The stairs went down further than expected.
Ben counted them without meaning to. Seventeen steps, then a short landing, then another flight. The walls changed as they went, bare concrete at the top, then something darker and smoother, clearly not standard construction, clearly not something that had been built by people who were thinking about biker bars when they designed it.
At the bottom a door. Heavy, wide, the kind with no handle on the outside. Max pressed his thumb to a panel beside it that Ben hadn't noticed until it lit up green.
The door opened.
The sound hit them first.
Not loud, the sound of a busy place that had learned to be efficient about its noise. Voices, equipment, the particular hum of a lot of technology running at once. Then the air, which was cooler and cleaner than upstairs and smelled faintly of something Ben couldn't identify. Then the light, which was steady and bright and sourceless, coming from the ceiling in clean white panels.
Then the space itself.
Ben stopped walking.
The main floor stretched out in front of them the size of a small airport terminal. Workstations in long rows, screens displaying data in languages Ben didn't recognize alongside some he did. Agents moving between stations, humans in black suits, others in white tactical gear, and between them, working alongside them, sitting at the same desks, walking the same corridors, aliens. A tall blue-skinned humanoid in a suit arguing with a human woman over a holographic map. A small grey-green creature perched on a raised chair operating a console built for something much larger. Two agents in white gear walking past, one human, one something with four eyes and a broad flat head, deep in conversation about something neither Ben nor Gwen could follow.
None of them treated any of this as remarkable.
Ben stood at the bottom of the stairs and looked at all of it.
Gwen stood beside him and said nothing for approximately four seconds which was the longest she had gone without saying something since Ben had known her.
"Okay," she said quietly.
"Yeah," Ben said.
Max was already walking.
He led them across the main floor and people acknowledged him as he passed, a nod here, a raised hand there, a few looks that were professional and a few that were something more personal. Max nodded back at all of them without stopping. He knew this place. He knew these people. That was clear in every step he took, not showing off, just comfortable in a way he wasn't always comfortable, moving through a space that had once been as familiar as his own kitchen.
He stopped at a door on the far side of the floor. Knocked twice.
"Come in," said a voice.
The office was small and busy, every surface covered with files, screens, equipment that didn't have obvious purposes. Maps on the walls, both terrestrial and something much larger than terrestrial. A desk in the middle with two chairs in front of it.
Behind the desk a man stood up.
He was young for the room, mid thirties maybe, lean, with the kind of face that had been outdoors a lot and showed it. Dark hair cut practically. A white tactical jacket over a black shirt. He looked at Max for a moment with an expression that had several things in it and was working out which one to lead with.
He went with a handshake. Firm and brief.
"Max," he said.
"Ted," Max said.
Not Ted exactly, his full name was something longer that he'd shortened years ago for the benefit of human colleagues who couldn't manage the original. He'd told Max once he didn't mind. Max suspected he minded a little.
Ted looked at Ben and Gwen. His eyes moved to the Omnitrix on Ben's chest and stayed there for just a second before coming back up.
"So it's real," he said.
"It's real," Max said.
Ted looked at Max. "You've been gone four years."
"I know."
"Four years, no contact, and you come back with this." He gestured at Ben in a way that was not unkind but was very direct.
"That's about the size of it," Max said.
Ted looked at him for another second. Then he pulled out the chair closest to the desk and sat on the edge of it and rubbed his face with one hand.
"Okay," he said. "Sit down. Tell me everything."
Max told them to look around.
He said it the way he said most things, simply and with the assumption that they understood the limits built into those words. Look around. Don't touch anything important. Don't go anywhere restricted. Be back in twenty minutes.
Ben and Gwen looked at the main floor of a Plumbers facility full of humans and aliens working side by side.
They went left.
The first thing that got Ben's attention was the containment level visible through a thick glass wall on the far side of the main floor, a row of cells, some lit, some dark, each one clearly built to specific requirements that varied wildly from cell to cell. One had water up to the ceiling. One had no light at all that Ben could detect. One had what looked like a small weather system operating inside it, cloud cover and wind and something moving in the grey of it.
A human agent in a black suit was walking the corridor outside the cells making notes on a tablet.
Ben pressed his face to the glass.
"Ben," Gwen said.
"I'm just looking."
"You have your touching face on."
"I don't have a touching face."
"It's the same as your thinking face but with more forward lean."
Ben leaned back from the glass approximately one inch.
Gwen pulled him away by the sleeve.
They found the tech storage bay next, a room the size of a warehouse with shelving units running floor to ceiling and equipment in labeled cases stacked in orderly rows. Some of it Ben recognized from Max's scanner. Most of it he didn't. Alien devices of every size and shape, tagged and catalogued, sitting behind a door that was clearly not meant for casual visitors but had been left slightly open because someone had been in a hurry.
Ben stood in the doorway.
Gwen stood beside him.
"Grandpa said don't touch anything important," Ben said.
"He said don't touch anything," Gwen said.
"He said don't touch anything important. Which implies touching unimportant things is probably fine."
"That is not what that implies."
"It's a reasonable reading."
"It is not a reasonable…" Gwen stopped. "Ben, don't…"
Ben touched the nearest thing. It was small, roughly spherical, sitting on a shelf at eye level in a case that wasn't latched. It looked like a smooth grey ball with a seam around the middle.
It made a sound like a single clear note.
Then every light in the tech bay turned red and a calm automated voice said something in a language Ben didn't recognize and then in English said unauthorized access detected, sector seven, please remain calm.
Ben put the ball back.
Three agents appeared in the doorway behind them in under fifteen seconds.
Max appeared thirty seconds after that.
He looked at the red lights. At the agents. At Ben and Gwen standing in the middle of the tech bay with the expressions of people who had technically not done anything that serious but were aware that the optics were not great.
He looked at Ben specifically.
"I barely touched it," Ben said.
"Sector seven is tagged," one of the agents said to Max. "Proximity sensor on the Valtorian resonance sphere. It goes off if anything warm blooded gets within six inches."
"I thought it was just sitting there," Ben said.
"It was in a case," Gwen said quietly.
"An unlatched case."
Max looked at him for a long moment. Then he looked at the agents. "We'll be out of your way."
He steered Ben out of the tech bay by the shoulder. Gwen followed. The red lights faded behind them as they went back into the corridor.
"I barely touched it," Ben said again.
"I heard you," Max said.
He handed them off to a small grey-green creature waiting near the research department door.
The creature was about two feet tall, large-headed, with wide eyes that moved independently and the focused energy of something that thought faster than it spoke and found speaking an inefficient use of time. It wore a white lab coat that had been modified extensively to fit a Galvan's proportions and had a data pad in one hand and a scanner in the other and was already looking at Ben's chest before introductions were finished.
"Gellix," Max said. "Galvan. Best Omnitrix researcher this facility has. Gellix, these are my grandchildren. Ben and Gwen."
"Yes yes," Gellix said, not looking up from Ben's chest. "The boy with the Omnitrix. I've been reviewing the scans Ted's team took when you came through the door." He moved closer to Ben and held up the scanner. "May I?"
Ben looked down at him. "You're already doing it."
"I'm asking retroactively. May I?"
"Sure," Ben said.
Gellix ran the scanner slowly across the Omnitrix, eyes moving between the device and the data on his pad with the rapid efficiency of someone cross-referencing in real time. He made small sounds, not words, just processing sounds, the Galvan equivalent of nodding.
"Fascinating," he said. "Absolutely fascinating. The integration depth is, yes, yes that makes sense, the cardiac replacement was the only viable option given the trauma window, but the neural threading, I didn't expect the neural threading to be this advanced at this stage…"
"Can you explain it to us," Gwen said. "In words we can follow."
Gellix looked at her as if noticing her for the first time. "How much do you know about Galvan biotech integration theory?"
"None," Gwen said.
"Right. Yes." He looked back at Ben's chest. "Simple version. The Omnitrix was designed to interface with a living host's biology. Specifically the wrist, that was Azmuth's original design. Cardiac integration was never the plan." He paused. "When the device made contact with your grandson it was faced with a dead host and approximately three seconds to make a decision. It chose the most critical system available and replaced it."
"His heart," Gwen said.
"His heart. Yes. But that's not the interesting part." Gellix tapped Ben's chest with one small finger. "The interesting part is what it's been doing since. The Omnitrix isn't just keeping him alive. It's rewriting him."
Ben looked at him. "Rewriting how."
"Every transformation stresses the host biology. Normally the Omnitrix compensates by reverting the host to baseline after timeout. But your baseline isn't static anymore." Gellix pulled up a scan on his pad and showed it to Ben, a diagram that looked like a human body overlaid with something else, something that ran through it like a secondary system. "Your cellular structure has been changing since the day of integration. Slowly. Consistently. The Omnitrix is upgrading your baseline between transformations. Making you more durable. More adaptable. Faster processing." He paused. "Better at surviving."
"Is that why the transformations hurt less?" Ben asked.
"Precisely. Your body is learning the forms. Not just the Omnitrix, your body. The integration runs both ways." Gellix looked at his pad. "You're not just a host anymore. You're part of the system."
The room was quiet for a second.
"Is that dangerous?" Gwen asked.
"Potentially," Gellix said with the cheerfulness of someone for whom potential danger was intellectually interesting. "We don't know the endpoint. Nobody has ever had cardiac integration before. The Omnitrix was designed for a wrist. What it's doing to a cardiovascular system over time is…" He paused. "Uncharted."
"So you don't know what happens to him," Gwen said.
"We don't know yet," Gellix said. "There's a difference." He looked at Ben. "Azmuth built the Omnitrix. Azmuth knows the Omnitrix better than anything in this galaxy. The answers you need, the real ones, he's the only one who has them."
"Can we talk to him?" Ben asked.
"You can't find Azmuth," Gellix said flatly. "Azmuth finds you. When he's ready. When he decides it's worth his time." He looked at the Omnitrix again. "But this…" He tapped it once more. "This will get his attention. I'd be surprised if he isn't already aware."
Ben looked down at the device on his chest.
"What can you tell us?" Gwen said. "Right now. What do you know for certain?"
Gellix held up his pad. "That the Omnitrix has given him access to thirteen alien species so far, three of which shouldn't be in any database Azmuth was working from publicly. That his transformation tolerance is increasing at approximately double the expected rate for a new host. That the Omnitrix is self-repairing and self-expanding and has already unlocked two additional dormant slots in the past week that weren't active at integration." He lowered the pad. "And that whatever Azmuth built this for, a ten year old boy dying in a clearing in Bellwood was not the original plan."
"But it happened anyway," Ben said.
"But it happened anyway," Gellix agreed. He looked at the Omnitrix one more time with those wide independent eyes. "Which is the part that interests me most."
Max came back an hour later and found them in the research department, Gellix still talking, still scanning, Ben sitting in a chair with the particular patience of someone who had asked to stop being scanned twice and been politely ignored both times, Gwen filling three pages of notes with small precise handwriting.
He stood in the doorway and looked at the scene.
Ted appeared beside him.
"Your granddaughter takes better notes than half my agents," Ted said quietly.
"Her mother's side," Max said.
They watched for a moment.
"She needs training," Ted said. "The energy ability. If it came in under trauma conditions it'll be unstable for a while. We have resources for that."
"I know," Max said.
"And the boy." Ted looked at Ben. "The Omnitrix aside, he's going to need to know how to use those forms. Really use them. Not just survive the transformation and improvise."
"I know that too," Max said.
"We can help with that," Ted said. "Both of them. If you're staying."
Max looked at Ben, sitting in that chair with those flat careful eyes, listening to a Galvan researcher explain the mechanics of his own heart with the same steady attention he gave everything. Ten years old. The Omnitrix glowing quiet and green on his chest.
"We're staying," Max said.
They told Ben and Gwen together, back on the main floor with the facility moving around them and agents of two dozen species going about the business of keeping a complicated galaxy from falling apart.
Gellix stood on a raised platform to be eye level with everyone and delivered it the way he delivered most things, directly and without softening.
"You'll train here," he said. "Both of you. Ben, your alien forms need structured development. You've been improvising which is fine for survival and terrible for everything else. We have facilities for each form type. Controlled environments where you can learn what each species can actually do before you're doing it in a crisis." He looked at Gwen. "You, the energy ability needs direction. Not just barriers. You should be able to move things, shield multiple targets, project at range, sustain output without burning through your capacity in four minutes." He said this last part pointedly. Gwen did not argue with it. "I'll oversee both programs. Data driven. Measurable outcomes. No guessing."
"You're going to train us?" Ben said. "You're about two feet tall."
"Two feet and three inches," Gellix said. "And I have an IQ that would give you a headache to think about. Yes. I'm going to train you."
Ben looked at him for a second.
"Okay," he said.
"Good," Gellix said. He hopped off the platform. "We start tomorrow. Get some rest. You're both currently operating well below your potential and I find that professionally offensive."
He walked away.
Gwen watched him go. "I like him," she said.
"He kept scanning my chest for an hour," Ben said.
"He's thorough."
"He did it while explaining things. He didn't stop even once."
"Thorough," Gwen said again.
Max put a hand briefly on each of their shoulders. "Come on. Ted found you both somewhere to sleep."
They followed him across the main floor, past the workstations and the holographic maps and the humans and aliens working side by side, toward the residential corridor on the far side. Ben looked at all of it as he walked. The scale of it. The ordinariness of it, which was somehow the strangest part. A Plumbers facility running quietly under a biker bar in the middle of nowhere, full of people keeping a galaxy together one incident at a time.
He filed all of it.
Said nothing.
The Omnitrix glowed steady green on his chest.
Three floors above them, in the gravel parking lot outside Harlan's Bar, the dark blue car sat in the same spot it had been in for the past two hours.
The man inside it had finished his coffee. He'd been patient about that too.
His tablet showed the same blue dot, stationary, underground, not moving. He looked at it for a while. Then he picked up the radio.
"They're still inside," he said. "Confirmed Plumber facility. Underground. Looks established." A pause on the other end. "No. I'm not going in. Not yet." He looked at the bar entrance. "I'll wait."
He set the radio down.
Outside the neon sign buzzed and flickered in the dark. A couple of motorcycles remained in the lot. The cornfield across the road moved slightly in the night breeze.
The man settled back in his seat and watched the door with those patient empty eyes.
Somewhere underground a ten year old boy with an alien device for a heart was sleeping in a Plumbers facility for the first time.