"So what's in the backpacks?" Karen asked after she and Ash were picked up.

"More rope, some snacks and MREs, a compass, radios. A couple of cameras and a few small empty containers." Ash had tossed in a three foot long sledgehammer and a machete next to my staff buried under the backpacks in question.

"Adventurer's pack. I think the ten foot pole is a few feet short though." Ash proved his nerd credentials.

"Har har." I deadpanned as I got the jeep onto 72 for the drive.

"What are you looking for out there anyways?" Karen continued after elbowing Ash. "I don't think we could find a terrarium large enough for one of those spiders if that's what you're thinking."

"You'd better not be hoping to get those spiders." Melissa said. "They're bad enough small, but those things are big time creepy crawlers."

I actually laughed this time. "No, I just want to get some information about it. The geodes we've got are mostly from California, which is the closest point of the first breakthrough. No one's going to be going into the storm anytime soon, so these little forest areas are probably our best bet to find our own source of them."

"You're obviously not the first one to think of this." Ash shook his head. "I'm fairly certain you're stealing this idea from ELF after what Zach told us."

I shrugged while driving. "I've been curious about what else in in there since the first time we were there. An entire area, larger on the inside than on the outside? That's worth exploring on its own. But yes, if ELF is trying to get things out of there, I want to know what they're finding besides spiders."

"Not to mention it lets us possibly have a source of energy related things that aren't just provided by Brent." Karen added. "I'm all for it."

"Also, how they're getting things out." I finished. "There should be some sort of access control on it, right? I mean, any of us could easily jump a fence but still."

"So, how would you keep someone around your level out of it then?" Melissa prompted me.

"I'd...uhh..." I drew a blank on it. Thinking on the base defenses, there were miles of fencing that would be almost less than a hop to bypass as the only barrier. "Depending on exactly how big it is, yeah. I don't think there's much that could stop me because it's not a building. You'd need someone at the same level and able to react to them fast enough to stop them."

~~~

An hour later in Mark Twain National Forest I slowed the Jeep down, coming to a halt at the barrier blocking the turn off that would lead to the hidden forest a couple miles further. "Road Closed." I read off the barriers stretched across.

A somewhat more obvious barrier was the convoy truck parked lengthwise across the road behind the sign barrier and the two men sitting on the tailgate with automatic rifles, both watching. Both were at third breakthroughs.

One of them came over and I rolled the window down. He gave me an assessing, uneasy look before speaking. "Sorry, road's closed for the foreseeable future due to training maneuvers."

"Training maneuvers in the area of hidden forest?" I asked. "We were headed there ourselves to do some investigating." I pulled out my base ID and showed it to him. "We were here a couple of weeks ago when it was first found."

He looked a little startled before taking the ID. "Give me a moment, please."

As he walked away, Ash spoke up. "Huh, yours doesn't have that green stripe. Why'd you get a military one instead of a contractor?"

"Dunno." I watched as the guard handed the card over to the other, who scanned it with a small handheld reader then got on what looked like a radio. "It's just what I was issued to get on base."

"Mind if I see it when he gets back?" Ash asked.

"Sure."

We waited almost fifteen minutes more as I started to get a little nervous before the guard came back and held up my ID, comparing me to the picture before offering it back. "Do you need us to move the truck ma'am?"

I looked at the signs of vehicles that had pulled through the grass to the side. "I think I can make it."

"Yes ma'am. They're expecting you." The guard made an aborted attempt at a salute before standing aside.

After he stepped back I reversed the Jeep before pulling around the convoy truck and continuing on. I handed my ID over to Ash as requested.

"Who the hell made you a SES four?" Ash asked after a moment. "You're the civilian version of a general."

"You know as much as I do. I'm a general?" I laughed to cover confusion. "How the hell did Brent do that?"

"Civilian, so not a real general or in the military chain of command." Ash noted.

I would have commented more, but had to slow down again as we reached our destination. There were nearly a dozen people out surrounding an eight foot chain-link fence that ran into the woods. A handful of trees were cut down to provide additional space between the fence and the woods with someone working on cutting down another on the far side of the road away from the fencing.

Three of the people here felt at four breakthroughs while everyone else was at three. Definitely impressive.

I pulled over next to several other vehicles at a trailer and we all got out.

One of the men came over. Interestingly not one of the guys at I-4. "Good afternoon Ms. Firen, I'm Captain Walker. I have to admit, I wasn't expecting to have an SES randomly show up." He eyed me and the others over for a moment. "Nor for an SES to be so young. I had to call in to actually confirm our equipment wasn't broken, sorry for the delay."

I looked at my military ID, noting the DARPA logo and the SES-4 marker on it along with a few other things. "I've got more questions for someone else, Captain Walker. To be honest, I didn't know I was an SES." I got a look of utter confusion from the captain. "I'd say someone's pulling my leg, but you said it was right."

"I want to ask questions as well, but I think it'd be better if I didn't right now after the call I had." The captain said. "If you're here investigating, I'm sorry to say we don't have a lot of info yet. We've been primarily involved with locking this thing down first."

"We actually planned on going in, but I didn't think we'd find all this." I waved towards the work going on. "It was just a couple of trucks and some guards last time."

"Yes ma'am. It was decided a larger, more permanent presence was necessary after the men stationed here were nearly overrun by spiders coming out from the other side. The fence runs the perimeter of the effect and gives us enough time to react to anything coming from there if we're close enough."

"Close enough?" Ash asked.

"The effect is an approximately two mile circle that we're getting cameras set up recording the fence and occasional patrols." He turned and waved to the receding fence line going in both directions. "We've had spiders come out from multiple different edges and I've sent in men. There's breakpoints in the effect line somewhere that end up sending you to different parts of where ever this is. Ends up out of radio range in some cases."

"We were planning on sticking together." I noted. "Is there any issues with us going in?"

The officer gave me a look. "I'm not going to gainsay you without a lot more to back it up, considering your strength. But I don't have enough men to send a group with you and my command knows you're here. If you're willing to at least take one extra man with you, there's not much I can do to stop you."

I shrugged. "You can just tell me no and we'll leave until I find the right person to get let in. I'm not going to force my way past you."

"I have the strangest feeling when you go looking the right person is going to be you, ma'am." The captain shook his head. "Let me get one of my men."

~~~

Our backpacks had been mostly deemed insufficient and were quickly replaced with several packs the military had on hand and we were introduced to SERE Specialist Hughes.

Hughes was a heavily built, sandy haired guy that was one of the three people onsite with four breakthroughs, in Air Force camo. "Melee weapons?" He asked as he took us in. I'd retrieved my staff, Melissa had her sheathed daggers. Ash was carrying the sledgehammer like it was nothing and Karen looked vaguely uneasy with the machete Ash had handed her.

Hughes had some sort of automatic rifle and probably plenty of extra ammo in his own pack.

"We were expecting to have to fend off spiders, and it didn't seem like a good idea to have to only use what was available. There likely wouldn't be a car to tear apart this time." I answered his question.

He nodded. "Sounds good. As your temporary military attaché however, I'll still request that if anything happens you leave things to me."

"I can probably take the hits from anything better than you can. How about we just work together if we find more spiders?"

"Yes ma'am."

~~~

When we stepped past the demarcation line onto the other side, I wasn't surprised that there was more military presence. A few of the nearby trees had been knocked down as well to create a clearing and another convoy truck was parked in here with a few other people in uniform standing guard.

Even still, the energy in this place felt cleaner even as wood surged in strength compared to the others. I looked up through the hole in the canopy created by the downed trees and saw blue skies and clouds, clearer skies that it was just a few steps away.

Specialist Hughes waved to the guards on this side before motioning us forward. "How do you want to do this, ma'am?"

"We were just going to pick a direction and walk."

Hughes nodded. "Pick your direction then, ma'am. I suggest letting me take one side however so I have better lines of sight and you stay centered. If you're going to end up needing to use your weapons, you'll need space to do so in, so everyone will need to be spaced apart a bit."

We went forward into the woods, walking quietly while keeping an eye out for anything interesting. The same pines and oaks were on this side as they were outside, but it was a lot more silent.

"So, what do you think the spiders eat?" Ash asked after we'd gone nearly eight miles and poking at things without finding much. "I haven't seen anything like, you know, five foot butterflies or other upscaled normal creatures that spiders eat."

"That's a good question. Whatever the planet or the alien did to create this place, you'd think there'd be more of a full ecological biome here than just bushes, trees, and spiders." Karen answered him.

"There's been a few signs of normal animals." Hughes answered. "We've been a little too noisy to have anything stick around us though."

"Like them eating bobcats and boar is any better of a thought." Ash looked around. "I kinda would have thought we would have already run into the spiders again, considering how easily we found them last time and everything."

"Hey!" Melissa hopped down from the tree she'd climbed. "Looks like there's a pretty big break ahead in the trees."

~~~

The break turned out to be almost half a mile ahead and turned out to be a pretty large lake with a stream feeding into and away from it.

The lake itself was quite idyllic and serene, with the water being crystal clear. The lake edges were almost beach like.

The only real issue was the stream feeding off of the lake was built up in a dam made of webs that stretched at least ten feet across the water and actually down into it. Thankfully not where we broke out of the trees, but close enough we could see dozens of the dog sized spiders on the webs.

I watched slightly dumbfounded for a moment along with the others, before a fish almost as large as the spiders seemed to come backwards out of the lake to go downstream swimming hard to go back upstream, only to get caught in the web. Immediately, several of the closest spiders converged on the fish and had it wrapped up and unmoving in seconds.

"How strong is that current that a fish can't outswim it?" Hughes asked.

Karen chopped a large branch off a tree with her machete and threw it into the stream where it pretty quickly got pulled away by the current, though the water still looked glassy.

"You're going to piss them off!" Hughes hissed, but unable to stop the stick throw in time. "Back up, everyone. Now." His stepped forward and his rifle came up, pointing towards the web.

We retreated slightly off the shore and watched as the limb floated away and then into the web dam. The stick caught for a second before the web seemed to shake as the spiders froze, then the limb started freely floating through the webbing like it wasn't there.

"Huh."

"Hey, you feel that?" Melissa stepped back out of the forest onto the riverbank. "Water energy getting pulled like the current, but it's getting caught up in lakebed."