Lexa stirred awake in a New York apartment, locked into a stasis chamber that was treating her wounds.

She looked around taking in everything that was present, just like she had been taught as a part of the Cêpan /Guardians.

Everything carried with it a profound piece of information, even if it was gum at the bottom of a chair. You would be surprised at what you can learn from the way a person chews their gum.

"You're awake," Alice said, giving Lexa an appraising look, almost as if evaluating her usefulness "Gave us quite a scare there when you self-destructed the entire safe house, I thought you were one of those religious fanatics. I have a bad history with those,"

"Where am I?" Lexa asked.

"Somewhere safe, well that depends on what your memories tell us," Alice replied "For now you just have to wait a bit, my husband is in the opposite room recovering. This is our safe house and that thing you're in is called a stasis chamber, has many functions including healing,"

Five minutes later, Zeel walked into the room hugging Alice and giving her a small kiss on the cheek before turning his attention to Lexa.

He began walking towards her as she struggled fiercely, even contemplating biting her own tongue to suicide.

"Hold on! It'll be over soon, no need to worry," Zeel said as he placed his hands on her head and began sifting through her surface memories, while simultaneously summarizing what he was seeing so Alice could also know "Their planet is called Lorien, it neighboring planet harboring life is the home planet of the Mogadorians. At one point in their history, they were at war amongst themselves due to lack of resources like any other planet, but during the war, they changed- became an environmentally friendly race of peace lovers.

This change brought with it an era of prosperity, and as if the planet was reciprocating their efforts, it became more vibrant, more lively, more everything.

Then the planet Lorien is believed to have given beings known as 'The Elders' their abilities as a gift for choosing the right path. Legend tells of the nine elders finding something called phoenix stones which set free the chimera, a race of shapeshifting Lorien animals.

The gifts were called legacies as they could be passed down from one descendant to the next. It was passed onto those who the planet deemed worthy. They divided themselves into two groups: The Garde- those with abilities to protect the planet, and the Cêpan - those who would run the planet.

Then the war came to the planet Lorien. It had been invaded by the belligerent Mogadorians, who coveted its resources and slaughtered its people. During the invasion, a rocket was sent from Lorien to Earth, containing nine Garde children, each accompanied by a Cêpan to act as guardian and to help them when their Legacies developed.

On Earth they live in disguise, hunted by the Mogadorians who have followed them. Each of the children is protected by a charm, and, so long as they remain apart, they can only be killed in order, one through nine.

Whenever one of them is killed, each of the others receives a scar. Their final objective is to unite all the children for a standoff against the Mogadorians, then head back to the planet to repopulate and restore it to what it once was using their Phoenix Stones,"

After Zeel released Lexa, he fell to his knees exhausted from having to read memories for so long. Usually, he would get in, alter something, and get out since the mind of another was a dangerous place.

While he was reading her memories, Lexa could also see his own, with his permission of course. He had shown her that Alice and himself were from a planet on the brink of disaster, then teleported to this planet and the rest was his memories from this planet.

It detailed how Alice and himself became a number and so forth. Zeel chose selectively what to show, Lexa, of course, knew this but also could tell the memories were genuine as well.

"Explains a lot," said Lexa as she looked upon Zeel's stoic face.

"Yeah, it's a lot to take in," Alice said after Zeel recovered and shared what he saw with her through a memory link instead of just orally sharing.

"So you gonna let me go now or?" Lexa asked a rhetorical question just to gauge Alice's and Zeel's reactions.

"Alice, do it," Zeel said as he gestured to Alice to release Lexa.

After she was finished unstrapping the tied Lexa, Zeel once again looked at Lexa's memories and had to agree that Lorien was a beautiful place; but he had a vague impression of Lorien – almost as if he was looking for someone called Lorien as well.

A small sting shook Zeel's body for a brief moment before receding, almost as if it never happened. But as acute as Zeel was, he could certainly tell the feeling was not an illusion.

"Hmmm, so what's next? Quiet the empire you guys have built for yourselves here," Lexa commented looking at the tech-saturated room, most of the tech she couldn't even recognize.

"Well, I hear every Garde needs a Cêpan, wanna be our mother?" Zeel replied jokingly, but he was very much serious.

"Yeah sure, exactly what I was thinking, but how did you guys get this young, you look like 18-year-olds now, but your memories you guys looked late 20's,"

"Unwanted side effects of multi…*cough* long-distance teleportation from our home planet," Alice replied almost letting their biggest secret slip, not that Zeel would mind but it was still best to keep their methods of transference to themselves.

Zeel was not naïve enough to assume that he could always detect anyone that was listening to them. There were countless beings that would start wars for his method of Multiversal Travel. Zeel made a note to explain to Alice the uniqueness of their method of travel another time.

"So what's first?" Lexa asked sloughing on the sofa like she owned the place. Zeel guessed that Loric people weren't much for courtesy, little did he know it was actually Lexa that lacked decorum.

"Well, I noticed you're good with computers," Zeel replied pulling out some liquid mercury that had incubated the nanites and handing it to Lexa "Nanites, that's how all our computers work so now your job is to keep track of all the construction details, accelerate how fast everything is built and keep an eye out for any numbers that may contact us,"

Lexa looked at the equipment in the room and she could swear she had an orgasm in her pants "Well I'll do it, and these nanites should up my game quite a bit,"

Even without inspecting the nanites closely, Loriens were sensitive to energy signatures that were natural to nature. Lexa could tell the nanites were definitely more potent than Loric Crystals.

Just like that Alice, Zeel and Lexa began living together, traveling from safe house to safe house, planning, and building for the future war with the Mogadorians.

Unknown to Alice, Zeel had lapsed back into his old methods of experimentations without her approval. Zeel's secret experiments.