Disclaimer: Primeval does not belong to me, this is fan fiction, not for profit.
Any references to people, places, businesses etc is entirely fictitious.
10.5
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Danny's head was spinning, and not just with the last vestiges of the buzz from the champagne he had consumed so recently at his friends twenty-fifty wedding anniversary.
What Lester had just asked him to do was impossible, right?
But then, as Danny looked at the horrors of that devastated street right in front of him, he realized that somebody must have done exactly what James Lester had just asked him to do.
Somebody had changed the time line.
This present, darkness and death, would never lead to that happy anniversary party he had just attended.
Lester was speaking to him again Danny realized. Lester was saying something about his wife and her mission. Lester was still holding the woman's hand, it looked as if he wasn't ever going to let go. Danny could hear the sirens screaming in the distance. Fire, police, ambulance, they were all coming closer.
"You understand what I'm asking you to do?" asked Lester anxiously.
"Yeah," replied Danny. His hands were shaking as he held Connor's prototype up in front of him. He blinked to clear his eyes, trying to focus on the beveled glass screen in front of him as he pressed the number keypad.
The air shimmered, fractured and an anomaly opened. Danny stepped through. By the time the fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances arrived the anomaly had closed and Danny was gone.
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109.5
Danny strode through the anomaly and found himself in a library.
The polished hardwood floors and bookcases overflowing with books could have come from almost any era since the printing press had been invented he thought. The leather wingback chair narrowed down the time period somewhat more. But the girl with long blonde hair cascading over her shoulders seated in that chair, staring at the gadget in his hands, could only be from the future.
"Oooh," she breathed, her blue eyes lighting up in delight "where did you get the antique anomaly opening device from?"
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Danny was surprised that the girl, young woman he corrected himself as he stepped closer, recognized the device in his hands for what it was. Instead of answering her question, he asked her how she knew the gadget was an anomaly opening device. Her initial excitement at seeing the device Danny held had faded however, to be replaced by suspicion of Danny himself.
"You're in the Central Metropolitan University Science library," she replied narrowing her eyes in suspicion as she leaned towards him "and just who are you to be walking in here through an anomaly?"
Her pixie nose crinkled, she sniffed. "You smell… like smoke…" the suspicion in her eyes changed to concern. "Are you alright?" she asked.
Danny looked down at the blue sweater and jeans that he had worn at an anniversary party, and then to the site of an explosion. The black marks on his knee where he had knelt by Lester were a grim reminder of what he still needed to do.
He explained that he was a detective constable, searching for his friends, there had been an explosion. Everything he said was true, his story might not include all the details, but Danny told the young woman the most important one… he was worried for his friends. The young woman gave him a dazzling smile.
"Me mum's a history professor at the uni…" she pointed at a woman in the distance "I'm Dolores by the way… I'm working on a summer project… advanced studies program… studying the development of Temporal Science in the early part of the last century…"
Danny thought she looked a little young to be taking university level courses on anything, but he listened as she continued talking.
"Yeah, well my friend built this anomaly opener…," Danny finally interrupted "but it doesn't seem to be working right… every time I've tried to go some place I wind up in the wrong place… the wrong time, I mean."
"Hmm, sounds like the calibration is off on the timing mechanism," Dolores said snatching it out of his hand. "Let me see this… hmmm, this isn't right… this is different… not the standard set up at all... where did you get this?"
Danny watched as the young woman slipped the casing off Connor's prototype and started fiddling with the inner components. He just prayed that the beautiful blonde knew what she was doing. He didn't want to be stranded here in the future.
"A friend," Danny answered, "he built the anomaly opening device… that's his first prototype you're holding."
The young woman started to hand him back the device. As Danny reached his big hand around the gadget, she screeched.
"Watch what you're doing with that thing!" she exclaimed, "You've got your thumb pressed on the geographic locator… you don't want to be opening any more anomalies inside now…"
"What?"
Danny thought the glare she gave him would wither him right on the spot.
"You don't know what you're doing, do you?" she asked.
"Nope, this gadget didn't come with an operating manual," he said.
Dolores looked at Danny with a puzzled expression as she began to explain the controls to him… the time selection criteria, the geographic locator, the shield… you don't have a shield? How could you have an anomaly opening device without a shield?!
"Unshielded use of an anomaly opening device is just asking for trouble," she said reaching into her rucksack "anomalies like to open… they're created off of radio-magnetic energy fields… open one unshielded, and the next thing you know…" She paused for breath while attaching a small shiny sliver of metal to the back of Danny's device.
"You've attracted another… before long you've got two, three or more…" she continued explaining while she tightened down the shield.
"Well, we'll just lock them," said Danny impatiently.
"Right," Dolores snorted "as if…"
"What do you mean?" asked Danny.
"No one has ever figured out how to close, or lock as you call it, an anomaly," the young woman replied frostily. "Current scientific thought is that they can't be closed."
Danny looked at her in astonishment. He knew that Connor had created the anomaly locking mechanism years before anyone had ever thought of trying to open an anomaly.
Something was wrong here.
"You said the anomaly opening device that I've got," he began "is different from the standard set up…" He paused.
"Yeah," she said.
"Who created the standard model anomaly opening device?" Danny asked.
"Why Helen Cutter, of course."
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Danny thought he was going to be ill, and maybe some of that showed in the expression on his face. Dolores looked at him with concern.
"Are you alright?" she asked again.
"It's just… I know that name…"
"Well of course you do," chuckled Dolores "She's famous… the black widow of science… she married and murdered six husbands!"
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