The combat training room was bigger than the ones Ben and Gwen had spent the past several days in.
It needed to be. High ceiling, wide floor, the same pale grey material underfoot but more of it, with a raised spectator area along the far wall behind thick reinforced glass. The kind of room built for controlled chaos rather than quiet practice.
It was already half full when they walked in.
Agents from the main floor, lab staff, a few faces Ben recognized from the corridors and a few he didn't. Word had apparently gotten around that the Tennyson kids were doing a live session. People had opinions about that and most of those opinions had brought them here to see for themselves.
Ted stood at the edge of the spectator area with Max on one side and Gellix on the other, Gellix already running his scanner and entering data before anyone had done anything worth scanning. Sera was three seats down with her hands folded and her back straight, watching the floor with those deep blue eyes giving nothing away.
Two figures stood in the center of the room waiting.
The first was a man in his thirties in full Plumbers white combat gear, broad shouldered, relaxed, with the easy stance of someone who was comfortable in a fight and didn't feel the need to advertise it. He had a friendly face, the kind that smiled easily, and he was smiling now at Ben and Gwen as they crossed the floor toward him.
The second was a woman. Alien. Lean and sharp-featured with grey-silver skin and pale eyes that moved fast, tracking Ben and Gwen from the moment they walked in with the detached focus of someone doing a threat assessment out of pure habit. She stood completely still. Not relaxed still, ready still. There was a difference and it was immediately clear which one this was.
Ben and Gwen stopped in front of them.
"I'm Cole," the man said. He stuck out a hand and Ben shook it and he shook it like he meant it. "Good to meet you both. Heard a lot about what you've been doing in there." He nodded toward the training corridor. "Looking forward to this."
The woman looked at them. "Zyl," she said. One word, no handshake. Her pale eyes moved to the Omnitrix on Ben's chest for exactly one second, then came back up.
"Hi," Gwen said.
Zyl said nothing else.
Cole looked at Zyl and then at Ben and Gwen with an expression that said she's always like this, don't take it personally.
Up in the spectator area Ted leaned forward and his voice came through the room speakers clearly. "Simple rules. Full contact, full ability use. Session ends on my signal. Any questions?"
Nobody had questions.
Ted looked at both sides of the floor. Then he nodded.
"Begin."
Ben tapped the Omnitrix.
The green flash came and Heatblast stood where Ben had been. Dark volcanic skin, white-orange plasma rolling off him in waves, the temperature in the room climbing immediately. Fast. Clean. No sound.
Gwen glanced at him sideways.
"You're not screaming," she said.
Heatblast looked at her. The small yellow eyes carried something dry in them.
"Screaming is for babies," he said.
Gwen opened her mouth. Closed it. Turned back to the fight.
Cole was already moving.
He came at Ben fast and direct, eating up the distance between them in long strides, and Gwen's barrier went up between them immediately. Solid pink-white, shoulder width, clean placement.
Cole left the ground and cleared it in one easy jump and landed on the other side without breaking stride.
Gwen watched him land. "Oh."
Ben didn't move. He stood with both hands on his waist and watched Cole coming at him and the heat rolled off him in steady waves and his expression was completely flat.
"You can't touch me," he said. "I'm made of fire. You'll burn yourself."
Cole kept running. He was smiling.
"Fireproof armour," he said. "You idiot."
The roundhouse kick connected with the side of Heatblast's head and sent him across the room into the wall with a crash that shook the reinforced glass in the spectator area.
A ripple went through the watching agents.
Heatblast peeled himself off the wall and stood up straight.
"Ahhh," he said. "I should have known."
Up in the spectator seats Max crossed his arms. "He didn't check the gear."
"He assumed," Ted said, making a note.
"He assumed," Max agreed.
Gellix entered data without comment.
Zyl moved.
She had been standing still since the session started and then she simply wasn't standing still anymore, crossing the floor in a blur that left an afterimage, closing on Gwen from the left while Cole reset against Ben.
Gwen spun. Barrier up.
Zyl went around it. Not through, not over, around, changing direction mid-stride with the instant reflexes of something built for speed, and Gwen's second barrier went up a half second too late and Zyl was already past it.
Gwen threw an energy disc, tight and flat, aimed ahead of where Zyl was going rather than where she was. Good instinct. Zyl changed direction again and the disc missed by two feet.
Ben threw a fireball at Cole who deflected it with a forearm and kept coming. The fireball hit the floor and scorched a black mark and Ben threw another one and Cole went left and it missed and Ben went right to cut him off and walked directly into Gwen's barrier from the inside.
The barrier held. Ben bounced off it.
"Ben—"
"I see it—"
"I had him—"
"You had a wall in the middle of—"
"It was containing him—"
Cole hit Ben from the side while he was talking.
In the spectator area someone laughed. Not unkindly.
Ted looked at Max. Max looked at the ceiling.
The next few minutes were messy.
Not losing exactly, they weren't getting taken apart. But not working either. Ben's fireballs kept getting cut off by Gwen's barriers appearing in his line of fire. Gwen's barriers kept appearing in places Ben was already moving through. They were fighting the same fight in the same space without sharing it and it showed.
Zyl toyed with Ben. Not cruelly, professionally. She let him get close enough to think the fireball would land then simply wasn't there when it arrived. She moved in angles that meant every barrier Gwen put in her path required Gwen to turn away from whatever else she was doing and Zyl used those half seconds efficiently.
Cole had a weapon out now, a sword that hummed faint blue at the edge. Alien tech, clearly not standard issue but clearly something he knew how to use. He moved with it the way people move with things they've been carrying for years. Ben matched him, fire for steel, driving him back, taking a hit when the armour made it not matter, circling. But there was something slightly mechanical about it. Ben reading each move as it came rather than seeing two moves ahead.
Then Cole switched targets.
No announcement. No tell. He just turned mid-exchange and went at Gwen instead, crossing the floor fast with the sword up, and Ben was on the wrong side of the room to stop it in time.
Gwen got her barrier up. Cole's sword hit it and held. He pushed. She pushed back. Her nose started bleeding from the sustained output.
Zyl came at Ben from behind and was in his space before he turned around and for thirty seconds Ben was fighting someone twice his speed at close range, which was where speed mattered most, and it did not go well for him.
The room watched.
In the spectator area Sera watched Gwen holding the barrier against Cole's sword with one hand and trying to track Zyl with the other and her expression was the expression of a teacher watching a student perform under real pressure for the first time.
Then it changed.
It happened in a single moment and like most single moments it was small.
Zyl broke away from Ben and went at Gwen again, full speed, direct, closing the distance in under a second. Cole was already swinging at Ben from the left.
Ben and Gwen looked at each other across the floor.
Neither of them said anything.
Something passed between them that didn't need words, the particular communication of two people who had grown up arguing with each other and knew every frequency the other person transmitted on. Gwen's eyes said I've got him. Ben's eyes said I've got her.
They both smiled at the same time.
Gwen turned away from Zyl completely.
Zyl saw the opening and accelerated. Her pale eyes were fixed on Gwen, her fist already pulling back, and the distance between them was closing to nothing.
"Where are you looking, sweetheart," Zyl said.
Gwen raised one hand toward Cole.
The energy wrapped around him. Not a barrier, not a disc, the direct lifting grip she had spent three days learning to build, and she picked Cole up off the ground mid-swing and threw him sideways across the room. He left the ground and skidded across the floor and came to a stop against the far wall, sword clattering away from his hand.
In the same instant a wall flame erupted directly in Zyl's path.
The fire stood between Zyl and Gwen, high and hot and real, and Zyl's reflexes were exceptional but they were pointed at Gwen and the wall was sideways and she changed direction a half second too late and hit it shoulder first and went down.
The room went quiet for a moment.
Cole raised his head from the floor. He looked at where he'd landed. Looked at Gwen across the room. Looked at where Zyl was getting up from the floor near the fire wall.
He started laughing.
"There it is," he said. He got to his feet and picked up his sword and pointed it at both of them. "You're finally in rhythm. Now this is going to be fun."
Cole looked at Zyl. She looked at him. Something passed between them the same way something had passed between Ben and Gwen thirty seconds ago.
They both nodded.
Cole came through the fire wall.
He hit it at a run and the flame split around the fireproof armour and he came out the other side into smoke and low visibility and slowed slightly, looking for Ben, sword up.
A green flash lit up the smoke from inside it.
Cole stopped. The flash was bright and close and the shape in the smoke wasn't the shape it had been before. He swung the sword at the outline.
A hand caught the blade.
Cole blinked. One hand on the sword, large, dark red, four fingers. He pulled. The hand held. He dropped his grip on one hand and threw a punch with the other into the smoke.
Another hand caught that too.
Two hands. Both held.
A voice came out of the smoke, unhurried and dry.
"Too bad I have two more."
The third arm came straight out of the smoke and hit Cole in the stomach with enough force to lift him off his feet and send him skidding backward across the floor. He hit the ground and rolled and came up on one knee and looked back at the smoke.
Fourarms stepped out of it.
Cole looked at up, he started laughing again, real and loud, the laugh of someone having a genuinely good time.
"YEAH," Fourarms shouted, and it came out too loud for the room and several people in the spectator seats flinched and then laughed. "HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT."
"I like it a lot actually," Cole said, still laughing. He stood up. "Come on then."
The fight that followed was louder and faster and considerably more coordinated than anything that had happened in the first half.
Gwen found her range against Zyl. Not trying to cage her, not trying to outrun her speed, but controlling the geometry instead. Barriers not in Zyl's path but in her destination, forcing the direction changes, narrowing the options with each exchange. It wasn't clean. Zyl broke out of it twice and Gwen had to reset. But the third time the geometry worked and Zyl hit a barrier she hadn't seen coming and Gwen had a disc ready on the other side.
Zyl dodged it. But it was close.
Ben and Cole moved around each other in the open space. Fourarms absorbing hits that would have ended the session earlier, giving them back with the three hit combination he'd worked out in the smoke. Cole was better than him. Clearly, technically, experientially better. But Fourarms was heavier and Cole's sword wasn't going to cut through dark red Tetramand skin and the gap between them was narrowing as Ben stopped reacting to each swing and started reading the sequence instead.
Gwen built steps.
Not a staircase, three platforms in the air, stacked, solid enough to hold weight. Ben saw them without being told and went up them in three strides and the height changed his angle on Cole completely and Cole adjusted but the adjustment left his left side open and Ben saw it the same way Verdict would have seen it and came down off the second platform with a right cross that Cole partially blocked and partially didn't.
Cole staggered.
The room made a sound.
Gwen redirected Zyl with two fast barriers and threw a wall up around her, four sides, solid, closing in. Zyl read it late and started running but the walls were already there and she hit one and the next one was closer and the next one closer still and Zyl stopped and looked at the shrinking space around her and her pale eyes showed something that was almost respect.
Then she ran at full speed at the closest wall and hit it with both feet and it exploded outward and she came through the gap and covered the distance to Gwen in under a second and Gwen didn't have time to reset and Zyl put her on the floor.
"Ben," Gwen said from the floor. "Little help."
She looked toward Ben.
Fourarms was on the floor. Face down. Cole was sitting on his back with both arms crossed smiling. Fourarms raised his head from the ground and looked at Gwen with those four yellow eyes.
"Sorry," Fourarms said. "I already lost."
A green flash.
Ben lay on the floor where Fourarms had been, Cole still sitting on his back, and raised one hand in a small apologetic wave.
Cole patted him on the shoulder. "Good job."
Ted's voice came through the speakers. "Session over."
The spectator area emptied onto the floor in the way spectator areas do after something worth watching. People moving with the energy of having seen something and wanting to talk about it. The agents who came down were genuine about it, the way people who work dangerous jobs are genuine about competence when they see it, and Ben and Gwen received it with different expressions. Gwen accepted it with the focused attention of someone already thinking about what to improve. Ben received it with that flat level expression that gave nothing away.
Zyl stopped in front of Gwen.
"The geometry approach," she said. "Against a speedster. That was correct thinking." She paused. "You need to commit to the cage earlier. You waited until I was already moving. Start building before I give you the reason to."
"I know," Gwen said. "I hesitated."
"Don't," Zyl said. She held Gwen's gaze for a moment and then walked away and that was that.
Cole had his arm around Ben's shoulders and was hitting him on the arm in the friendly way of someone who hits people on the arm as a primary love language.
"That smoke entrance," Cole said. "The hand catch into the gut hit. Where did you get that?"
"Made it up in the moment," Ben said.
Cole hit him on the arm again. "Come train with me again. Seriously. I want to go again when you've got more forms unlocked." He grinned. "You're going to be trouble."
Ben looked at him. "I know," he said.
Cole laughed.
Max came over and looked at both of them for a moment.
"Good," he said.
That was all. But from Max it landed the way it always landed, like something that meant more than the word itself.
Ted appeared beside them with two small devices in his hand. Round, flat, compact, not much bigger than a large coin, smooth on one side and studded with small controls on the other.
"Here," he said. He held one out to Ben and one to Gwen.
Max looked at the devices. "Ted—"
"Built in communicator, GPS, threat alert linked to the Plumber network," Ted said, talking over Max smoothly. "When something comes up in your area you'll know about it." He looked at Max. "They've earned it."
"They're ten," Max said.
"They handled themselves in there. Against two of my best." He looked at Ben and Gwen. "As far as this facility is concerned you're acknowledged. Junior status but acknowledged." He nodded at the devices. "Think of it as a badge."
Ben looked at the device in his hand. Small and plain and completely unremarkable.
He closed his hand around it.
"Thank you," Gwen said.
Max looked at Ted for a moment longer. Ted looked back at him steadily. Max looked at his grandchildren.
"Don't make me regret not arguing harder," he said.
The goodbyes took longer than expected.
Cole made Ben promise to come back and fight him again and made the promise feel like a threat and a compliment simultaneously. Zyl told Gwen three specific things to work on and Gwen wrote all three down immediately which made Zyl look at her with something that was as close to warmth as Zyl apparently got. Gellix handed Ben a data pad with a full alien species database downloaded onto it and told him to read the Tetramand entry properly because he was using Fourarms at approximately sixty percent efficiency which was unacceptable.
Sera found Gwen before they left.
Sera looked at her. "You did good," she said quietly. And walked away.
Gwen stood there for a second.
Then she followed the others up the stairs.
The bar was exactly as they'd left it.
Sticky floor, jukebox, two guys playing pool without enthusiasm. The bartender looked up when the floor panel opened and the Tennysons came up from below and looked back down at his newspaper with the complete indifference of a man who had seen this many times.
They crossed the bar and went out the front door into the afternoon.
The parking lot. The motorcycles. The cornfield across the road moving in the breeze. The Rustbucket sitting where Max had left it, groaning slightly when he started it up like it was commenting on how long it had been waiting.
Ben sat in the back with the small round device in his hand, turning it over. Gwen sat beside him doing the same with hers. Max pulled out of the lot and onto the two-lane road and the facility disappeared behind them and the road opened up and the afternoon was wide and quiet around them.
Ben put the device in his pocket.
He looked out the window.
The Omnitrix glowed steady green on his chest.
Sixty meters back, in the gravel lot, the dark blue car sat where it had been sitting.
The man inside it, plain jacket, plain face, the complete unremarkability of someone trained to be forgettable, watched the Rustbucket pull away. He picked up his communicator.
"They're moving," he said. "Heading north on the two-lane."
A pause on the other end.
"You waited outside the whole time?" The voice was flat. Unhurried.
"Yes sir."
Another pause. Shorter.
"Okay."
The line went dead.
The man set the communicator on the dash. He reached for his seatbelt and pulled it across and clicked it in.
The belt tightened.
Not the normal resistance of a seatbelt catching. Something else, a slow deliberate pressure, pulling taut across his chest, then moving upward toward his neck. He grabbed it with both hands and pulled but it didn't give and the pressure kept building and he looked in the rearview mirror.
Ted was in the back seat.
Both hands on the belt. His face was completely calm. His eyes met the man's eyes in the mirror and held them and he didn't say anything because there was nothing to say.
The man's hands went to the buckle. Ted's knee came forward and blocked it.
The communicator on the dash buzzed once from the movement and went still.
The afternoon outside was quiet and empty and the cornfield moved in the breeze and nobody saw anything.
Max's communicator rang ten minutes down the road.
He picked it up from the dash without looking at it and held it to his ear.
"It's Ted," the voice said. "Threat neutralised."
Max's hand tightened on the wheel slightly. "You could have interrogated him."
"Could have," Ted said.
"We would have found out who sent him. What they know. How long they've been following us."
"Yes," Ted said.
"Instead we have nothing," Max said. His voice was level but the level had an edge under it. "No information. No lead. Just a body."
A short silence on Ted's end.
"He was sitting outside for four days, Max," Ted said. "He was calling out to me. Whoever sent him knew I'd find him."
The line went quiet.
Max looked at the road ahead. At the Rustbucket's hood. At the afternoon going past on both sides.
"Next time," he said, "you call me first."
He ended the call.
In the back Ben was looking out the window and Gwen was reading and neither of them had heard anything worth asking about.
Max drove.
Four hundred miles away the office was the same as it always was. Clean desk, bare walls, grey courtyard outside the window.
Vael sat behind the desk and looked at his assistant standing across from it.
"Send another one," Vael said.
The assistant nodded. Then, carefully, "Sir. What about the one we already sent?"
Vael looked at the window. At the grey courtyard. At nothing in particular.
Then something happened on his face that was rare. The corner of his mouth moved.
"That idiot," he said quietly, "sat outside that bar for four days." He looked at his assistant. "Four days. In the same car. In the same spot." The almost-smile held for a moment. "Ted Calloway has been running counter-surveillance operations for fifteen years. There is no version of this universe in which Ted won't notice it"
The assistant was quiet.
"He was never coming home," Vael said simply. He looked back at the window. "Send someone who understands that the point of watching is to not be seen doing it."
"Yes sir."
"And tell them—" Vael paused. "Tell them to study the boy."
The assistant left.
The office was quiet.
Outside the grey courtyard held its usual nothing. Vael sat behind his clean desk and looked at it and thought about a ten year old boy on the front page of two different newspapers. A boy who had walked into a Plumbers facility and come out with a badge and was heading somewhere on a road that Vael already knew the general direction of even if he didn't know every stop.
He picked up a pen. Set it down.
He had time.
He could wait.