"So," Amy asked, stepping into the apartment and pulling the door closed behind her, "how did it go?"

"Wonderful," Cat said.

"Awful," Syd said at the same time.

Amy blinked, then turned to give Ryan a questioning look. He just shrugged in response.

"Syd wanted to try sparring with Cat in War-Form," he told her.

"Ah." Amy nodded sagely. "I wish I'd been around to see that."

"It was bullshit!" Syd complained. "Why the fuck didn't anybody tell me that she did jiu-jitsu in college!?"

"Language, Syd," Amy warned.

"Well, I'm sure you've heard that old saying about what happens when you assume, dear." Syd let out an almost-feline snarl, which did nothing to dim Cat's beaming, innocent smile. One finger tapped against her cheek in a thinking gesture. "Mmm... you're not upset that I won, are you?"

"No, Cat, I'm not upset," Syd bit out, sarcasm practically dripping from her words. "It's just for training. Why would I be upset that I lost five rounds in a row to a woman who didn't even know Changers existed a few hours ago?" Noticing the skeptical side-eye Amy was giving her, Syd whirled to face the taller woman. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," Amy replied in a too-casual tone. "I was just thinking about the time I beat you in that racing game. You said you weren't mad about losing, and then refused to talk to me for the rest of the month."

"I was twelve! Besides, you cheated!"

"How was I supposed to know that you're not allowed to look at the other player's screen? It's right there on the TV!"

"Ladies, please." Placing one hand on Amy's shoulder and the other on Syd's, Ryan steered the pair towards the kitchen. "For a first session, I think that everything went well. Cat still has a lot to learn, but her foundation is solid." Tilting his head to indicate their new teammate, he added, "You obviously know how to handle yourself in a fight already."

"Cat didn't just do jiu-jitsu in college," Amy pointed out, echoing Syd's earlier complaint. "She was the president of the school's BJJ club... that's where I met her, actually. Our team was pretty good. In my senior year, we went to the nationals."

"Huh," Ryan said. "I would never have figured her for the type of woman who enjoys bending people into pretzels in her free time."

"Please, darling, you're making me sound like some sort of sadist," Cat protested, her smile growing a bit self-conscious. Gesturing down at herself, she continued, "It's a great workout! This kind of body doesn't just happen by accident, you know."

Syd's gaze followed the movement, then trailed down to stare at her own chest. Petulantly, she wrapped both of her arms around Ryan's forearm and pulled herself against him, possessively trapping him in her meager cleavage. When Cat looked away, she stuck her tongue out at her.

"Okay, so Syd learned what it feels like to get put in a triangle choke. Anything else I missed while I was out?"

Amy's comment immediately brought to mind the image of Syd and Cat, lying tangled together on the warehouse floor in their form-fitting armored suits. In the memory, Syd's neck and shoulders were clamped between Cat's thighs, her hips raised and back bowed, writhing as she struggled to free herself from the other woman's iron grip...

Ryan shook his head to clear the intrusive thoughts.

"We salvaged the last of the captured Mark-I Changers to get Cat up to Level 2," he told her, subtly shifting in his seat as he spoke so that he could adjust his pants. "Cat took Accelerate Recovery as her next Ability, and we spent some time testing it out."

Syd caught the movement. She smirked, but thankfully declined to comment.

"Accelerate Recovery? How does that work?"

"Magic healing spell," Syd said. "She used it to patch us up."

"Oh! You know, I noticed that Ryan seemed to be having less difficulty moving around. Are you all better now?"

"Better than before, anyway. See?" He lifted the corner of his shirt to illustrate. The puckered burn covering his side remained prominently visible, but it had scabbed over and was starting to recede at the edges. "Don't listen to Syd, though, it's not a magic cure-all... it just makes you recuperate faster. With a few more applications, I should be back up to a hundred percent in a day or two."

Without letting go of her tight hold on his arm, Syd shrugged.

"I dunno, boss. It fixed me right up."

"What did you even need it for?" Amy wondered. "You weren't still hung over, were you? I tried to warn you –"

"No... that wasn't the problem. After last night, I was just, um, y'know... a little... sore." She glanced down. "Twice in one day may have been too much for me."

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Amy blinked again, confused, then her cheeks flamed scarlet when she belatedly realized what Syd meant.

Cat looked from Amy to Syd with a considering expression, then from Syd to Ryan.

A bit sheepishly, Ryan cleared his throat.

"Right. Well, uh, that's how we spent our afternoon. Overall I'd say that it was a productive training session. How about you, Amy? I know there were some leads you wanted to follow up on – did you come up with anything that we can use?"

"Ah!" Amy visibly started when all eyes in the room turned towards her. "...actually, yes, I think I found something. I wanted to tell you about it as soon as I got home, but..." She waved helplessly. "...I got sidetracked."

Reaching down, she pulled out a yellow-brown manila envelope and placed it on the table between them.

"Take a look at this," she said. "Remember I told you that one of the Enforcer names you gave me recently updated his social media profile?" When Ryan nodded, she continued, "I did some digging, and it turns out that he isn't the only one who suddenly popped back onto the grid in the last few months."

"Owen Henson," Syd read off the top sheet. "Age forty-four. Single, no kids. Professor with a degree in geological engineering. Jeez, this guy sounds as boring as he looks. Resumed teaching classes after a leave of absence at a satellite campus in Washington state... hey, wait a minute. Isn't that pretty close to the state park where you were working when the aliens grabbed you, Ryan?"

"Yeah, it is," he confirmed with a frown. "He was abducted at around the same time that I was, too. I remember thinking it was a funny coincidence when I met him in Enforcer training."

"It might not have been a coincidence, love," Cat put in. "You're assuming that they were taking people at random, aren't you?"

"That was how it looked to me. If there was a pattern, it was one that I never managed to figure out."

"Hm." She tilted her head, contemplating. "What do you think, hon?"

"If it was just the one guy, I'd be inclined to call it inconclusive... but all three of the others who turned up were active in the same general area. Two of them got flagged in NCIC when they renewed an expired driver's license. The third opened a bank account a few months ago in," Amy glanced down at the page, "Kennewick. He made a huge initial deposit, then started renting out construction equipment."

"Construction equipment?" Ryan asked, sliding the pile over to his side of the table. His eyebrows went up as he scanned the list. "Wow, you weren't kidding. Five hundred thousand dollars' worth of bulldozers sounds like a lot... can't imagine what they could be planning to do with all of that."

"I don't know, either, but right now it's the only solid lead we have. If those people are still working for the Zorvax, and we know where they're operating..."

"...then we might be able to catch one of them coming or going from the main base," he finished for her.

"Why does that matter?"

Three sets of eyes turned to stare at Cat, who gave them a diffident smile in response.

"Sorry, dears, it's just that I don't think anyone has explained to me what we're actually trying to accomplish right now... beyond preventing an alien invasion, of course."

"The Changer that we gave you has a transponder built into it," Ryan explained. "Same with the ones Syd and Amy are wearing. Using the signal that the transponders send out, the Zorvax can track our current location... that's how they know where to teleport the Enforcer teams that they've been sending after us. If I could establish a direct connection to an open command terminal, then I'd be able to disable the transponders, and that would buy us some breathing room."

"If," Cat repeated. "I'm guessing there's a catch."

"There is, and it's a big one. The only place I'm aware of that we can find a command terminal is inside the Zorvax main base."

"Which we currently don't know the location of," Syd noted, "beyond the fact that it's somewhere on Earth." She paused. "Probably."

"Right. And even if we do figure out where it is, there's only one way to get in and out, to the best of my knowledge – by using the teleporter."

"...so you think that we can use the people Amy found to get inside?"

"That's a possibility. Even if they don't lead us directly to the base, though, we might be able to get some information out of them that will bring us a step closer. Like Amy said, they're the only solid lead we've found so far."

"I think it's certainly worth checking out," Amy agreed, tidying up the table as she spoke. "For all we know, there could be a perfectly innocent explanation for their reappearance. Maybe they're even escapees like Ryan who were able to get away from the Zorvax, and now they're on the run... or maybe the Zorvax are planning some kind of secret operation that we need to stop. There's only one way for us to find out."

Syd already had her phone out and was tapping away furiously.

"Going from here to Kennewick, Washington by car would take us seventeen hours," she informed them. "Longer, if we hit rush hour traffic. That's a lot of driving. Call it four days, round trip, plus however long it takes us to do our thing once we get there."

"And I've already used up a lot of my time off for the year," Amy said. "Not to say that saving the world isn't important enough to be worth going negative on vacation days for! It's just, you know... my job..."

"Don't worry, I understand," Ryan reassured her. He turned back to Syd, who had reattached herself to him, and suggested, "We're on the clock, too... it would be better to take care of this sooner rather than later. What if we flew there instead?"

"Wouldn't that be dangerous?" Amy's expression was skeptical. "A plane would be a terrible place for a fight. There's no room to move around, and civilians everywhere. What if the Zorvax attack while we're in mid-flight?"

"It'd probably be safer than driving, honestly. The portal targeting system is nowhere near precise enough for them to try dropping an Enforcer team onto a moving aircraft. Worst-case scenario, they come after us once we're back on the ground – and that would just leave us in the same position as if we'd driven there."

"If it means we don't have to camp out in the woods again, I vote for flying," Syd said.

He turned to Cat, who made a dismissive gesture.

"Don't ask me, handsome, you're the team leader. I'm still trying to wrap my head around this whole situation."

"Amy?"

The policewoman grunted thoughtfully, then fished out her own phone.

"Fine, you win. Flying it is. I think I should have enough saved for airfare..." she began.

"Aaand done," Syd interrupted her. "Four tickets, first class. We're leaving tomorrow morning." She looked up at Ryan. "Do you think I need to pack a bathing suit?"