The gate was unlocked when they pulled up to the driveway that led to the forge. The light overhead cast everything into long shadows and she couldn’t help but think that a whole squad of SWAT could be waiting for them within. Nicole almost panicked as a bush rustled, thankfully a familiar form cd in purple stepped out of the treeline, spear slung over his shoulder with an easy confidence.

  “That fucker did that on purpose,” Kay muttered, rexing her grip on the steering wheel as she did.

  Even as the tension bled out of Nicole, she could tell that Maraline was making up for it in spades. Rangers meant danger, especially with her impnts being offline. Even a well trained person would pose a threat to her as she was, which meant she was putting her full trust into Nicole to not screw her over.

  It was touching and Nicole was determined to live up to the faith her friend had in her.

  “Welcome back,” Jeff said, leaning against his spear as he ignored Kay’s gre. “I see you found our wayward friend.”

  “Among others,” Kay said pointedly. “Gonna need a full team meeting for this one, apparently it’s a long story.”

  Jeff paused, then ducked his head to look into the vehicle and whistled. “Yeah, I’d say that involves a tall tale or three. Alright, let’s get away from the main road before someone gets curious why a Ranger is hanging around this random driveway.”

  Kay put the vehicle into drive and started down the makeshift road without a further word and Nicole let out a weak breath. She knew that her team would have strong words about bringing Maraline back with her, and she was especially nervous about how Grace would take it, but for the moment she just wanted to enjoy a moment of respite.

  They were safe, and not at the mercy of some being or organization that was so far above them. That alone brought with it a comfort that Nicole hadn’t felt since she made her deal with Sincir. As much as she was happy to continue with her Ranger work, doing so as what essentially amounted to a corporate sponsored stooge had never sat well.

  Even if he did give her as much freedom as she wanted.

  Nicole had been stuck in a gilded cage, one that she didn’t necessarily hate, but it bothered her all the same. Now she didn’t technically need them, so long as she could maintain control of that otherworldly power that flowed freely through her. Yes, she was stronger than she was under the old morpher, but there were no safety systems in pce.

  A repeat of her near death was something that she risked with every transformation.

  The Progenitor had helped her learn to control things, guided her through meditations that were documented from the civilization that first discovered the Source, of the warriors that first learned to control it long before the technology to harness it ever existed.

  Honestly, the entire thing sounded a little too Xianxia for her taste, and there was no way in hell she could ever let Becca know about that connection. Unfortunately, she would probably make it within five minutes of talking to The Progenitor. That entire conversation would just be the worst and unfortunately all Nicole would be able to do is endure the resulting excitement of a nerd affirmed.

  A gentle thunk rang out from the car roof and Nicole once again almost reached for that flowing well of power within her only to pause when Kay let out an exasperated sigh. Then she turned an angry gre upwards and punched the ceiling.

  “Jeff, must you insist on riding on my van’s roof?”

  “Better than walking,” he answered.

  Before the argument could continue, the treeline broke and the grounds of the farm came into view. Nicole looked around, surprised at how dark everything was, but at the same time, there were fugitives hiding on the premises. That she was technically one of them wasn’t lost on her.

  Kay pulled the van into the detached garage and the door began to shut behind her. The lights in the building were dim, casting everything in deep shadow. Jeff hopped off the roof with fluid grace, his morph dropping in shattered prisms as he hit the concrete. He turned back to the van with a grin and opened the passenger door just as Nicole undid her seatbelt.

  Then promptly pulled Nicole out and into a crushing hug.

  “Gd you’re safe,” he said, squeezing tight.

  Nicole almost broke right there, fighting back the tears as she returned the hug. SHe’d missed her friends in the time she was away, and being welcomed back was reassuring in a way she didn’t know she needed. The sm of a van door shutting broke the moment as Kay hopped out and then flung the passenger slide door open.

  “Come on,” Kay said, the words spoken as a command. “Nicole trusts you, which is the only reason I’m asking instead of forcing.”

  “No need to be rude,” Maraline said, stepping out of the van. She held the same poise as she always did when presenting her best face to the public, yet she cked the deadly edge of a warrior waiting to strike. “I am here of my own will, and no, I am not being tracked.”

  Kay raised an eyebrow in question. “Awfully certain, aren’t you?”

  “Her impnts were removed,” Nicole cut in quickly. “That’s part of what we need to discuss with the team.”

  Kay’s other eyebrow rose to join the first as Jeff whistled. “Okay, I can see how that warrants consideration. I’ll admit, half the reason I’m entertaining this is that Maraline knew the lyrics to all the Pony songs.”

  Jeff’s eyes widened as he grinned, stepping up to the Syn woman. “Oh, that sounds like something I need to hear for myself.”

  Nicole nodded as Maraline started to sing, eyes scanning over the room as a frown grew on her face. “Where’s Grace? I figured she would be the first one to tackle me.”

  “She’s out with Devon checking a perimeter arm,” Jeff said, amused as Maraline did indeed know the lyrics to the wrapping of winter. “I imagine they’ll be back any moment.”

  “Should we be worried about that?” Nicole asked.

  “Probably,” a familiar voice said.

  Nicole turned, her frown dropping as she caught sight of the familiar red of her girlfriend’s uniform. She was fnked by Devon’s silver, but that wasn’t what caught her attention, or who spoke for that matter. A third person stood between them, wearing a familiar form fitting suit and tie.

  “We found the cause of the arm,” Grace said as she dropped her morph. “She was just standing there, waving at the motion detector.”

  Anita chuckled with a shrug. “It was the closest thing I could think of to knocking.”

  Nicole didn’t care about any of that, instead opting to rush forward and nearly leap into her girlfriend’s arms. Grace squawked in surprise, but caught her all the same, spinning to bleed off momentum. Nicole took a deep breath of that familiar scent that smelled of home and finally allowed herself to rex for the first time in nearly a week.

  “I fucking missed you,” Nicole said, tears prickling at her eyes.

  Grace didn’t answer with words, but Nicole found herself nearly crushed under the strength of her girlfriend’s arms, not that she cared. After so much time in the jungles of that damn cave, Nicole would savor the moment for as long as she could.

  “Aww, ain’t this sweet,” Anita said, interrupting the moment.

  “Do you mind?” Grace snapped.

  Anita huffed. “Sure, but I do think we should address the Syn in the room sooner rather than ter.”

  “The what?” Devon asked, but he was already looking at Jeff as he ughed along with something Maraline had said. His shoulder was slung over her shoulder and even Kay was smiling at whatever was going on. “Fucking hell, it’s her!”

  Sword and shield fshed into his hands as he kicked off the ground with explosive force. Nicole’s eyes widened as she watched him move in slow motion, the power within already rising up to answer her unspoken call. Negative light fshed through the space as her hand reached out and caught Devon by the ankle before he could do something foolish.

  The force of his motion almost pulled Nicole off her feet, but she simply adjusted her stance and braced, cutting off all of his forward momentum. Devon fell to the floor with an undignified thump and Nicole let out her breath. A sucked in breath drew her gaze to where Grace was staring with a hanging jaw.

  “Well, that’s unexpected,” Anita said.

  And Nicole was promptly pulled into another hug from her girlfriend. “You got your morpher working!”

  If her arms weren’t currently pinned, Nicole might have rubbed the back of her head. “Not exactly. It’s part of the long story I need to rey to everyone. Speaking of, please tell me Becca and Colin made it here safely.”

  “Yeah,” Grace confirmed without dey. “They’re both in the house asleep.”

  “We should probably wake them,” Nicole said with a sigh. “Becca would kill me if she missed this one.”

  “Oh, this I’ve got to hear,” Anita said, pulling up a chair. “I can’t wait for the excuse you have for why you went missing for a week then managed to return with a Syn General in tow.”

  Nicole let out a mirthless chuckle as she considered just where to begin. Well, at least she had a few minutes to figure that out as Kay went to fetch the sleeping couple. It was already a long night, and it was shaping up to be longer still.

  “This better be good,” Becca muttered as she was all but herded into the garage.

  The poor girl had never been a night person, and getting woke up at ass A.M. was never one of her fondest experiences. Nicole knew that, but this was too important to wait for until morning. Colin trailed behind her, looking far more alert, but was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Becca paused as she squinted against the harsh lights, looking over everyone present with some the sort of detached ambivalence of someone who just wanted to go back to bed.

  It surprised me that Kay hadn’t told her the reason for being woken in the middle of the night, but sometimes she let her chaos gremlin side dictate her choices. Nicole caught the exact moment that Rebecca’s eyes trailed over her with their tired gze, only for it to all vanish in an instant as they snapped back to Nicole’s morphed form.

  “How the fuck,” Becca muttered, walking right up to her. “Nicole, that is you, right?”

  Nicole chose that moment to dismiss the morph and let her best friend see. Her clothes were still the rustic fare that she’d been given, and in hindsight it was a bit of a surprise that the cops hadn’t said anything about it given the Renfaire was long since cancelled for the year. Nicole smiled hesitantly at her best friend, unsure of where exactly to begin given how invested Becca was into the research.

  “I suppose I should start with the teleport,” Nicole said, addressing everyone. “I’ll admit, I expected to end up on a Syn ship in orbit, but something else happened. We ended up in a jungle that happened to be buried deep underground with a stone acting as an artificial sun.”

  Skeptical looks were expected, something she expected to see a lot of over the coming debriefing. Some of it she didn’t want getting back to Sincir, but with Anita present, that was all but a given and if Maraline was going to be stuck in a civilian life, overcoming the suspicion would be a necessary step.

  Given how she was all but kidnapped a week earlier, some skepticism was warranted, even if it did hurt to see it reflected back in her best friend’s gaze. At least Grace was smiling at her, even if her expression was slightly strained.

  “They are known as luminescence stones,” Maraline interjected. “The technology is ancient, even by The Empire’s standards. It is primarily a farming tool, but the fact that it was present on Earth was arming.”

  Anita hummed. “You’re suggesting that Earth actually had contact with ancient aliens?”

  “Not suggesting,” Nicole said. “We found proof.”

  “No shit?” Kay said. “I mean, we know aliens are real and all, but you have to admit how outndish that sounds.”

  Running a hand through her hair, Nicole smiled. “Yeah it really does, but there is something we could do that would put any doubts to rest.”

  “It’s not that we doubt you, but that is a pretty tall ask,” Rebecca said. “I mean, that’s the kind of find that Sincir Industries would kill for.” She shared a look with Anita and Nicole caught the way she pitched her voice as she continued. “He’s investigated every rumor of ancient aliens, and all of them turned out to be busts, right?”

  Anita hummed, her face shifting slightly. “Nothing that we could conclusively prove. A few periods where civilization seemingly improved overnight, new gods emerged in their pantheons, but never anything that we could point at and call it a smoking gun.”

  The cadence of her words had shifted as well, indicating that Maria was now out front. It was unusual to hear Maria again, because she rarely came out in combat situations, but a debriefing like this was right in line with what she liked to stick her nose into.

  “Well, if it’s a smoking gun you’re after,” Nicole said, looking at each of her teammates in turn before settling on Sincir’s private Ranger. “How would you like to see an ancient spaceship?”

  Maria blinked at Nicole’s admittedly ridiculous non-sequitur, but it did give her something to tch onto and it was the rgest elephant in the room that Nicole needed to address. Their presence was something that Nicole wasn’t happy about, but keeping secrets from her would only raise the suspicions over Maraline to new heights.

  The half-Syn had moved to stand beside her, if a bit reserved, but the support was welcome all the same. No, this needed to be confronted head on and kept in the open if her friends were going to trust her on this. It hurt that they weren’t all speaking up in support, and even Grace was giving her a bit of a look at all of it.

  “If that isn’t the most obvious trap I’ve ever heard of,” Devon said with a grunt. When the others didn’t immediately agree with him, he kept going. “I’m sorry, but Nicole goes missing for a week, then turns back up being able to morph again, with a Syn General in tow, and on top of that is asking if we want to come back with her to the mysterious not-a-candy-van to see something cool?”

  “It is highly suspicious,” Maria agreed. “You offered us a tour, which I’m assuming means you have a means to bring us back to this mysterious ship?”

  Nicole nodded, but held off on eborating.

  “I’ll want a look at that tech,” Becca said, cutting off whatever the Sincir sponsored Ranger was going to say next. “Long distance teleportation would be a game changer if we could reverse engineer it.”

  “Put the techno babble back in your pants,” Mari—no, that was definitely Anita—said. “If we’re going to entertain this, it should be in a controlled environment, not the middle of nowhere.”

  “Like the controlled environment that set half the city abze?” Jeff demanded. “If you haven’t noticed, we aren’t exactly trusting of Sincir right now after that whole fiasco.”

  Kay crossed her arms, nodding along. “Like, why was Nicole’s morpher down there? You don’t expect us to buy that you were trying to fix it?”

  “Of course we were—”

  Becca snarled, stalking forward. “Then why was I pulled off the project?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Anita said, taking a step back with her hands raised.

  “Are you referring to the Source surge?” Maraline asked.

  Everyone turned at her interjection, and Nicole could admit to being curious herself as to what might have caused it. That Anita was looking rather nervous only cemented that conviction as the woman’s hand inched towards her morpher. Nicole moved to stand with Rebecca, making sure that Anita didn’t have a clear path to prevent Maraline from revealing whatever secret it might have been.

  Maraline smiled and gave a short nod before she continued. “Obviously you were experimenting with the battery you recovered from Nicole’s near death, but that surge had a rather unique signature.”

  A pause followed and after a beat Kay huffed. “Don’t keep us in suspense, drama queen. Out with it.”

  “No sense for dramatic timing,” Maraline muttered. “It was the surge of a first morph. They were tapping into a morphing effect. In other words, they were creating new Rangers.”

  “Well fuck,” Anita said, her shoulders slumping. “I really wanted to avoid this.”

  That was when the lights cut off and the outer doors exploded.

  Pendragoon