Falling through the mirror dimension briefly, the group quickly entered an enormous laboratory.

The group looked around, confused for a couple of seconds before suits wrapped around their bodies, UV light blared up, water began spraying from the ceiling, with different solutions floating in the air.

The group felt the sensation of weird liquids seeping under their skin and prodding their insides.

"Sorry, guys have to be cautious," Zeel said as he examined everything around.

"What do you experiment with that would require so many precautionary measures?" Elizabeth asked causing everyone to direct their attention towards Zeel.

Zeel shrugged "Too many things to consider…. Just a little bit of everything you know?"

Zeel's vague answer was like a boom in everyone's ear. Zeel was known to provide vague answers when he was conducting questionable experiments.

Suddenly, ionic blasters and lasers shot out from behind walls. No doubt preventative measures put in place at the near impossibility of anyone other than Zeel gaining access to this lab. His lab didn't only house all his advanced projects but also potentially world-ending developments.

Even Alice was at a loss in the lab that looked similar to an Umbrella Facility in both design and size. She had been in the lab before but this section was entirely new to her.

"What's wrong?" Zeel asked in a manner that was more threatening than anything else.

"Foreign energy signature detected in Cloning Bay Ten," STARS2 replied, causing Zeel to breathe a sigh of relief.

Alice noticed that Zeel did not name the AI, The Red Queen, like usual, but could guess the reason why. Zeel was preparing to make 'The Red Queen', the main controller of his Master Nanites should anything happen to himself.

"Is Cloning Bay Ten not important?" Marina asked after seeing Zeel's relief at the information.

"No, it is important, I am just relieved nobody touched the Quasar project or we'd all be fucked into oblivion," Zeel said making a vital piece of information slip, something Alice noted to ask about later since the name sounded familiar.

Running over to cloning bay ten as quick as he could, Zeel's kick dissolved the metal door; not having the extra patience to go through verification processes at the moment.

When the rest of the group saw what was inside, they sucked in a cool breath of air. They had all known that Zeel was a bit fanatic, but they had not considered the extent to which he liked his 'Experiments'.

"What is this?" Cindy asked with a hint of anger in her voice.

Alice shrugged and replied with a bitter face lying through her teeth "Clones, very popular on my planet. Don't think too much of it, spare parts in case you got hurt. See these ones have no features, so they're general clones,"

Alice replied as the group stared at the lines of clones attached to incubation chambers suspended in the air. Many of the clones had their features as well, almost as if Zeel were cloning them.

"Your mouth is saying one thing but your face is saying another," John commented noticing the disparity between Alice's expression and the words she is speaking.

"Maybe you're reading too much into it," Vishnu interrupted not wanting to investigate the matter at this time. Zeel just said some things inside this lab could be world ending, maybe they should focus on the world ending part first?

"Let's go, the disturbance is coming for further up ahead," Cindy said. Marina, as she always does, observed the situation in silence.

Coming up on a separate corridor, what the group saw baffled them, even Zeel was a bit surprised. Ella was standing there naked with a stoic look on her face.

'Fucking shit did I make a ghost' was Zeel's initial thought before making sense of the situation.

"Ella, you survived?" Marina shrieked as she attempted to run over but only to find herself frozen in place.

"That's not Ella," Alice interrupted when she saw the others struggling to approach Ella as well.

Alice was genuinely scared beyond belief. If Zeel was not next to her at this moment, she would have bolted a long time ago.

Alice looked at the confused face of the others and came to a realization, only she could feel the power radiating off the imposter Ella. But little did Alice know that what she sensed was only the tip of the iceberg. Only Zeel could feel the entirety of the Cosmic Energy radiating from the being in front of him.

Zeel asked, "Who are you?"

"I am who I am," Ella replied with her face lacking any expression, but she looked at Zeel curiously and a bit boringly. Almost as if she had seen him a thousand times before, but also for the first time.

"Lorien," questioned John.

"Yes. The Felians and now their descendants refer to me as such," Ella replied "I came to like the name after a couple of millennia, and now it is the moniker that defines me across multiple Universes,"

"Are you a Cosmic Force?" Zeel inquired.

Ella tilts her head to the side for a couple of seconds looking as if she had forgotten something "Yes. I can't remember much as I'm still too weak. But that is not what you wish to know, return me to what I once was and I'll gift you all my knowledge. Good compensation, no?"

"What makes us so sure you won't just kill us after having that power back?" Alice questioned since Zeel had told her countless times before of how Cosmic Forces chose their hosts to grow stronger and experience life; however, human bodies were unreliable and the process would often end in tragedy for both beings.

Ella began walking towards Zeel and when she got to Zeel, she wrapped her hands around his waist and laid her head on his chest.

"Because I am as drawn to him, as he is to me. He seeks answers and it is the first time a human? No. Eutopian(African)-Descent High Human. Has garnered my interest since my point of origin. Come to me and I'll give you what you seek. Also, he needs me to suppress the chains on his soul,"

Ella then began rubbing her hands through Zeel's hair before falling unconscious.

"So the cosmic force is crushing on you?" Marina asked playfully.

"Nope, curiosity and crushing are separate things. And garnering the attention of a Cosmic Force is ill-advised," Zeel replied smiling bitterly at the fact Lorien had exposed one of his greatest secrets – the seal placed on his soul by another Cosmic Force.

"So are we gonna talk about why you kept a clone of Ella?" Cindy asked awkwardly.

"She was the most likely to die, so we thought it would come in useful much later since after you guys die you return to Lorien," Alice replied once again lying to cover Zeel, only this time the explanation was much more believable.

"Anyways, we have to get out of here. You guys can't handle the first layer of the mirrorverse for much longer. It places too much stress on the body and mind," Zeel replied as he waved his hand and everyone was ejected from the laboratory to another base location built in the Antarctic region of Earth.

Zeel stared at the breached lab for a little before enacting the Collection Protocol. A protocol initiated when the lab was breached for any reason, it collected all research and saved it onto a drive.

Then all samples, data, and experiments were collapsed into the depths of the Mirrorverse.

A small fury burned in Zeel's eyes as he watched his haven being reduced to mirrorverse junk, but soon, he too shifted and exited the mirrorverse. Appearing next to the others who had left previously.

"Cold," Elizabeth pointed out, after appearing in an underground facility in Antarctica; once again similar in build to an Umbrella Facility.

Alice shrugged "STARS2 turn on the heater,"

"So we're underwater?" Cindy asked.

"Well, yeah there is an observation room further up but before that we'll meet in the conference room in a couple of minutes," Zeel said.

"Why?" Vishnu spoke for the first time in a while.

"Time to send you guys home, of course, and there are some answers promised," Zeel replied waving his hand behind his back in a dismissive manner.