The trip had been long, more than a little harried in places, and boring for the most part. Personally, Ryan was just glad to have it over and done with. The house itself was pretty nice, settled into some valley or other that looked like it would have a nice selection of plants. That is, it would have if he'd ever had the chance to see it in daylight. But no, during the day they were all confined to the inner areas of the house.

He knew it was to keep any of Chronos' Zoanoids from figuring out that there were actually people staying in what he'd been told was made up to look like some old abandoned shack, but he'd have been lying if he said he was completely okay with that. However, the one thing he was completely okay with was having his mom here. She and Shizu seemed to get along pretty well, probably since both of them liked to cook so much.

He'd pretty much gotten used to not seeing daylight – Mom hated the fact that they all had to be functionally nocturnal and was scowling more often when she thought nobody was looking – and it was nice to be able to see the stars from someplace where it was dark enough that they just seemed to go on forever. Sometimes he even got to watch the sunrise before he had to duck back into his room to avoid one of King Bastard's lectures.

Of course, right now wasn't really the time to think about all those kinds of things—now it was more time for breakfast. He could already almost taste his mom's cooking, since she and Shizu usually alternated those kinds of chores to give the other some time off. Mom always seemed to know when someone was working himself too hard, and she wouldn't stand for it. It was just one of the things that made her who she was.

Heading down into the breakfast room, which was windowless so they could have actual lights on in there, he took a seat at the table and watched as she set out the dishes. He was going to be helping to wash those, the way he always did when his mom was the one tapped to do the cooking, so he at least wanted to know what he was going to be dealing with.

XxXxX

When he woke up, from another one of those dreams where three people who he could only vaguely make out stood around a pair of graves – one empty, one apparently filled – and the one on his right held a hand out to him, Sean sat up and scrubbed at his face. He could never tell if the rightmost figure wanted him to join the group or was just trying to pull him down into that open grave. Hell, he couldn't even tell if those three people he kept seeing were male or female, let alone what their motives were or might be.

He'd talked to Cori about it a few times, back when the dream had first started appearing, and all she had said was that it was strange. Normally he didn't put much stock in dreams, since reality was what was important as far as he was concerned, but this dream had been showing up every night for the last two weeks. That meant that it either had to mean something, or his subconscious just wasn't what it used to be.

But for now, he pushed the dream to the back of his mind and went to go take a shower. He and Cori were staying with Lieutenant Carl Richards; the man looked enough like Cori that she could pretend she was his young cousin up for a visit. They at least didn't have to lie about the relationship that he and Cori had.

And, thankfully, no one seemed to be getting too curious. He was sure it helped that none of the soldiers who worked for the "Combat Research Division" – the ACTF's cover name – were well-regarded by the rest of the Army. Not that anyone who was actually on the inside would be stupid enough to underestimate the importance of what they were all doing. They were fighting to save the world from some very sick people, after all.

Not that most of Chronos' employees could be considered "people" in anything but the loosest sense of the word.

Still, there were some people associated with Chronos who could be considered good, or at least as good as anyone could be when they were stuck down in that underground hell. The men he was even now going to visit were two of the exceptions to the rule: they had escaped from Chronos and were even now helping the ACTF to devise weapons and armor to fight Chronos' Zoanoids on even ground.

With how much those men knew about Chronos and their Zoanoids, Sean felt that it was only a matter of time before the Armored Hunters had the kind of weaponry they would need to fight Zoanoids and win much more often than they lost. Larry Johanson and Barney Sislak had been killed in one of Chronos' increasingly frequent raids on their off-base outposts, and he knew that he wasn't the only one who wanted a little payback.

That was one of the reasons he liked those two so much: they hated Chronos as much as he did. There were obviously some things that they weren't quite ready to talk about yet, mostly things involving Chronos' Arizona base and the massacre there. Sean wasn't about to push the issue, as Professors Odagiri and Yamamura were friends of his, and he didn't want to remind them of things that were probably best left forgotten.

Still, it had always been interesting talking to them. They had a lot of stories they could tell—not just about Chronos and their Zoanoids, but about other people who were fighting against Chronos. Masaki Murakami sounded like a good guy, dedicated and tough, someone Sean wouldn't mind getting to know. He and Cori both agreed that what had happened to his wife and son was awful, and Sean personally hoped that Murakami would at least be able to keep his son safe.

The kid would probably have been safer staying with the ACTF, but Sean more than most could respect just what kind of paranoia this life bred. And just how it messed with your mind. He'd have been the first to admit that if he hadn't known these people as well as he did, he wouldn't have let them get anywhere near Cori.

Continuing on his way up through the base, Sean waved to a few of the non-ACTF soldiers he passed on his way. A few of them had tried to recruit him to the part of the Army that could be completely overrun by Zoanoids for all he knew. Finding out that some of the soldiers had been processed against their will was sick, but Sean had to admit that that was about what he'd expected from Chronos, though Professor Odagiri's reaction to Sean telling him that – a weary sigh, a sad look, and the assertion "you're young" – hadn't done much for self-confidence. If there were worse things that Chronos had done… he didn't want to think about it.

Continuing on his way to Yamamura's and Odagiri's shared laboratory, Sean paused for a moment to look at the racks of weapons that the ACTF had managed to gather for themselves. It was a good selection; the ammo might not have been able to do much more than annoy those new Zoanoids that Chronos had started sending after them, but everyone here was working on new types of weaponry in their own capacity.

The input from the two Professors did a lot in helping them to figure out what they needed to deal with different breeds of Zoanoid. He'd even found out that there were nine main branches of Chronos, one for each of the Zoalords who held dominion over what were known as Sections in Chronos' terminology. Nine Sections for twelve Zoalords; Sean didn't think that quite worked out, but then maybe the Zoalords were different.

The Zoalord he'd killed certainly didn't seem like he'd be able to deal with sharing the world with nine different men.

It was a bit strange, the way neither Professor Odagiri nor Professor Yamamura knew about Fulton Balcas or what had been going on in Los Angeles in general. But then, from what they had been saying most Chronos scientists didn't keep abreast of what was going on outside of their respective departments. He didn't really understand why that was the case, but it was.

XxXxX

When he woke up, that strange voice calling to him the way it had been for the last week and a half, and Ryan swore softly. As if it wasn't enough that he'd had his life effectively ruined by some alien thing that had stuck itself into his back, something else was trying to drag him off to find something that just had to be connected to the thing. He couldn't be unlucky enough to have attracted the attention of two alien artifacts.

He hoped not, at least.

Since he'd at least gotten a good night's sleep, albeit one with really weird dreams, Ryan hauled himself out of bed and went to go get breakfast. He was hoping his "normal" routine would help him forget that weird dream he'd had, the same way it had done for his other dream—at least the ones that didn't fade away a few hours after he woke up. Of course, that would have been nice, too.

Heading for the kitchen, Ryan paused to sniff the air the way he'd taken to doing, trying to see if he could determine who was cooking just by the scent of the food. It smelled like Shizu was the one who had been tapped this morning. It was one of his mom's ideas: having so many people in the house meant some of them were bound to have different tastes in food, so she had come up with the idea of trading recipes with Shizu.

It worked out pretty well, since he'd have been the first to admit that having to eat the same kind of food day in and day out would have driven even him crazy. Hell, eating nothing but lasagna for three weeks straight would have driven him out of his mind, and he loved that stuff more than pizza. Well, more than most kinds of pizza, anyway.

Still, Shizu's cooking wasn't anything to sniff at – except for obvious reasons – and Mom clearly needed some time off, so there you were. Shizu was nice, and a good cook besides, so things weren't as bad as they could be.