on the coffee table. "If Spectra wanted to target a specific bomb division it would be easy – all they'd have to do is plant the weapon within their jurisdiction."

Mark shook his head. "No. If Zoltar knew where she was, he would have hit the department a long time ago."

"Unless he didn't know until yesterday." She caught his look and shrugged a shoulder up to her ear. "Well, we didn't know, did we?"

Barron scrolled through the information in the file and let out a breath as he set the computer back on the table. "With my team suddenly becoming celebrities and the duo's faces being plastered all over the press, I guess they found her."

Princess shuddered. "I don't want to think that Eric was killed because of me."

Mark stroked her arm. "It's not your fault, Sweetheart. Even if it was to draw you out, it's still Zoltar's fault."

Her eyes grazed across the faces of all on their way toward him. "But it is still because of me; of my connection to you: his greatest enemy."

Mark's eyes narrowed thinly. "And I will make him pay for what he has done to us." His expression and glance toward the hulking Sergeant Barron left no doubt that "us" referred to Princess' new team as well as his own. "Spectra crossed the line today and I swear to any deity watching that I will exact revenge for everything he's done."

Barron gave a hot snort. "As long as you share the honour, Commander. I will teach you the necessary forensic techniques to make sure noone can pin it on you." He caught Damien's stunned stare and thumbed at his nose. "He took a man from me today, Knight. He threatened my girl's little girl." He pounded at the left side of his chest. "That's my family he's screwing with."

Mark gave a firm nod in total agreement and extended his hand to Barron for a firm shake. "It's a deal, Sir."

Jason chuckled. "Deals between Devils. I'm on board."

Damien just seemed stunned. "I can't believe you just called us family, man."

Princess covered her mouth with her hands and giggled. "That makes you the bratty little brother."

Mark separated himself from Princess and leaned on the coffee table in a manner to suggest that it was time for work. He flicked his fingers to ask all to join him around the table and slid a pad of paper and a pen toward himself. "Then let's get to it. Fun and games is over. We need to formulate a plan of investigation and attack if we want to end this once and for all."