Something Like Claudia Brown

by SCWLC

Abby's going to get married. Then she goes through an anomaly, comes back out, and finds out just how upsetting the Claudia Brown phenomenon can be. Not about Stephen and Connor, for once.

Title: Something Like Claudia Brown
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, except a third-rate fantasy novella that will probably never be finished.
Rating: PG-13 at the outset, I may change it later.
Summary: Abby's going to get married. Then she goes through an anomaly, comes back out, and finds out just how upsetting the Claudia Brown phenomenon can be.
A/N: So, as I take a bold step into my first Conby 'ship fic, I've been kicking this idea around.

---

In the end, Abby and Connor had had to be the ones to go through of the team, everyone else was occupied. They had to retrieve the strings of tinsel and some very long-lasting shiny stuff, taken by the hopeful oviraptor male, who had managed quite a . . . decorative effect with his bower. As they stripped it away, Connor idly remarked, "I feel quite sorry for him, actually. I mean, he'd gone to all this trouble to decorate the place, probably might as well have put on Barry White albums and everything, and he's going to bring his girl back to find a mess."

Despite agreeing with his sentiments in a way, Abby just rolled her eyes at her fiancé and soon-to-be-husband. "As much as I agree, Connor, let's just hurry up and get this done and get home. I need to take the time to yell at Danny in advance so that when he brings you home from your stag night I've already got it out of my system." At the affronted look on his face, she rolled her eyes. "I'm expecting to be too drunk myself to do it then, you know. I heard Jenny going on about male strippers."

Connor raised an eyebrow at her. "Is that why you're not laying down the law about not getting me too pissed to stand up and all that? You won't have a leg to stand on?"

"Pretty much," Abby told him blithely. "Anyhow, it's also that I trust you and I don't even think it's a possibility that you'd actually do anything wrong behind my back. So, if you, Danny, Becker and Matt decide to spend all night getting drunk and leering at mostly naked women, I can deal with it."

"Also, you still can't say anything if Jenny's living room will be populated by people like, Casper the Copper and Frankie the Fireman."

Abby stared at him. "I may have been curious about what Jenny was planning," he admitted.

"You hacked her email and used keyword searches, didn't you?"

"Yup." She couldn't keep herself from laughing. "Hey," he said, an amused twinkle in his eye, "Did you know she's being courted for being the publicity relations person for the Association for Regulation of Scottish Economics?"

Abby stared blankly a moment, then sighed. "Silly arses," she muttered. "No pun intended," she snapped even as Connor opened his mouth.

It closed again, and then he nodded. "She sent them a pretty scathing email back."

"I don't blame her," Abby told him. They'd gotten the last bundles together and walked back to the anomaly. Connor plucked a flower from a nearby bush with his free hand, presenting it to her.

"For the loveliest lady in all the British Isles," he said sketching a bow.

She took it, smelled it, put it into her hair, which didn't quite work because it wasn't staying put properly, and smiled back. "I know you're leaving room for Tricia Helfer," she told him, taking his hand anyhow, because it was sweet the way he romanced her. It was awkward and endearing and if you ignored the things he accidentally said because he didn't mean to say them and just completely missed them, he was really romantic.

He took her hand and they walked back through the anomaly.

The first thing she noticed on the other side was that Matt, Emily and Becker weren't there. Stephen, Cutter and Captain Ryan were. A sick feeling filled her a moment, as she wondered if she was dead or dreaming or . . . something. But a quick pinch of her leg told her that she was probably not dreaming, and if she were dead, shouldn't she either remember something about to kill her, or at least not be feeling the pain of being pinched or . . . she'd assume she was alive until someone pointed out the Pearly Gates to her.

The second thing was that she had a free hand to pinch herself, and Connor's hand that had been in hers was missing. He wasn't there. She didn't even have time to start looking for him when Stephen strode forward, saying, "God, I was worried! What possessed you to go through?" Then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

Shocked, Abby just stood there a moment while Stephen kissed her, trying to cope with what was going on. That was when she realised that Stephen Hartwas kissing her, and pushed away from him, staggering back into the wall, staring blankly. "What?" she asked dumbly. How could this be happening?

"Claudia! Where's Claudia Brown?"

She felt sick at the memory and asked the question she was now certain she wouldn't like the answer to. "Where's Connor?"

"Who?" Stephen asked, still standing too close.

"For goodness sake, Stephen," said Jenny as she emerged from behind Ryan and Cutter. "I realise you're still dealing with the breakup, but I don't think trying to kiss your way back in will work."

Abby shook her head to clear it, wondering if this was how Cutter had felt as he came out of the anomaly, looking for a woman who'd never existed. "Connor Temple," she repeated. "I . . . he was right behind me, Cutter." She shook her head, "It's like he just . . . evaporated as we crossed back."

Suddenly, Jenny got a sour look on her face. "She's talking about the Temple boy, Nick. The one who's been causing all the trouble with showing up at the anomalies like some sort of thrill-seeker." Disgruntled, she continued. "I still cannot believe he convinced my own sister to join his merry little band of . . . of vigilantes. What Jenny was thinking, I do not know."

The idea was dizzying, and Abby found herself saying, "Claudia?" in disbelief.

"Yes?"

"Oh my God." Abby felt her knees shaking as she leaned against the wall. It was all wrong. "So . . . I don't . . . No wonder you looked so disorientated," she said to Cutter. A hysterical laugh escaped her. "You were right, she doeslook just like Jenny. How Connor managed to even understand it all is just beyond me, but he's always been that way."

"Abby," Stephen said, cautiously, "Are you alright?"

"No," she said. "No I am not alright on an epic scale." Another hysterical laugh as she felt the walls of the alley starting to rotate around her. "God, Connor, you have me quoting one of your damn shows and you're not even here to appreciate corrupting me."

Cutter seemed to make a decision to take a stab at getting sense out of her. "Abby, we can't help if you don't explain."

Taking in a trembling breath, Abby said, "It's just like Claudia Brown."

"What?" said the woman who looked like Jenny but was actually Claudia.

"Long story," Abby said, deciding that explaining about Cutter staggering out of the anomaly in the Forest of Dean wouldn't do any good and would just confuse the issue. "The point is, when I went through the anomaly, you were dead," she told the three men. "Ryan died in the anomaly in the Permian when Helen tricked us into sending the future predator's kits through. It was his body they found when he and Cutter went through that anomaly the first time." She turned to Stephen. "You died in Leek's menagerie, but you won't know who Leek is, because you have Claudia, which we didn't, because she disappeared from history when Cutter came out of the Permian anomaly without Ryan."

"What?" came a ragged chorus of reply.

She ignored them. "And Helen had one of her clones shoot you," she added to Cutter. "It left Connor gutted when you died. He was there and . . . I've never seen him like that since." She shook her head. "It was so surreal. We'd spent the day at the hospital, corralling the diictodons, and then all of a sudden, the ARC's been invaded by Helen and . . . so we were left with Becker and Sarah, and Lester hired Danny on the spot to stop Christine Johnson from poking her nose into the ARC, not that that helped."

"Abby, you're not making any sense," Stephen said gently.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It's just . . . this morning you were all dead." The look the others exchanged spoke volumes. "I'm not mad. Something happened in the past. Something Connor and I did changed things, or maybe it was the oviraptor taking the tinsel," she held out her handful of shiny stuff, "But everything's changed here."

It was as though a light went on in Cutter's head. "You're saying that you think you must have done something in the past which somehow sent ripples through time to affect the present?"

"Yes!" Abby exclaimed. "It's happened before. With you and Claudia Brown. You came out of the anomaly, asking where she was, but none of us had ever heard of her, because she didn't exist. But now she does and . . . everything's different," Abby finished lamely, unable to explain better. After all, there was no way to explain this, and she was no Connor with his instinctive understanding of such concepts.

Cutter frowned, but Abby had the somewhat comforting feeling that he wasn't dismissing her out of hand, just trying to determine what to do about things. "We'd best head back to the Home Office," he told her. "We'll figure something out."

She followed him back to his car, a sense of some relief coming over her. Losing Cutter had done some very bad things to the team, had taken away the mandate of scientific exploration that had so characterised those early years, leaving them with Danny and Matt and Becker to take up the slack, pushing it all into a military mindset of controlling the anomalies and not studying them and the animals that came through.

But as they pulled up at the home office, heading past the mishmash of offices that Abby remembered as being completely inadequate to the work at the ARC, she realised how different things were. This wasn't the ARC, this was the small adjunct satellite to the Home Office that had been set up on a shoestring to handle the incursions. Where was the tech? Where were the scientists and soldiers and administrators? Leek had been pretty much an evil, skeevy, creepy, Helen-minion, but he'd organised and delegated and got them their building.

Now that she thought about it, it had been down to him and Connor. Connor, who had claimed the computer system was inadequate for a proper handling of his database and the information that needed to be processed and cross-referenced, Connor, who had pointed out they needed to separate the science into departments, if only to keep the samples from cross-contaminating, and Connor who'd liaised between Leek and Cutter, keeping them from each other's throats by playing go-between so that the set-up would get done without having to call Lester in to make disparaging comments.

Connor wasn't here.

She felt like crying.

By the time they trooped into Lester's office she had herself under control, but the sight of Lester, looking exactly the same as when they'd left the ARC that morning nearly undid her. He'd agreed to walk her down the aisle, taking the place of her absentee father. She nearly moved to hug him in relief, when he seemed to retreat from her. He neither backed down nor flinched, but something in the way he held himself was standoffish. This wasn't the Lester that had greeted her and Connor with a joke after a year away in the Cretaceous, this was the government hatchet man Cutter had so disliked.

One more thing out of place. It was good to see Ryan again, Cutter and Stephen well and friendly, but she missed Becker's stolidity, so different in nature from Ryan's phlegmatic temperament. She missed Matt's weird stiffness and she missed Jess' cheer and Emily's warmth.

Then from around the corner, Sarah appeared. "Sarah!" She wasn't a replacement for the ones Abby was missing, no one was, but then, no one was a replacement for anyone else. She didn't care that the other woman looked baffled, anything was better than the picture in her mind drawn by Becker's defeated words of Sarah lying dead in a car, killed by predators in a now-hopefully-changed future.

Sarah hesitantly hugged her back, saying, "Erm . . . there, there? Abby? Are you alright?"

"You're not dead anymore!" Abby gushed. "You don't know how horrible it was when . . ." She pulled away. "Sorry. It's complicated."

Cutter stared at her, "What happened?" he asked, eyes wide, "Was there some sort of apocalypse in this . . . alternate reality you're from? It's as though everyone you meet here is someone who was dead there."

Abby knew she should be serious, but a little devil of mischief made her say, "Oh, we stopped the apocalypse. Really, I still don't know how Matt made it back out of that monster anomaly Helen got Burton to trick Connor into making."

They all stared. "Sorry. It's just . . . everything here's so . . . different."

"If one of you might consider explaining this . . . possibly delusional behaviour?" Lester asked pointedly.

Abby was thankful that Cutter leapt in to explain, rather than forcing her to do it, because Connor was really the only one who'd understood when Cutter had tried to explain in the original timeline. Or was it the second one, since the one with Claudia Brown andConnor had come first?

At least everyone was now so used to the weirdness that was the anomalies, that they seemed to accept fairly quickly that Abby was a different Abby than the one they knew, while still being Abby. When Cutter's explanation of the theory of how a different present could be created by Abby having been in the past, he said, "And she's been bringing up that Temple boy."

It hadn't quite registered with her until that moment. "So, Connor exists here? Not like Claudia Brown and Jenny, where Jenny just sort of . . . replaced Claudia?"

"Jenny 'replaced' me?" Claudia asked, sounding stunned. "How . . ."

Abby shrugged. "I don't know. Connor was the only one who ever really understood. I mean . . ."

"Well," Stephen interrupted her. "I don't know about someone replacing anyone, but I have the feeling that the Connor that you're used to is significantly different from the one here."

"What do you mean?" Abby asked slowly.

Looks of disgust circled the room. "When we went out to investigate the report in the Forest of Dean, he just kept doing the silliest things," Cutter explained. "I finally just sent him back to the university after he sat in front of the anomaly sending his bloody housekey through, like a three-year-old with a new toy."

Stephen nodded. "It's just as well. That poor kid you got the coelurosauravus from was killed."

"The gorgonopsid killed Ben?" Abby asked, aghast.

Nodding soberly, Stephen told her, "I found a footprint, but I just wasn't prepared for what it was." He shook his head. "Temple would have just-"

"Told you it was a gorgonopsid so you knew and knew to move fast and keep Ben from being killed," Abby snapped.

"Abby," Cutter said gently. "I think you need to realise that this isn't the reality you're from. Temple and his little gang have been getting in our way, risking themselves, and doing some very foolish things. He's not the person you remember."

She nodded silently, but wondered if Cutter were truly right. They'd all thought Connor quite daft when the project had started, but after years of working with him, everyone had to agree that there was a method behind the daft, sometimes childlike man Connor was. What she had to do was bide her time, find out more, then find Connor to see for herself.

As the meeting broke up, she hastily latched onto the one person she recognised that might be able to answer some of her questions, and used Sarah as an excuse to avoid Stephen. Soon they were ensconced in Sarah's lab, one thing that looked not much different from the one she'd had at the old ARC building. "I need to know a few things," Abby said to her. "And I think the first one is, were Stephen and I dating?"

Sarah looked extremely uncomfortable as she said, "You were, but a week ago you broke up with him. You gave him the 'let's just be friends,' speech. He didn't really take it well."

"Well, that's something, at least," Abby muttered. "I mean, not that Stephen's not happy, but I was going to get married in just a few days. I couldn't have gone from that to Stephen's girlfriend, even if I were still interested. Which I'm not anymore."

"Anymore?" Sarah inquired.

So, Abby told her about those early days when she'd held out hope that Stephen would notice her. "But in the end, it wouldn't have worked anyhow. And I'm happy with Conn . . ." her voice cracked as she realised that, even if there was a Connor here, he wouldn't be herConnor. He wouldn't have spent a year lost 65 million years in the past, wouldn't have lived with her and Rex and Sid and Nancy. Wouldn't have dangled over a cliff's edge, screaming for anyone to hear that he loved her as he clung to her hand, preferring to die than abandon her.

"Oh, Abby," Sarah murmured as she wrapped her arms around her friend. It wasn't herSarah, wasn't the one who'd lied to Connor about a curse on the Sun Cage and cheerfully messed with Connor's sense of superiority about his programming and locking device, but it was still Sarah. Who smelled like curry and dust and had a hundred references in her office to try tracking anomalies by historical appearance. Sarah, who Abby had thought she'd never see again and had died trying to give Connor and Abby a rescue when she should never have been in the field.

"I missed you," she admitted into her friend's shoulder. "When we got back from the Cretaceous, Connor and I, and we found out you'd died on a mission to rescue us, I felt so awful. Becker wasn't the same either. I think he blamed himself."

"Who's Becker?" Sarah asked curiously.

"How . . . of course," Abby shook her head. "He wouldn't be here. He was hired after Ryan died, and if Ryan never died, there'd be no reason to get Becker."

Quick on the uptake as always, Sarah said, "So, he was a soldier?"

"SAS," Abby said grinning. "Extremely good-looking."

"Who's good-looking?" interrupted a voice from the door. It was the not-Jenny, Claudia.

"Just someone I knew once," Abby said, shaking her head. "It's weird how much you look like Jenny."

Claudia just looked irritated. "I'll tell you this. My sister is the bane of my existence. The notion that I might have had another life where she never existed is a dream I had all the time growing up."

"What?" Abby said, baffled.

Sighing, Claudia said, "I suppose I'd better warn you before you trip over her and get confused. I have a half sister. Our mothers were twins, and my father, our father, had an affair with my aunt. It's a quirk of genetics, but my half sister, Jenny looks exactly like me. We were even born on the same day. She just goes by her mother's name, Lewis. Since my mum was actually married to our father at the time, I have their name, Brown."

Abby buried her head in her hands a moment, stifling snickers. "What is it?" Sarah asked.

Trying not to have hysterics, Abby told them, "It's just . . . it always seemed like some sort of weird mystical thing that Claudia was magically replaced by some other woman that looked just like her but was totally different. This just . . . makes it all a lot less mysterious."

"I suppose it does at that," Sarah said nodding. Abby still caught her and Claudia shrugging at each other out of the corner of her eye.

Stephen suddenly rounded the corner. "We've got a lead on an anomaly, let's move," he said shortly.

Abby found herself in the back seat of the old Hilux, loading up the tranqs they'd ceased to use with the advent of the EMD. Her head snapped up as she heard Cutter grumble, "I just hope we can beat them to it. I wish I knew how Temple's crew beats us to the anomalies the way they do."

"Beats us to the anomalies?" Abby asked.

Stephen turned to face her. "Somehow, Temple's managing to beat us to the anomalies. It's turned into a stupid race," he said. "Sometimes they beat us and sometimes they don't, and no one's been able to figure out how they beat us or not. It seems to be luck," he explained.

When they got there, it seemed that Connor's 'crew' had indeed beaten them there. How could Cutter and Stephen tell? The anomaly had been blocked off from allowing anything to escape, by the expedient of surrounding it on all sides with the heavy barrels in the warehouse, which had also been hastily bolted together. From inside the enclosure Abby could hear an irritated roar, but it would be cut off as the animal on the other side would clearly go right back through when faced with nowhere to go. It was clever and effective, given that apparently this Connor had no locking device.

Cutter and Stephen, meanwhile, were making irritated noises about Connor's 'interference', which only stiffened Abby's resolve to find Connor and see if she could put together what was going on.

---

Abby aimlessly wandered the offices, renewing her acquaintance with the layout of everything, wondering if every few years she'd be doing this again. This time, unlike the last two times, however, there was no Connor. With the move to the first ARC, he'd eagerly pointed out everything that had been his idea, showing her, Cutter and Stephen where their offices were and the quarantine spaces for studying things that might be dangerous and places where they could hold things like Columbian mammoths until such time as there was somewhere to send them. He'd been intimately involved in setting up, having argued Lester and Leek to a standstill as he pointed out that if it was a scientific endeavour, they should have one of the working scientists consulting on layout. He'd even snagged one of Ryan's men, insisting that they should have a say on their section of things.

Cutter had been too busy with the anomalies themselves to pay attention, she and Stephen had been too busy with the animals, and none of them had even noticed how bored Connor was at playing lab tech for them to realise until he'd whipped out a complete architectural blueprint one day, having taught himself the entire first year curriculum for an architecture student in his free time.

The second time, they'd gone through and Connor had made dry remarks about living like morlocks underground and the security upgrades all over. Despite the sense of displacement, he and Becker had had her in stitches as Connor had put on airs and tried to outdo Becker for bone-dry sarcasm. His glee following each comment had ruined the effect, but it had made her love him all the more as he forced the tour into making the new ARC their own again.

Now she was wandering about and there was no Connor to tisk about the overflowing in-trays and make faces about the aged computers.

"Impressive, isn't it?" Sarah said from behind her.

Abby nearly leapt three feet in the air. "It's . . . something," she said, comparing it to the old ARC, with its high ceilings and airy openness. A thought occurred to her, "How do you detect anomalies here, anyhow?" she asked.

"Well," Sarah said, leading her down the hall. "Cutter's got some techs working around the clock to locate anomalies based on something to do with radio waves," she explained. "He noticed a few years back that the anomalies disrupt a particular frequency, but it's been sort of on the back burner. At the moment," Sarah stopped at the door to a large room with a bank of computers, a bank of televisions, a stack of what were radios and a dozen people or so, clearly monitoring everything coming out of the massive media collection in the room, "we just track any and all reports of strange sightings, odd animal sightings and whatnot."

"You . . ." Abby trailed off.

Sarah nodded. "It's a pretty stunning undertaking, isn't it?" she said proudly.

"Stunning," Abby echoed. Well, it was no wonder Connor was beating them to anomalies. He probably had an ADD up and running, while they were still using the old internet keyword search 'bot system from the early days. Even if Connor didn't have an ADD, she bet he'd've put one together that was better than whatever they had.

Soon enough she was given a proper tour by Cutter and Claudia, both of whom were immensely cute together as a couple, and mistakenly proud of their set-up. When Cutter showed her the fancy newfangled anomaly tracking devices his team had come up with, the ones that would let them narrow down an anomaly location once they were within a few hundred metres of the things, she nearly laughed. And her Cutter had been disappointed with the 'large' size of Connor's first prototypes? These things were the size of a notebook computer, and while they had some extra app-like functions on them, they didn't even have the elegance of Connor's early work, which had tended to include bits of toasters. Usually toasters taken from their flat.

She felt like she was in another technological era altogether. Cutter's work on the anomalies was far more advanced along, his giant model with many more blanks filled in than it had when he'd died in the old timeline. Stephen had got himself a whole room for comparative microbiology and seemed happier than she'd even seen him before, but for the sad, hangdog expressions he aimed her way. Sarah, too, had her own little department of researchers, doing the legwork of digging up potential historical references to anomalies for her, saving her time of endlessly poring over things written in languages someone else could translate.

But the technological heart of the ARC had been Connor, and without him puttering around, it all felt wrong. Abby found her way back to her office and began to read through old reports.

Without Burton, they'd had to find other ways to handle the animals left behind and trapped in the present. It seemed that Abby handled oversight of that, and Lester had somehow got them an old private zoo to keep them in. Looking at the pictures, Abby smiled. It was a million times better than Burton's grim concrete enclave and all the large herbivores had turned out docile enough to roam in the open together freely.

Suddenly, she saw something in the background of one of the photographs. Peering closely, finally getting out a magnifying glass, she saw what, or rather who, it was. Tom. Connor's friend Tom was in the background, talking to the manager at the menagerie there. A thought made her open up a dozen files and expense reports, and begin to dig through them. Her sudden hunch seemed accurate.

The Home Office Anomaly Research Adjunct weren't the only people using the menagerie. Connor's so-called crew had been using it too. In secret, with her supposed subordinates keeping it from her. Either her previous self had missed the clues, or had caught them but let it go because the animals needed proper care. Either way, Connor would have been making sure that any animals he captured wound up there, which meant that if Abby went out to check, and mid-week it wasn't on her normal Friday afternoon schedule, she might find someone who could point her to where Connor was now.

She trotted to the door, telling Claudia that, "Since I'm effectively brand new and all, I'd like to see the zoo we've got," and got waved off to do whatever needed doing. After all, there was no need to hide where she was going, it was part of her job she'd have to deal with anyhow.

It was amusing when she got there to see a sudden panic as a bunch of keepers tried to drag Princess the dracorex out of sight. It wasn't so much working, and Abby ignored the frantic manager as she noticed the dinosaur's fixation on someone's lunch, poked through it to discover they'd brought a container of strawberries and cheerfully stole them to feed to the herbivore. "Hey there, you," she said, giving the dinosaur a good scratching while the creature happily ate someone's lunch treat.

"So," she told the now-sweating man. "I don't suppose one of you can tell me how to get into contact with Connor Temple's people, can you?"

From behind her, she heard someone say, "I'd be interested in knowing what you plan to do if someone tells you how."

When she turned, she got another shock. "Tom?"

He looked disturbed. "Er . . . yeah. Since when do you know my name?"

It was another difference. "Can we talk somewhere, in private?" she asked. It was all well and good to tell some people, but she didn't want everyone in the greater London area to know her new background. A few minutes later they were installed in her office at the prehistoric zoo, and Tom was looking at her suspiciously. It wasn't the same Tom that had tried to kill her under the influence of the dodo's parasite, this Tom was . . . sharp. There was a set to his shoulders that was different, not aggressive, but prepared. "I need to talk to Connor," she started.

"Why?" he asked. "Why now? None of you people give a damn about anything we try to tell you. You don't want to work with us because we aren't in the know to begin with. I've seen how you all treat Connor," he snapped. "You act like he's some sort of idiot, just because . . . I don't even know why," he finished in aggravation.

"I know," Abby said. "But I'm not who you think I am. Not anymore, anyhow."

Tom stared at her blankly. "What?"

"You know all that stuff about . . . about alternate timelines," Abby said carefully. "I'm from one. I went into an anomaly yesterday morning, and when I came out, people who were dead weren't anymore, my whole team was gone, it's like the world up and reset itself to something different."

Eyes wide, Tom said, "Duncan always speculated that we could be changing the present every time we went into the past, but it wasn't enough for the person who came back to notice, or maybe that they changed when they came through to align with the present."

"Oh, they don't realign with the present," Abby said without thinking. "Otherwise we wouldn't have thought Cutter was mad when he came out shouting about Claudia Brown and not knowing who Leek was."

"You're really serious," Tom said wonderingly. "You've seen it happen?"

She was making progress. Maybe there was something to hiring sci-fi nerds for these positions. They were used to thinking like this. "Well, I saw Cutter come out and ask after someone who didn't exist, and then have no idea what the ARC was. And now . . . now there's no ARC, and everything's completely . . ." she trailed off, shaking her head.

"ARC?" Tom asked.

"The Anomaly Research Centre," Abby explained. "I think Connor picked the name because he wanted to tell people, 'No, not that ark,' every chance he got."

The redhead fixed her with a stare, then slowly nodded. "I think I believe you, but whatever happens will be up to Connor in the end."

Abby stood. "So, what now? Will you meet at my flat, do you want me to meet with Connor and . . . whoever, at someplace else?"

"I'll talk to Connor, see what he says," Tom told her. "He'll want to see for himself that you're . . . if you're telling the truth."

"Think he'll be sceptical that I knew him in another timeline and all?" Abby asked. It would make sense, certainly.

Her new contact nodded. "He will. I don't suppose you have more proof than a cockamamie story, do you?"

Abby thought a moment, then grinned. "Tell him that he once compared a cabin with no electricity that hadn't been occupied since the 30s to his gran's at Christmas, and that I know from personal experience that he's been circumcised."

Tom flushed as red as his hair, but he nodded. He gestured with his head, and they went into the zoo, Tom showing her all the animals Connor's group had arranged to keep in the menagerie. It was pleasant, and Abby, who'd never had any chance at all to know Tom, found herself amused and charmed by him. He was more confident than Connor in some ways, with a more sardonic outlook on life, but he was smart and a decent conversationalist. At the end of her tour, which had saved her the trouble of having to ask people to give her a tour of a facility she was supposed to have known, she walked him to his car, a beaten up and rusted hulk from the late 80s. As he turned the key, she said to him, "By the way, Tom?"

"Yeah," he said as he shifted it to drive.

"It's good to see you alive."

She walked away before he could do more than squawk. If what she'd said thus far didn't get Connor's attention, she didn't know what would.

After all that, she just drove home, happy to have her old flat back. The new flat she and Connor had shared was nice enough, but this one had all her things, her equipment and Rex. It didn't really feel like home, of course. It was missing Connor and his boxer shorts strewn every which way, it was missing his Xbox and the pictures of Tom and Duncan. The bits and bobs of things he'd been in the middle of making that he kept as out of the way as he could and the sudden discovery that he'd ignored her and warmed his bloody pants in the microwave again, the kettle he always kept full and the tea and coffee he'd make for them both at the drop of a hat, it wasn't there. Connor wasn't there, and since he wasn't there it wasn't home.

But in a twisted sort of way, given that she'd never been further from where they belonged than this, it was more home than their new apartment, which she'd never see again.

It all finally sank in. Her old life, the new ARC, Becker, Jess, Matt and Emily, the Lester who was now more of a father to her than her own, the ADD and EMDs, shared memories of a past, Connor . . . it was all gone. Even if they were all here, the people, they wouldn't be hers. The Cutter there wasn't the one that had stumbled shell-shocked to find his whole world upside-down. That Stephen had never been turned away from the team for following along with Helen's scheme. This Sarah had never joked and picked on Connor. That Lester hadn't dealt with Christine Johnson or spent a year waiting for three of his people to come back from prehistory. The people were the same, but they weren't her people.

With a sob, Abby collapsed to the sofa, arms wrapped around a cushion and began to cry. She was alone now. No one would remember, only her.

Rex landed beside her, crawling onto her and snuggling down. He was like a cat that way. Sometimes he'd just been able to tell when she needed to cuddle something and had filled in the need. "I'm glad I'm here, Rex," she murmured. "I just wish everyone else was."

He cheeped, making her giggle wetly, and then pull herself together. Cutter had rebuilt for himself after landing in his new timeline, Emily and Matt had made homes for themselves out of their own times, and she and Connor had figured out how to live in the 21st century all over again after a year of roots, bulbs and running away from Bob the Spinosaurus. She'd cope now.

Somehow.

A couple days passed. Then on Sunday, Abby was at the mall, looking to see if there were any palpable differences in the world outside the anomaly investigation team from what she was used to, when she spotted Tom looking furtive. He looked like he was trying to avoid being seen, and it wasn't until she saw a truly exasperated-looking Becker approach her, bump into her, knocking her bag to the floor, and Tom shove something in while she supposedly was distracted that she realised what was going on.

It was cloak-and-dagger done Connor Temple style. She nearly laughed as she realised he'd somehow talked Becker into "distracting" her, while Tom was to drop off some sort of directions that would no doubt be convoluted and silly and might well end with a bag over her head in the back of a van.

The whole thing was just so . . . Connor, she couldn't help the wicked amusement that made her flutter her eyelashes at Becker. "Oh, I'm so sorry. Was I not watching where I was going?"

"No, ma'am," he said in that impeccably military way of his. "I should have been watching where I was going."

Tom scarpered, and Abby let enough of her hysterical laughter out to smile at Becker. Clearly there was something unsettling in it, because he looked even stiffer than usual. "I don't mind in the slightest," she told him, breathily. After all, he wasquite handsome and Connor wasn't there to lose his mind about her flirting. "My name's Abby. Abby Maitland. What's yours?"

He looked even more dreadfully uncomfortable. "Becker, ma'am. Lieutenant Becker."

"You're in the army?" she asked, imitating those silly girls from uni who'd thought the best way to impress a boy was to act like everything about him impressed them, including his ability to down fifteen pints of beer in less than a minute without vomiting. Which, now that she thought about it, was pretty impressive in a stupid, but-why-did-you-do-it-to-start-with way.

"SAS," he replied, looking even more uncomfortable. "Excuse me," he said. "But I'm running rather late, I should be going."

"Maybe I'll see you around!" she called after him, waving.

Then she went to the tables next to the McDonald's and collapsed into hysterical laughter. She'd go along with it, but when she got her hands on Connor . . .

It took no time at all to find the scrap of paper. It was in code, a la Connor Temple, half sci-fi reference and half pseudo-military notations. Abby went home, changed into something that would stand up well to someone putting a bag over her head and shoving her into a van, spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on old case files, googling what all the references were, (It directed her to go to the location where the anomaly to the Silurian had opened, later that evening. The one where the girl and her dog had gone through) fed Rex, then headed out to the meeting spot.

Sure enough, moments after she arrived, there was a bag over her head and the sounds of people shushing Tom. Competently cuffed, she felt a sudden suspicion about who else was there with her and tugged the hairpin off her sleeve, opening up the handcuffs the way Danny had taught her, then yanking the bag off her head before anyone could react.

"I thought I recognised your style, Danny," Abby told the slightly flummoxed former detective.

The grin he shot her was pure Danny, and it made Abby homesick all over again, because he'd just got back from being lost in time again, and he'd made it in time to be part of the wedding and everything, taking up the role of best man for Connor, because he'd felt that someone should be there to give Connor a properly stripper-enhanced send-off, and he knew where all the good ones were at. "So, we knew each other in that alternate reality of yours?" he asked.

"Yeah, you were team leader for a while," Abby said, drinking in the sight of someone else who wasn't dead or missing. "When you got back, you butted heads with Matt so much Lester had to split up the teams into two. Matt got Emily and me, and you got Connor and Becker."

"Who's Matt?" chorused the van.

Abby shrugged. "You probably won't know him. He won't have had any reason to wind up at the ARC, any version of it, in this timeline." It also wouldn't help anything to tell Emily she'd been dating someone who effectively wouldn't exist. "So, I assume this is all because Connor wants to be sure I can't give away the top-secret clubhouse to anyone back at the A - Home Office."

"Something like that," Danny told her with another grin. "It's amusing enough to watch him play secret society head, so I don't buck his system."

Emily's lips were twitching, but Tom snapped from the front seat, "Connor's brilliant. There's no need to make fun of him for being cautious."

"I'm not making fun of him being cautious," Abby said. "I know perfectly well he's brilliant. The Home Office is practically in the Stone Age right now as compared to before, and that's all down to Connor. I'm making fun of how he's going about being cautious, because he's being silly. If he wanted it done right, he should have delegated to Danny and had done with."

As they pulled to a stop, Emily shot her an apologetic look and pulled the bag back over her head before they led her out of the van, up some stairs and over and about before finally bringing things to a halt. When the bag came off, they were in the theatre Emily, Ethan and Charlotte had arrived in back in Abby's timeline. They were on the stage, and there was a desk, a large office chair of the sort that spun around, and Connor was sitting, one ankle hooked over his knee. "Would you like a cup of tea?" he asked.

It was reflex. "Connor, I swear to God, you do that Alice 2009 thing one more time and I'm going to kickbox you back to the Cretaceous and you can just deal with Bob by yourself."

"Er . . ." They were all staring at her, Tom indignant, Danny and Emily amused, Connor a little stunned.

She shook her head. "I'm sorry. It's just, you've been doing that again and again since that bloody thing came out and it got a little tired."

"Who's Bob?" Danny asked.

"The spinosaurus that kept trying to eat us," Abby grumbled. "Connor wanted to name him something with a lot of words, ending in 'of Doom', but since he'd already named the raptors Two-Face and Joker, I got to name the spinosaurus."

There was a lengthy silence, and then Connor said slowly, "Well, you're not the Maitland from here, she has no sense of humour."

"I just . . . I need to know what's going on," Abby told him. "Because I feel like you not being there's the key difference. I mean, I'm happy Cutter, Stephen and Ryan are all alive again now, but everything's so different."

The twitch of his lips, which was obviously suppressed glee made both her eyebrows go up. "And what's got you so happy?" she asked.

"Sorry," he said, looking embarrassed. "It's just, alternate realities. It's kind of cool, yeah?"

When Connor stood then, Abby gasped. Because as his head turned, she saw a scar, thick and white, running down his face and neck, perilously close to his jugular, continuing below the neck of his top. Not only that, though. He was clearly favouring his left side, one arm tucked in close to hold his ribs. "Connor," she said, and instinct overwhelmed common sense as she nearly ran to his side, sitting him back in the chair to check on what was wrong with him, batting his hands away as she looked at the bandages on his side, tisking over the wrapping job before she realised that she was, to this Connor, a stranger. "Sorry," she said, flushing and backing away.

"Er . . . yeah, no problem," he said, blushing. Then he shook his head and pulled himself back up. "So, what exactly do you want? I mean, out of this meeting and all?"

She stood as well. "I don't even really know, Connor. I just . . . I needed to know what was going on, and when Cutter and Stephen started going on about how you were interfering and what-all, I had to know what went wrong and if they were right about you."

"Right about me, how?" he asked.

"Yes," said Danny, "I'd be very interested to know what they think of Connor here, especially that Stephen fellow."

"Don't you get started on Stephen with me-"

"Right," Connor said in that annoying sing-song of his. "Your boyfriend."

Abby rolled her eyes. "Why is it Stephen brings out more stupid alpha male in men than anyone else?"

"Because he's forever posturing in that irritatingly laid-back way of his," a new voice cut in. It was Jenny.

"Jenny? What are you doing here, luv?" Danny asked, hurrying over to her. She was limping heavily, the cane she was leaning on was well-worn, indicating that whatever injury had lamed her was of long standing.

She leaned on Danny, even as she rolled her eyes and gestured to Becker, hovering protectively behind her, to come along. "Since nearly everyone was here to meet this supposedly different Abigail Maitland, I decided that Becker and myself ought to be here as well."

"Oh, Jenny, what happened?" Abby asked. The last she'd seen of Jenny, days before her wedding, the other woman had been happily involved in working for some environmental concern in PR, writing scathing indictments of governmental policy and making snide comments about the Tories. This wasn't that woman. This was the exhausted Jenny that had left the ARC after literally freezing to death.

"I got in the way of a charging stegosaurus," she said. "It could have been worse, certainly." Connor immediately pushed the chair to her, and she sat down with that sharp self-possession that Abby remembered so well. "I take it, based on how you spoke to me that you knew me in this other timeline?"

"Yeah," Abby said, shaking her head. "It's just, this is all so weird. I mean, I keep expecting everyone to act the way they did back . . . there. But they don't quite. I mean, the you I know wouldn't have been caught dead back at the ARC - dealing with anomalies again."

"Really?" she leaned forward, looking intrigued. "Why's that?"

"Well, after you pretty much froze to death after the fungus monster got you it was just one thing too many. Sarah said you'd found some picture of Claudia in Cutter's things and sort of went a little mad." Abby heaved a deep breath. "At least I know how Cutter felt. This is so disorientating."

"Fungus monster?" Tom had perked up and asked. "What was that?"

"I think it got handled by Cutter's team," Abby said. "I've been skimming the files, and it looks like the anomalies were pretty much the same, but there are a lot fewer in the Home Office files than we handled at the ARC. But since Princess is at the menagerie, it looks to me like they pretty much got divided between them and you."

"Princess?" Connor asked.

Abby turned to him. "The dracorex."

"You named it Princess?" Danny asked, amused. "I thought only Connor named things like that."

"We don't let Connor name things anymore," Abby said, leaning against the desk. "After he won the argument with Lester to name the mammoth Stampy, Cutter put a moratorium on it. In fact, I think he also put a moratorium on Lester naming things, since he wanted to call it Manny. No, I think Princess got named by ARC-wide pool."

"You had a pool to name a dinosaur?" Becker asked, finally speaking up.

Abby smiled at him. "Yeah, after Connor and I had a shouting match about it, you decided to put all the animal names to a pool in future, unless someone was taking them home as a pet." Then the smile turned to a smirk. "I still haven't got you back for taking over Stephen's 'when Connor and Abby shag' pool."

"What?" Becker looked stunned. "But at the mall, you said . . . you were . . ."

"Please, I saw Tom coming a mile off, Becker."

"Wait, you know all of us?" Emily said. "How can that be? This is quite a disparate group to gather together by chance."

"How should I know?" Abby asked. "By the way," she turned to Tom and Connor, who were now shoulder to shoulder. It looked just a bit like Cutter and Stephen, although Abby would have been hard-pressed to say which had which role. "Where's Duncan? I'd have thought he'd be here. He was certainly insistent when the kaprosuchus started attacking people, dragging Connor out to the docks."

Tom and Connor both closed their eyes, matching grief on their faces. Becker's face had the same stony look as when he'd told Connor and Abby about Sarah dying. "Oh, I'm so sorry," Abby said.

"Duncan was still alive?" Tom asked hoarsely. "How was he?"

"I . . ." Abby took a deep breath and tried to find a way to put it that wouldn't just hurt them both all over. "After you died, Tom, he . . . didn't take it well. It didn't help that Stephen was denying up and down that there was a conspiracy, and Connor wasn't . . . he didn't handle it well either. They kind of lost touch for a bit, and after Connor and I were trapped in the Cretaceous for a year, Conn wasn't really in any position to be there for Duncan."

"Wait," Tom said. "That's right. You said it was good to see me alive. I was dead? I died? How did I die?"

"You lot missed that anomaly, and it's a good thing," Abby said, sighing. "There were some dodos. They had a parasite that got into your bloodstream and it kind of . . . ate your brain. You went a little mad at the end and tried to kill me."

"Oh, wow." There was a pause, then Tom added. "Well, that's kind of cool."

She couldn't help staring. "Having your brain eaten by what Connor called the mutant Goa'uld from prehistory?"

"Cool," Connor and Tom chorused. Ah. There was her geek.

Danny snickered while Jenny, Emily and Becker rolled their eyes.

Then Connor pulled himself back together, perching a little down from her on the desk. "So, you still haven't really answered my question, Maitland. Why did you want to see us, beyond reminiscing about your own old times that none of us'll remember?"

It came to Abby in a flash. She'd wondered what the ARC could have been if they'd had everyone there. If Cutter had been able to focus on his science while Danny led the team in the field, if they'd been able to have more than one alpha-grade team to send to the anomalies, if there had been a Jenny anda Claudia to run interference with the media, Stephen and Ryan on one team and Becker and Danny on another, if her hunch was right about Tom, Connor on one with Tom on another. The idea was quite dazzling. Maybe they could even find Jess. Getting everyone to work together, especially after Cutter and Stephen had been so stupid, would be like herding cats. If anyone could herd cats it would be Jess.

"Maybe with enough chocolate as a bribe," Abby muttered, not realising she was talking aloud.

"Pardon?" Jenny asked for them all.

"I didn't know when I got here what I'd find," Abby explained. "Cutter and Stephen could have been right. Connor and the rest of you could have been useless. At first I just wanted to know. But now I think I know what I want to do about all this. I just have to find a way to convince Lester. We need to get everyone working together properly. We could form a new ARC."

She hadn't expected it to be like in the films when someone gives a ringing speech and everyone leaps to join up. But she also didn't expect the snort that escaped Connor, her eternal optimist and the man who liked to find the best in everything and everyone. "Lovely fantasy. Let me know how it goes with the unicorns and leprechaun gold while you're at it."

Abby stared at Connor, who had always been the first to leap up and go along with hopes and schemes and optimistic plans. He was the one who, lost in the Cretaceous, had kept faith they'd get home, long after she'd resigned herself to dying in prehistory. It was so different from anything she'd expected out of Connor that she just gaped for a minute. In fact, she gaped for so long that Connor started looking very uncomfortable and said, "Maitland? Are you alright? You're not having a stroke or some such?"

"Absence seizure?" offered Tom.

Abby shook herself. "I just . . . you're reallydifferent from my Connor is all."

He raised an eyebrow, offering a sardonic smirk her way. "Was I supposed to leap up and agree to beard the T-rex in his den?"

She'd been so relieved at just seeing him, at seeing aspects of her fiancé, she'd failed to notice Connor was dressed in dark military fatigues, as were they all, but Jenny. She hadn't noticed the world-weary look in his eyes or the way that his puppyish eagerness was muted with a sort of weight on his shoulders that looked like Danny when they'd thought Becker was lost to predators or Cutter when Valerie had been killed by her pet smilodon. Something had crushed that joy out of Connor, and she had the terrible feeling that it might have been Cutter.

Abby said none of this. Just felt tears prick her eyes, because one of the things that had made Connor so loveable and such a source of strength for her had been the way he always expected things to come out alright. This one expected nothing, just another body slam of disdain and bad news. "Well," she said, "I should have expected this. If I could be dating Stephen Hart, I suppose Connor Temple could become a pessimist."

That was when her mobile rang. It was Cutter. "Where are you?" he asked. "I was thinking that perhaps you might join us for dinner. Claudia's conspired with Stephen and Sarah to order in some food from some unholy foreign source-"

Stephen's voice in the background, laughingly alive, made her feel the tears again. "Sushi, Nick, is hardly madly exotic. Now, South African bat on the other hand-"

"Shut up you pillock," Cutter growled. "I thought you might want to get to know how things are now, again."

Sarah was saying something that made Stephen laugh again and Cutter clearly pull the phone away from his mouth to be nasty to them both.

Spend an evening with Stephen and Cutter? See them both alive and well and not bloody or dead? See Stephen at all, since there'd been almost nothing left after the predators had been done with him? She couldn't refuse that chance, for all that she was here, faced with Connor and Tom and other dear and familiar faces. Claudia was now on the line, a woman Connor had told her was the last thing Cutter had thought of while dying. "Abby? Are you coming?"

"Yes," she said, a little abruptly. "Yes, I am. I'm just . . . it'll take me a bit to get there. Are you still at Cutter's old house, or somewhere else?" She'd only been there once, but it was at the other end of London from the theatre.

The other three were getting louder, Stephen and Sarah conspiring in some way to harass Cutter. Claudia gave her the address. "Would you three knock it off!" she snapped.

"I know where that is," Abby said, feeling fairly overwhelmed. "I'll be there in about an hour. It'll take that long from where I am, now." She'd have to take the bus, since she'd been kidnapped her car was still at the back alley.

"See you then," said Claudia, and hung up.

The people who weren't her friends anymore, because these strange copies never had been were staring at her. "Cutter just invited me to dinner. He wants to catch me up with how things are now," she told them.

"So, you're just . . . off?" Tom asked, looking sceptical.

She nodded. "I need to know more, and if I want to try to get the ARC back, to get what I knowwe can do if we all just work together on this, I need to know them too."

"There's more to it than that," Danny spoke from behind her, having moved without her noticing, now startling the hell out of her. "You're all soppy about it." The nasty spark in his eyes that had previously only been reserved for people like Helen and Christine Johnson was in his eyes, reminding her of the suspicious detective she, Jenny and Connor had met at the old house. "Is it Stephen?"

Her emotions had already been on a whirlwind up and down several times in only the last few minutes. Affection, amusement, sadness, grief, loneliness, anger, confusion, so many feelings all swirled inside her and made her take it out on him. "Yes, it's Stephen. It's the man who walked into a room with a dozen alpha predators from as many different periods in history and let them tear him apart to save everyone from being mauled to death. It's Cutter, who was murdered by fucking Helen, because she's a psychotic bitch, and it's Sarah, who died to rescue me and Connor when she shouldn't have been out there, and Claudia, who I never knew, but was the last thing on Cutter's mind when he died in Connor's arms. So you can take your damned attitude and shove it up your arse, Danny! If you had a chance to see Patrick the way he was, not as Ethan fucking Dobrowski, you'd take it, wouldn't you?"

She turned on her heel, storming past them all towards the exit. She paused on the way out and shouted back, "And Connor? The theatre Emily, Charlotte and Ethan came out in along with the arboreal raptors? Not subtle at all."

She left to the sound of Connor saying, "Arboreal raptors? Wait a second, Emily, why didn't you tell me there are arboreal raptors? I could have a whole new entry into my database." Then, "Maitland, you tease!"

It was on the bus, heading back to the other side of town that Abby felt herself starting to cry again. For a moment she'd thought she could get everything and everyone back. But she'd finally registered Connor wasn't calling Abby, he was calling her by her last name. He'd never called her Maitland. Not once. Not even during their worst fights when he'd just blackmailed his way into her flat. That mistrustful look on Danny's face hadn't been aimed at her since he'd found out how and why Patrick had vanished. Becker had never looked at her that way, the way he'd looked at Christine Johnson, all polite interest and perfect military bearing without a smidgen of compassion, and Jenny was . . . it was like the worst of all the bad times with Jenny. That supercilious smugness from the early days, that beaten down exhaustion from after Cutter's death, all of them so alike and so different, and Abby suddenly wanted to be back at her flat with Rex again, because at least Rex wasn't different.

"You alright, Ma'am?" asked the kid sitting in front of her while she stood there, trying to surreptitiously wipe away her tears one-handed, gripping the steel pole for balance in the stop and go of London traffic. When had she become a ma'am? Not that it didn't feel appropriate, she felt so old suddenly, like someone who'd seen the world change into unrecognisability over the course of a lifetime.

Abby cleared her throat, "Yes, I'm okay. Just got some bad news is all."

He gave her a sympathetic smile, and she forced herself to think about the evening ahead, and her other three friends, just as different, but at least alive and well.

The ride was a long one, and eventually the kid left and Abby was able to take his seat, fingering the matchbook Connor had given her when he'd found out where Danny was taking him to start off the stag night. Connor had gotten it to her, making sure she'd know where to start looking for him if she needed to. He'd made a joke about Danny being Chewbacca, given the state the man's hair had been in when he'd finally made it safely back to the 21st century, and had scribbled a note into the matchbook.

Chewie and me are starting here. Should I keep the walking rug out of your way?

She'd carefully laid aside the tinsel from her and Connor's last trip through the anomaly, wanting to preserve what few memories she had of him, but the matchbook was the last note he'd written her, and she wasn't able to let it go yet, any more than she'd take off the engagement ring he'd got her with a little tiny green-studded lizard for the band. Her stop came and went, and she was startled into movement at that, getting off at the next one and having to walk back to get her connection. The tube might have been faster, but the bus routes meant only the one connection, not two, and in her state of mind, simpler was better.

Eventually she made it to Cutter's, pausing at the door to pull herself together before knocking. She was greeted by a warmly smiling Claudia, who said, "Lovely to see you, Abby. Nick, Stephen and Sarah are competing to see who has better tall tales about digging expeditions, so I'm grateful that you're here, since you hopefully can make them all stop."

Dinner was pleasant, if a little awkward. Abby found herself with an elephant in the room that only she could see, which was of Connor and the others on his 'crew'. For every story Cutter, Stephen and Sarah told her, Abby could recall that event, but with Connor there, with Danny or Jenny, with Becker or Matt or Emily. They loomed large, and she didn't know how to deal with the impression the others had that somehow Abby must have been less experienced than they were, seen fewer anomalies or any number of other things.

The stories filled in the blanks left by the official reports, but they also compounded proof of the reason for Connor's bitterness and pessimism on the idea of being accepted by Cutter and the rest. In the minds of Cutter and Stephen, Connor was forever frozen in that moment of gormless, cheerfully overenthusiastic silliness when he'd sent his housekey into the anomaly in the Forest of Dean.

Even as Stephen told her a story in disapproving tones of Duncan, putting himself in the way of an angry indricotherium to save two small children, dying in the process, she wanted to shake them. The Home Office team had been late to the scene and Duncan and the others had been doing their best with the lack of supplies available to people with no access to the government resources that made life easier for the official team. It was a blind spot, and Abby had to admit it was the same one she'd suffered from when they first started.

But she remembered that angry mammalian version of a sauropod, remembered seeing Connor and Stephen tag-team against it together, whilst she and Cutter tried desperately to reload the tranquilisers. The adventurer and the geek had made a perfect team, Connor's perfect knowledge of the anatomy of the animal meant he'd known how close he could get to distract it and keep it away from potential victims, and Stephen's sheer skill could do the other side, and between them they'd got it back through the temporal gate without even needed to resort to shooting. Stephen had bought Connor a pint at the pub that night, and Connor had relaxed enough to tell them about the string of practical jokes he, Tom and Duncan had done at the university. He'd won a place on the team before that, but that evening he won himself a place as an equal with the others.

It hadn't happened here.

The story of how Sarah joined the team was nearly the same, but no one had found out that you could lock an anomaly, no one had figured out that the sun cage was a magnetic holder, trapping an anomaly inside it.

She wound up alone with Claudia, hiding and helping in the kitchen, because she didn't know the woman, and while the resemblance to Jenny was confusing, at least there wasn't that same awful expectation that she'd be one way, then react another. "You know, it's sort of odd," she commented to her, "For the longest time, you were sort of an abstract to me."

Claudia seemed to smile in amusement and frown in confusion at the same time. "What do you mean?"

"Well, when Cutter came out of the second Permian anomaly, everything had changed for him. So, while he knew you, had still been working out of the Home Office and everything, none of us had. As far as we knew, Oliver Leek-"

"That creepy, slimy, weaselly, vile, scheming, horrible little man?" Claudia asked, horrified. "I know Oliver Leek. He shouldn't be anywhere near the anomaly project, he'd botch it and turn it into some dreadful self-serving three ring circus."

"He did at that," Abby admitted. "But it took Helen interfering for things to get really bad."

Claudia shuddered. "Let's not talk about him. You were saying, about Nick coming out of a second Permian anomaly?"

"Yes. Well, you didn't exist, you see. So, he comes out, expecting to see you, and we just think he's raving. Just gone completely mad over there," Abby explained. "Eventually we believed him, but it was sort of like believing in God or something. We just had to trust Cutter hadn't lost his mind, especially when Lester hired Jenny and he kept on calling her Claudia."

"Ah, the perils of being a twin," Claudia said, sounding wryly reminiscent.

Abby nodded, shifting a few more dishes to the sink. "So, eventually, 'Claudia Brown' became a shorthand for, 'massive change in the past creating a different present you only discover when you get back.'"

"Which is why you said that it's just like Claudia Brown when you were trying to explain things to Nick," Claudia nodded in some satisfaction at the explanation. "I suppose it must be even more disconcerting for you, given that you're not dealing with one person who could be treated as an amnesiac, in some ways, but everyone you know."

Sighing, Abby could only agree. "It's confusing. I mean, Stephen and I never dated at all. In fact, I'm pretty sure that he spent a lot of time lying to me in order to keep me at arm's length because he was still so hung up on Helen."

"I'm rather amazed, actually," Claudia said. "The moment Helen came back, he latched onto you rather quickly. It almost seemed like he was trying to stake some sort of ground out to make clear to her that he wasn't going to have anything to do with her anymore." She shrugged. "We haven't seen much of anything of her for quite some time."

No Helen? Stephen and Cutter and Ryan alive? Sarah alive? Maybe it was all for the better that Connor had never joined, not for the progress of the ARC, but for the lives that had been saved.

But lives weren't saved, murmured a voice in the back of her head. Ben had been killed by the gorgonopsid and half a dozen zookeepers from Wellington Zoo had gone thanks to the future predators, if the post-incident report was accurate. He brother was gone through the anomaly at the racetrack and the G-Rex had got a planeload of people before they'd brought it down. The little girl that had fed the chameleon monster had been torn to shreds in her brave quest to protect the neighbourhood pets, and Taylor "ain't baggage" from the Silurian was never seen again.

The people from the ARC were here, but the lives they had saved in Abby's timeline were gone. Killed because the anomaly project wasn't good enough, didn't have Danny to take mad risks and Becker to stand stalwart in the face of danger. They were here because they hadn't been there to put their lives on the line.

But no one of the home office team knew this. They'd been there as much as they could, as often as they knew to be there, and Stephen was still the man who would take on a prehistoric monster unarmed to protect a boy and his teacher, and Sarah was still brilliant and fearless, Cutter still headstrong and stubbornly determined to do what he thought was right.

She just had to make them all see that bringing Connor and everyone else in was the best thing to do. She just wished she knew how to do it.

---

Abby was woken the next morning by the sound of her mobile going off, calling her out to an anomaly. By now, after years of doing this, it was all routine. Grab a rucksack with snacks, something to drink, coffee from the machine she and Connor spent hours arguing over that made coffee for you at a preset time overnight (he'd won the argument for that gizmo and two weeks after they bought it she'd dressed up as Buffy the Vampire Slayer for him and the sex had been fantastic). It was habit to snag the black box that had been recharging overnight (also habit, that) and the EMD, she absently noted it was getting low on charge, and headed out the door.

It wasn't until she was on the road that she realised she'd been so caught up in routine she hadn't even realised what she was doing. The black box wasn't needed because there was going to be no Jess in her ear, telling them all where to go and covering up the CCTV footage. The EMD was technology no one had invented because Matt wasn't there to provide the impetus and demand it, and most of all, she didn't need the second rucksack with all of Connor's bits and pieces he never remembered, the second cup of coffee he'd normally be sucking down like an amped-up Hoover and she'd turned the sat-nav to the passenger side automatically, just because it made Connor happy to fiddle with it.

But Connor wasn't there, wasn't drinking his coffee, the machine she must have simply wound up buying for herself in this strange new world, and the bits and pieces weren't going to be used because Connor wouldn't be there to need them.

"I've got to stop crying," she muttered to herself.

She arrived at the office building to see Stephen waiting outside, looking cool and composed and sexy as ever. Even now, in love with Connor as she was, she had to admit, the man was a stunning package of lean lines and handsome face. He brightened as she trotted up the steps. "Abby," he said with a grin. "You're looking quite . . ." he paused, looking her up and down, and Abby was forced to recall the masses of punk wear she had in her closet in lieu of the jeans and pretty, yet comfortable tops she'd taken to wearing since coming back.

Connor, with no Burton to impress, had gone back to his waistcoats, fingerless gloves and scarves at once. Jess and Matt had been taken aback, while Emily had taken it in stride and pronounced it quite dashing in her opinion. It had led to the first time she'd ever seen Matt do anything that looked like bowing to peer pressure, and she and Jess had giggled over his attempts to imitate Connor's style, of all people, clearly thinking to woo Emily with it. Connor had been clueless about the whole thing, simply happy to be himself again. Lester had gone about muttering, yet produced Connor's old fedora from somewhere-or-other.

She shook off the shades of a now-gone timeline. "What? Like an adult? Anyhow, are we going right in, or what?"

That slow, lazy grin that had once made her knees wobble spread over his face. "First," he said, "sexy. And second, we've already got everyone out, fake bomb threat, and the SFs are guarding the doors and checking through the building. We're just waiting on Nick and Claudia."

"I'm not getting together with you," she informed him. "For one, I'm not thatAbby, for another, the other you was a complete berk to me about the possibility of us dating, and last," she looked at him sadly, showing the ring on her finger. "I was supposed to get married only a few days ago. I'm never seeing him again and I'm not about to leap into bed with anyone else."

The grin slid off his face and he straightened at once, taking her hand to look at the ring. "It's very nice, and I'm sorry, Abby." The seriousness and calm, the way he'd instantly eased back on flirting to that soothing friendship she did recall seeing between him and Cutter made her smile back. "I should have thought about that." He looked away. "It's just . . . when we broke up," he gave a bark of laughter, "I don't think anyone had ever broken up with me before that I was going to have to see again on such a regular basis."

"Then that's been an important experience for you," Abby told him with a grin. "Anyhow, this'll free you up to make a move on Sarah, right? Someone who'll actually want to hear about all the disgusting things you ate in Gambia or wherever."

He rolled his eyes. "You're all just so pedestrian in your eating habits," he told her. "Really, I can't imagine having access to nothing but roast beef and mashed potatoes for the rest of my life."

"After having to eat scavenged velociraptor and listen to Connor moan about writing his imaginary cookery book, 'Yummy Roots and Tasty Bulbs', I think I've earned the right to be left alone about it," Abby informed him.

He stared. "What exactly do you mean?" he asked. "You've mentioned being trapped in the past once or twice, but you really haven't go into any detail. How long were you there?"

"One really long, really awful year," Abby said with a sigh. "In the Cretaceous, if you're wondering."

"My God, Abby," he said. "That's . . . unbelievable. That wasn't . . . when you got here, when you . . . things . . . changed, you hadn't just come back from that?" he asked, looking worried.

The worry was palpable, and Abby saw his fingers flex against his car, reminding her of nothing so much as how she'd wanted to help Connor about in the Cretaceous, him too hurt to get safely about, too proud to ask her for help because he didn't want to be a burden. Stephen looked like the slightest encouragement would send him across the space between them to offer her comfort and anything else she asked.

For a moment she wanted that. He was right there, wanted her, was gorgeous and practically primed to be a new boyfriend, but Connor's request over the com system, that if the giant carnivorous bugs ate him she'd never look at another man again, flashed in her memory, along with the still-fresh loss of herConnor, and she pulled herself together. She might someday move on, but right now it would just be dating for the sake of dating, and everyone deserved better than that. "No, Stephen. That was a couple years ago, now. We'd been back for a fair while before this," she gestured vaguely about, "happened."

He instantly relaxed. "Good. Because I can't imagine what that might have been like, I wouldn't have wanted to find out that you'd been trying to readjust after something like that."

"Yeah, it wasn't easy," she admitted. "There were days when I think we both wanted to run off back through the anomalies, like Helen, only coming back if we wanted something-or-other." She looked around at the concrete and steel that surrounded her. "It really is incredibly different, in a way I don't even think getting lost in the wilderness could be, just because you knowthat no one will come."

He looked a little oddly at her. "Like Helen, Abby?" He took in a deep breath. "There's someone I've avoided thinking about for a very long time. I do wonder what happened after she went through the anomaly focal point."

"The anomaly . . . focal point?" Abby asked, hesitantly. He didn't mean . . .

"Yes," he said slowly. "You mentioned that time yourself, with the dodos?"

"The spaghetti junction of anomalies, right," Abby said. "Wait. You haven't seen Helen since then?"

"No," Stephen said shrugging. "I wonder what happened to her, sometimes."

Abby was saved from trying to answer that, because Cutter, Claudia and the SFs all showed up then, in a flurry of vehicles and uniforms, and they all marched into the building to find out what exactly had prompted the call. They only knew that it was "Some sort of weird, mutant dog-things!" Unfortunately, that left everything open from dogs to dozens of potential suspects from prehistory which were all the originating species of something else.

On the sixteenth floor, they found it. A large mammal of some type, snarling and heading for the door of the hastily emptied cubicle farm it had come out in. As they tried to scare it back through, Abby saw it taking lunges at them all, snarling, trying to get through the door. Eventually they hit it with enough tranqs to knock it out, but something about the reactions made Abby uneasy. While the others all congratulated themselves, she snapped a picture with her mobile, then went to Stephen.

"Did any of that seem odd to you?" she asked him.

He frowned a moment, then suddenly his face set in understanding. "You're right. Why wasit so determined to get out that door?"

In perfect accord they went into the hallway beyond, where he spotted something they'd all missed on the way in. "Look at this," he said, kneeling down next to the streaks of mud on the floor. "Footprints."

They led out, but the mud had clearly been worn away by carpeting and dried up, and by the time they got to the bank of lifts, although they could tell the thing had come this way, there was no way of knowing where it had gone. Only that, "It's small," Abby said, looking at the width and lengths of the trackway. "I bet it's her baby."

They looked at the lifts, one of which dinged and opened on its own. "If someone had left a lift running when we cleared the building," Stephen said slowly, "It could have got on, then gotten off anywhere." He cursed, turned, and headed off to get Cutter.

Abby nipped down the hall, and dialled a number on her mobile. Connor had kept the same number the whole time she'd known him, before they'd gone to the Cretaceous. If she was right, he should still have it. "Hello?"

"Oh, thank God. Connor, I need your database. We've got something loose in an office building and we need an idea where it might go. I've got a picture I could email you-"

He cut her off, swearing softly, then she heard a clatter, and Connor's voice saying, "No, sir. Of course I'm not taking personal calls. It's just Tom down at the mainframe. There's some sort of issue he wanted me to consult on." A pause. "Of course, sir. I'll make sure he calls someone else next time." Another sound of a shuffling phone, then Connor saying, "Hey, Tom, you know we're not supposed to use our mobiles for this. You mind using the office line?" Her phone beeped, saying she'd gotten a text message. "Thanks, mate." Then he hung up.

The message was a number and an extension, and Abby didn't hesitate to punch in the number, then navigated her way through the system of a stock trading firm she forgot the name of the minute she was in the system. The phone barely rang before Connor was answering, "Temple."

"Sorry," she said. "I didn't realise, but I need the help."

"Abby!" shouted Stephen.

"Damnit," she hissed. "Conn, look, I'm sending you the picture, can you just email me something to narrow down where we should be looking for its young?"

"Got it," he said, all efficiency. "I'll look it up quickly. Do you need an assist at getting into the CCTV in the building?"

"Abby!"

Putting a hand over the mobile to muffle her voice, she shouted back, "Just a sec, I'm fine!" Then put the phone back to her ear. "I should be fine, you and Jess taught me enough to get by, but I'll text if I need something. Don't worry. Gotta run, and thanks," she told him, snapping her mobile shut.

"What are you doing here?" Cutter demanded.

She froze a second, then lied like her life depended on it. "Just seeing if there was a chance it had gone this way." She pointed at a carpet that had some tears in it. "I thought those might have been from claws."

Cutter's face cleared. "Alright then. Listen, Sarah just got here, and I want you to head down there and watch her back while she looks at the CCTV system to see what's about."

Abby sighed and headed for the security centre, while the manly men went about doing manly things, while the three women were delegated to staying out of the way with the TV screens. She missed having Connor there to do that while she got to be in the action. She missed Jess doing that, so both she and Connor were in the action.

Halfway to her destination, accompanied by an SF, as though she didn't know how to shoot a gun, her phone buzzed with a message from Connor.

Ambulocetus, semi-aquatic mammal, Eocene period. It's a sort of proto-whale. Best guesses at the moment are that it's like a mammalian crocodile. So it may head for water if there's any to be had. Otherwise, my best guess is treat it mostly like an adolescent croc. Most people think it's an ambush predator.

It came with a picture from his database that pretty much matched what she had, and Abby smiled to herself as she sent a quick 'thank you' back. She'd forgotten about the SF, when he said, "You've been talking to that Temple lad?"

Abby whipped around, her heart pounding. Yes, she wanted to bring the two teams together, but she hadn't put together a plan yet, she didn't want things to fall apart before she'd had the chance to try properly. "What do you mean?"

The look in his eyes was shrewd, but kind, as he said, "Nothing, only that I've seen the work he and his people do, and I'd love to have a chance to work with some of his people. They're good."

"Harry Jacobson, wasn't it?" she asked, as they started back down the hall. "I remember you. Becker always liked putting you on point in the field."

"Becker?"

"SAS and head of our security," she told him. "Dark hair that looks like it never moves?"

A look of enlightenment appeared on his face. "Oh, that one. We call him the android, because that hair is not natural."

Abby was still laughing as she slipped into the control room for the security and joined the other two, who were staring in horror at the password protected system, while Claudia explained to Cutter that, "I can't magic these computers on to show anything, Nick. We're not hackers, you know."

"Move over," Abby said to Sarah. "All right, if I were the passwords of a nearly computer illiterate security guard, where would I be?" A few minutes later she found it. The little bit of writing on a tiny slip of paper underneath a monitor. "Hah. Passwords." From there it was the work of moments to navigate the system, bring up the monitors and start looking.

Keeping Connor's advice about crocs in mind, Abby checked the decorative pools and fountains on the main level. Nothing there and she started working her way up, floor by floor. "How . . . since when can you do that, Abby?" Sarah asked.

"My fiancé," Abby said by way of explanation. She didn't feel like defending Connor right then, they were working and the fight that could erupt, given Claudia's opinion of Connor, didn't seem worth it. She was no Jess Parker or Connor Temple, but she knew enough to know how to look.

Fifth floor, an odd sort of lower area and a pipe that had somehow burst, flooding the section of floor, and there it was. Claudia had been talking with Cutter the whole time, Abby not paying the least attention, but she snatched the phone from the older woman's hands, once again bemoaning the loss of the earpieces, she really had to talk to Lester about that, and said, "The calf's on the fifth floor, Cutter. There's a burst pipe, and it's turned that office into a pool, pretty much, there's some weird sort of steps there that are holding the water. And Cutter, tell everyone to watch out, it's probably an ambush predator."

"Why are you so sure?" Cutter asked her curiously.

It was absent-minded, it was what she'd always done when relaying Connor's information to Cutter or anyone else. "It's an ambulocetus. Protowhale and probably an ambush predator like a crocodile. The mother seems to be built like one."

"Got it. Keep an eye on it and let me know if it moves," Cutter said.

Abby handed the phone back to Claudia, who looked at her, impressed. "That isdifferent. Normally we just have to rely on the hit or miss from Nick and look into it later."

Hastily, Abby said, "That was just luck. I'd looked through Connor's database once. I just . . . remembered."

"Connor's database?" Sarah asked, curiously. "Is this as in Connor Temple?"

"Yes," Abby replied. Then, figuring it couldn't hurt, she said, "He'd been building it since he was fourteen. It was already extremely comprehensive before the anomaly project started, once we started having real animals to use for adding information it grew. We had a pretty impressive amount of memory devoted to the thing," Abby told her with a smile.

Nodding, Sarah said, "I can see how that would be useful, having all that at your fingertips. I wonder why they didn't get that from Connor in this timeline." She shrugged. "Well, by now there's so much bad blood he'll probably refuse based on principle alone."

"Probably," Abby agreed.

The SFs, Cutter and Stephen wrapped up getting the animals back through and they all trooped back to the Home Office to file reports. Abby got to her office, shut the door, and after a moment's thought, shoved a chair in front of it to block it from opening unexpectedly, and texted Connor.

You free? I want to thank you.

A minute later her mobile rang. "Hello?"

"You get the ambulocetus back through?" he asked, all business. He sounded like Matt, no time on the job to go off on tangents or anything else.

She took her cue from that and replied, "Yes. It was a mother and its calf. We found it hiding out in a flooded office, but they got it back through. Did you want me to tell you anything in particular, or would you be fine if I just photocopied the report I'm writing for Lester, or what?"

There was an odd sort of hesitation in his voice as he said, "D'you think we could meet up? I think we need to talk more. About everything."

"Sure," she said. "We could meet at my flat, if you'd like."

"I think the others would be pretty unhappy if I monopolised you," he replied, sounding amused. "How about . . ." he named an unexpectedly familiar address.

"Jenny's house?" Abby asked, surprised.

"Er . . . yeah," Connor sounded taken aback. "You know where that is, then?"

"Yes," she said. "Tonight? Maybe sevenish?"

"That works," he said. "I'll text if it changes."

"Okay," Abby felt so awkward. If he'd been her Connor, now was the time she'd have told him she loved him. But he wasn't and now she just had to end the call without accidentally sounding just a bit mad. "I'll see you then. I have to get back to work."

"Yeah, me too," he told her. "Tonight."

There was a brusque click as he hung up, and Abby snapped her mobile closed as well. Then she resolutely turned to the computer on the desk to complete her report. Because people might come back from the dead, fiancés disappear, half the world could go mad, but the paperwork would still be there.

After blowing up at Danny, Abby wasn't entirely sure what her welcome would be, and now that she was standing on Jenny's front doorstep, she couldn't quite bring herself to actually press on the doorbell. Cutter had had to make himself a new life in the new timeline, maybe she should stop trying to force this one into line with her own.

Of course, how could she not try to work with Connor, knowing as she did that he was brilliant, and still in some important ways the man she knew? She'd call him again about his database, she knew that much.

But still, the open hostility they all held for the her that had been there previously in this timeline . . . she must have been awful, and hearing Connor call her Maitland, like they were barely acquaintances, maybe even enemies, that hurt so much. Maybe she should just try to leave them alone for the most part, just quietly coordinate instead of pushing herself and her ARC on them.

But there was Ben and Taylor, her former zoo coworkers and all the people they hadn't saved because they didn't have someone getting there fast and stopping things.

On the other hand . . .

"Are you going to stand at my door all evening? Because at this rate the neighbours will call the police," Jenny said from where she'd opened the door.

Abby flushed. "Sorry, it's just . . . I'm starting to wonder if I'm doing the right thing, and then I start wondering if I have any right to interfere, and . . . this is all just so confusing."

Jenny seemed to soften a little. "Well, come in, and we'll see what we can work out, one way or the other."

Taking a steadying breath, Abby walked in, seeing all those familiar faces again. In a way, it really was worse than Cutter, Stephen and Ryan, because they'd been dead, so anything was an improvement. But to have Becker, Danny, Jenny and Emily all looking at her with open suspicion like that . . . it made her heart hurt. And the sight of the impassive, still Connor, who stood leaning against the mantle, his eyes ticking over her the way they'd looked at the first raptor they'd had to kill in the Cretaceous for survival and food, that made her feel nearly as alone as she had seeing Connor take the hit from the walrus-creature and fall into the water. Then the stony look on his face cracked and he smiled, the dimple on his cheek coming into play, and the sense of loss faded a little.

"Welcome to our humble headquarters," he said. "First of all, we've talked, and while I think you're tilting at windmills, we arewilling to give you enough rope to hang yourself with."

"Meaning?" Abby asked him.

Jenny sighed. "Meaning that we're all tired of having someone here, watching the detector, then phoning in tips into places that will hopefully get noticed by their media watchers during the daytime."

Abby frowned. "What do you mean? You're not trying to get there first?"

Connor gave a bitter bark of laughter, one echoed in Becker's sardonic smile and Danny and Tom's grimaces. "Unlike you people, with your government paycheques, wehave to have real jobs." Abby winced. She recalled that stretch where she'd been working at both the zoo and the Home Office. Finally getting to quit shovelling elephant dung had been incredible, and while the pay scale wasn't all that good at first, at least she hadn't needed to hold down two jobs anymore.

"Is that why Cutter and the others think they're beating you to the anomalies? You can't make it, so you're letting them have them?"

Jenny sighed. "As much as I think we'd all like to be there, to be sure people are protected, we can't. Not and continue to get by."

"I'm sorry," Abby said, feeling awkward. "I mean, I remember when we first started and I was still working at the zoo. It was tough trying to have two jobs, and I didn't even have to deal with people saying I wasn't able to do the job." She shook her head. "But that's neither here nor there. What were you thinking?" she asked Connor.

"Mostly," he said, "That we'd call you, and you'd head out to any anomalies, or at least make sure they get out to them before someone gets hurt."

She frowned. "I think I can do you one better. When I was at the office building today, one of the SFs caught me texting you. He said he'd be interested in working with you all. I might be able to feel them out, see if there are any more who might be willing to go along with things."

"Really?" Connor looked sceptical. "I'll believe that when I see it."

Danny sighed heavily. "I'll try to be ready if there's any more arrests." He looked a lot more exhausted than Abby was used to, more, the cheeky amusement that had been so very . . . Danny, was missing.

"I have every faith in you, Danny," Emily said with a warm smile at the detective.

"Why would you need to be ready for arrests?" Abby asked, bewildered.

He rubbed a hand over his face, sighing. "Your precious Lester is so busy defending the government's interests that he keeps trying to throw us in prison."

Jenny nodded, making her way to Danny. "Danny makes sure that the paperwork is fouled up enough that no one can actually arrest us for anything. At least, not without having to tell people too much of the truth."

"Don't sell yourself short, Jenny," Connor told her. "You do just as much, you know."

"Not to mention Becker might well have ended up being forced into an unwanted military position without your intervention," Emily added.

"Enough with the mutual admiration society stuff," Tom said impatiently. "I thought we were going to bring Maitland into things?"

Connor nodded sharply. "Right. Would you come with?" he asked Abby. She nodded and followed him and Tom down into Jenny's basement. There were banks of computers there, and a system that looked quite familiar.

She grinned. "I knew you had an ADD!"

They turned to her. "What?" Connor asked.

"It's one of the things that just proved how different things were between my timeline and this one," Abby explained as she closed in on it, taking a closer look at the screens tracking anomalous readings in the UK. "In mine, you built the ADD in the ARC's second year, after Cutter noticed the radio interference the anomalies put out. Leek and Jenny got kind of nasty at first, but you were able to track an anomaly whenever it showed up, which shut them both up about that." She shook her head. "Here, Cutter's let it slide to the backburner and he's got a whole team working on it now, while they use that old internet keyword search system."

"Radio interference?" Tom and Connor chorused.

Abby turned, frowning in confusion. "Yeah, anomalies cause a regular interference pattern on 87.6," she said. "So Connor set up a system to track when interference like that showed up, and would narrow it down." She looked at their confused faces. "If this doesn't use that, what does it use?"

Tom and Connor shared a look. "It was Duncan's idea," Connor said. "I'd been trying to finesse the 'bot for weeks. He came in one day with the solution. It was just what he did. He'd muck about, half useless, and then come up with some idea that was completely perfect and you'd feel a right idiot for not thinking of it first."

"He suggested we hack into the Geographical Survey's magnetic field research," Tom explained. "The satellites and observatories they use to track changes in the Earth's magnetic field lets us track where major fluctuations are, and over time we've put in a network of trackers all over London. It lets us narrow things down to a small area, and then close in fast."

"That's . . . really brilliant," Abby said admiringly. "I mean, I knew he was pretty good when he figured out that there was a boar croc loose in the city, but we couldn't have brought him in then, anyhow." She grimaced in remembered annoyance. "Bloody Burton with his no civilian policy."

"Burton?" Tom and Connor chorused. "Like Philip Burton?" Tom added.

Abby growled. "Don't even talk about that berk, he nearly tricked Connor into destroying the bloody world."

It nicely cut off their eager looks of hero worship and brought them back to the point of the visit. "Okay . . ." Connor said, looking at her dubiously. "You come from a very weird timeline, Maitlaind." They were interrupted by a familiar squeaking sound. Hardly daring to believe it, Abby turned to see a hole punched through what seemed to be a false wall. "Oh, no," Connor said.

It was. "Sid! Nancy!" Abby exclaimed. She ran to the familiar little diictodons, scooping up Nancy and cuddling her. "Oh, I wondered what happened to you two."

"You . . . you're okay with them being pets?" Tom asked her, sounding sceptical.

She ignored him, asking Connor, "Oh! Can you bring them by my flat? Rex always liked Nancy. He sort of tolerated Sid, but I'm pretty sure he missed him when I booted you out to give my brother a place to stay."

From behind her, Danny said, "As I understand it, their names are Fred and Wilma."

"Who picked those?" Abby asked, baffled. Connor had wanted to name them Rose and John, she'd wanted Charles and Carrie, they'd only wound up with Sid and Nancy in honour of Cutter. It had seemed a fitting memorial for him, just individual and weird enough to represent Cutter.

"Jenny," they all chorused.

Abby blinked. "Oh. So, they don't live with you, then?" she asked Connor.

"What? Fred and Wilma? No," he said, shaking his head. "My flat's no good for animals, and even worse for these two," he leaned over and scooped up Sid - Fred, and crooned to him, "Because you burrow through everything, now don't you."

Tom piped up, "I'm still stuck on, 'booted you out,' which suggests there was a time before booting, when Connor was in a state of being able to bebooted."

"He blackmailed his way into my flat," Abby said, keeping her face straight with difficulty. "He was trying to impress you and Duncan with a 'hot blonde girlfriend'."

But Connor didn't pale, didn't wibble, didn't look remotely frightened. He laughed, then turned a smile on her that was so like his normal happy grin, but with a strange, sexy confidence that made her knees wobble. "A 'hot blonde'?" he asked. "That does sound appealing." Her whole attempt to pull Connor back onto familiar ground had failed, because this more confident version of her Connor couldn't be intimidated.

She clung to her composure and replied, "Well, when we got back from the Cretaceous, that's what Duncan called me, according to you, 'the hot blonde'." Then, reaching for a change of topics, she put Wilma back on the floor. "It just occurred to me to wonder, though," she said. "When Connor and I were coming out of the anomaly when everything changed, I came back fine, but he just . . . evaporated as we came through." She felt sick, wondering a little if he was somehow trapped back there, alone without her. "So, what happened, do you think? Shouldn't there be two Connors?"

That got contemplative looks from Connor and Tom, who both frowned. "You said before that people coming back to a changed timeline clearly didn't change with it, right?" Tom asked, as they started back up the stairs.

Abby nodded. "Cutter came back, and he always maintained that Claudia Brown was real, even though she never existed. He mentioned to Connor that Helen was the only person who remembered Claudia-"

"That bloody bitch," said Becker.

It was so unlike him that Abby stared. "Becker?" she asked, feeling as wrong-footed by that as by anything she'd seen of Connor thus far.

Danny, coming up behind her, growled. "That damned woman murdered his sister. On my watch."

"She stampeded those indricotheriums that killed Duncan," Tom snapped. "I just hope that the next time we see her we have a chance to do something fatal to her."

"God," Abby dropped into a chair. "I'd didn't even think . . . Connor and I were in the Cretaceous, but Danny killed her in the Pliocene. If everything changed from the Cretaceous on, then what Danny did won't necessarily have taken. Hell, I'd just got used to her being dead."

"Helen's dead?" Connor asked her, eyes wide.

She shrugged. "Maybe? I mean, Stephen and Cutter and Ryan were all dead, now they're not. So maybe she's not anymore. I don't know."

"We can hope," Becker said dryly.

"Cheers to that," Danny said. "I got to kill her? Brilliant."

"Connor and I were stuck in a tree with raptors trying to kill us and Connor too hurt to follow," Abby said. "So, all I know is when you made it back and Lester asked, you said she'd died before she succeeded at wiping out the human race in prehistory."

Jenny snorted. "That does sound just like her. Really, why couldn't she be satisfied making herself a tin pot dictator and leave everyone else alone?"

"Why'd she work with Oliver Leek to create some crazy menagerie of predators and toss, me, Connor, you and that bitch Caroline in with a smilodon?" Abby retorted. "The woman's completely crazy."

For the rest of the evening, they traded tales of Helen, and Abby found that the reason Cutter and Stephen and all hadn't dealt with Helen was because she'd been more interested in harassing Connor's people. Which just went to show there was no accounting for what Helen was up to. By the end of the evening, Abby felt like she might have found the respect she wanted from Connor's team, and bid them all goodnight, with Danny no longer looking suspiciously at her, and Becker relaxed enough not to be all weird and militarily stiff at her. It wasn't quite as good as before, but it was better than it had been.

She waltzed into her flat, cheerfully telling Rex, "So, they've got diictodons, Rex. I bet you'll like having friends again, won't you? You always liked Sid and Nancy." She went to bed, feeling more positive about everything than she had since she'd first crossed into this mad little world.

---

After the heartening news that Connor and friends would give herself enough rope to hang with, and the disheartening news that Helen could be alive all over again, Abby went to work with a will, feeling out who among the SFs were willing to work with her on things. The numbers were about half and half, some of them impressed with how well the others were doing, interested by Becker and Danny in particular, as those two were professionals they could respect, and intrigued by the notion of having a better idea of where they were going at any given time for the sake of tactical purposes. The other half were caught up in irritation over amateurs trying to do the work of the professionals.

Her menagerie workers were, in the end, happy enough to help as well, and it was Lieutenant Jacobson who'd come up with the notion of pretending to get panicked calls from family members or friends, complaining of floating glass or animals.

It worked, and within a few weeks, the now-familiar routine of being called out to anomalies and dealing with the animals from them was a comfortable routine for Abby. Less so for Cutter, Stephen and Sarah.

"Damned things are increasing in frequency," muttered Cutter as they left behind the cleanup from an invasion of microceratuses, which had decided to mutilate all the flower beds in the Royal Botanical Gardens, and had been an epic pain to track down and shove back through the anomaly.

Abby laughed. "Really, Cutter? You didn't think you were finding them all before, did you? You're not going to catch them all opening until your people finish your detector."

Stephen and Sarah turned to stare at her. "What do you mean?" Sarah asked.

"I mean, you haven't been getting to more than half the anomalies," Abby explained patiently. "Goodness knows they're not in our old files, and changing the course of evolution won't do a thing to change the Earth's magnetic variations."

They all blanched. "More Valeries," Stephen said.

"I wasgoing to go looking for the kaprosuchus this weekend," Abby admitted.

"The what?" Sarah asked.

"The boar croc," Abby told her. "Back home it was eating homeless people. From what we could tell, it had pretty much grown up in the here-and-now, so I'll take a look about for it."

Stephen glared. "Not alone you won't," he snapped. "And if you think I'm going to let you sneak off, you've got another thing coming."

Cutter just shook his head. "Christ," he said. "I hadn't even thought of that since that mess with Valerie, and I should have."

As plans were made to look, Abby scolded herself. She'd been hoping to check in with Connor, maybe see how finding the thing went with them, and one moment of loose lips and that plan was sunk.

She'd been dividing her time between the two anomaly groups, using the loss of her fiancé as an excuse for the privacy. Cutter had been very sympathetic, talking about losing Helen, and Abby had spent that whole evening trying not to scream.

It took all afternoon after her revelations to escape, Lester demanding that she write reports to fill in the blanks on everything that had happened in her reality, and Abby had finally fled the building because if she had to write one more report she was going to go completely barmy and start beating Lester about the head and neck with one of Sarah's Egyptian god statues.

When she got to her flat, she found Connor, Danny, Becker and Emily there. Rex was dive-bombing Danny while Emily laughed at him, and Connor was fiddling with her EMD. "Connor, don't touch that, Becker and Danny didn't like it when Matt shot them and I doubt they'll be any happier if you do. Danny, whatever you were doing to Rex, stop it. Rex!" she finished, as she scooped his food out of the fridge, "Dinner!"

Rex promptly came to his bowl and started munching his lettuce and veggies, while Danny looked irritated and Connor ooohed over the EMD still. "If you electrocute yourself with that, I'm not doing CPR," she told him.

"What is it?" he asked. "I mean, I get it's a sort of fancy taser thing, but," he held out his hands pleadingly.

"It's an EMD, Electro-Muscular Disruptor. Matt once took down a T-Rex with one, but it took a few shots to do."

Connor's eyes sparkled with geeker joy and he went back to cooing at it.

"You keep referencing this Matt," Emily said, "While I do think it very unlikely that all the members of this ARC of yours would still manage to collect together in this new timeline, given the people thus far, I must wonder if we should be prepared for him to be here."

Abby shook her head. "I hope he isn't. I like Matt well enough, but if he shows up, that means something's really, really wrong, and things are bad enough normally without including that kind of bad."

Becker's eyebrow was nearly at his hairline as he asked, "What kind of bad?"

"The apocalypse bad," Abby said.

They all stopped whatever they were doing to stare at her. "Apocalypse?" Danny asked. "That doesn't sound good."

"We stopped it," she told him. Then realised something that had been bothering her for a while. "But I think I have a question, actually," she said. "I can see how Danny might have got involved, and Emily was probably mostly the same as back . . . home," she settled on a word to describe her native timeline. "But Becker, you only joined the ARC because after Captain Ryan died we needed someone new to head security and the soldiers for the ARC. How'd you get involved with this at all?"

"That was a bit of crazy," Connor admitted. "It was actually pretty early on for us," he said. "The anomaly opened up at the underground car park for a block of flats out in Uxbridge."

The newly created Anomaly Detection Device was wailing away, and Tom, Connor and Duncan just drove into the car park after a minute of fiddling with the various radios and frequency-producing devices they had with them to make the door open up. They parked the car close to the exit, not wanting to run the risk of the whatever might come out bashing the car. It was really old, but the only thing the three of them could afford on their budgets, and they needed the car to lug all their stuff with them.

They raced through the building, anxious to reach the anomaly before someone was hurt.

"The three idiots nearly killed themselves, running in front of my car as I tried to leave," Becker said idly. "I was a little irritated."

"You know," Connor said, "I was telling the story. If you want to tell it, go ahead."

The three imbeciles who had seemed not to notice the vehicle that nearly killed them ran toward the back of the car park where the ramp to the lower level was, all three of them juggling electrical equipment that could have been anything. Concerned, Becker parked immediately, forgetting about his interview, and went after them.

The lower level was, unusually, more populated with cars than the upper, and between the walls and vehicles, he couldn't spot them. He could hear them, however.

"Where did you get that?"

"How did you get that?"

"I talked to Mick Green-"

"You talked to him!? What's wrong with you? Do you even know how to use it?"

"Do you want to not have one anymore? I mean, with everything? We'll just have to figure it out."

"You mean, hope we figure it out."

"You heard that, huh?" Connor said, rubbing the back of his neck in embarrassment.

"Yes," Becker told him.

Danny snickered. "You never mentioned thatbefore. You just said that Tom had got it illegally."

"What were you arguing about?" Emily asked curiously. "I must admit, none of you has ever thought to tell me this story."

As they set up beside the anomaly, hoping that nothing was creeping up behind them, Connor was shocked to see Tom produce an honest-to-God gun from his bag. "Where did you get that?" he demanded.

Duncan's head whipped up and he stared at the third member of their trio, asking, "How did you get that?"

Tom looked defiant and shamefaced at the same time as he admitted, "I talked to Mick Green-"

Appalled that Tom would have gone to the crazy kid with real IRA connections for a weapon, Connor flipped out, "You talked to him!? What's wrong with you? Do you even know how to use it?"

The defiance and fear won out in Tom as he snapped back, "Do you want to not have one anymore? I mean, with everything? We'll just have to figure it out."

Duncan looked dubious, even as Connor conceded the point that they needed better weapons to push the dangerous creatures back. Not everything was going to be baby pachycephalosauruses, they'd already seen that.

Abby's eyes were wide. "That must have been early because I know I never saw them. Baby pachycephalosauruses? They must be so cute!"

"Which ones are those?" Emily asked.

Connor answered absently, even as he blinked at Abby in bemusement. "Bipedal herbivores, they've got skulls that have a sort of helmeted appearance with spikes around the edges, until recently believed to have used them for head-butting, but it's since been proven they're too weak to hold up to that sort of activity and may have had more of a purpose of display."

"Ah! Those!" Emily said with a satisfied nod.

Connor was still staring at Abby. "What?" she asked.

"You were so . . . girly," he said, sounding confused.

Repeating the words she'd said years before, she told him, "I can do the girl thing."

He smiled. "I can see that."

Bored now, Becker took up the thread of the narrative.

There was the sudden sound of a car alarm, and a sort of squawking roar somewhere else in the space. The hidden weirdos, with whatever it was they had with them suddenly hushed. "Oh no, it's already through."

"I'm going to pull the fire alarm," one of them said.

"But that'll get the fire department here, and the police!" protested one of the others.

The first voice snapped, "First, we have to make sure to keep people out, and second, the noise of the alarm should cover up any noise we make in here enough that we can figure out a decent excuse for it." There was a pause. "I hope."

"Maybe we should call Professor Cutter at the Home Office again," one suggested nervously. "That Stephen person you said was a bit of an action hero. Maybe we should-"

A bitter laugh answered, "Did they listen the last two times we tried to tell them?"

Silence met that statement, and Becker was about to demand to know what they were doing, faking the authority he no longer had as a member of Her Majesty's Armed Forces, when two of the young men came around one of the walls that divided up the space and froze, staring at him. The fire alarm went off, and the shorter one nudged the redhead, who continued to stare, gormlessly. The shorter one snatched up the gun, a beretta 9mm he noted absently -

"You noticed what kind of gun it was? Right then?" Connor asked disbelieving. "You and your guns."

"I'm quite certain Danny would have noticed," Becker said loftily.

Danny raised an eyebrow, "I don't know. If some kid had been aiming a gun at me, I probably would have been more worried about his shooting me at that particular moment than identifying exactly what it was." He nodded seriously at Becker. "I think you may have a bit of a problem, mate."

The soldier shot the policeman a betrayed look. "I still remember the time Emily saw you with Baby and thought it was a real baby," Abby commented.

"Baby?" Connor and Emily chorused. Danny just snickered to himself. Becker frowned.

"His favourite shotgun," she clarified. "I know we were all shocked when you handed her over to Danny to go chasing after Helen."

Becker's eyes were wide. "I let Danny run off with Priscilla?"

That set Abby off laughing. "You named it Priscilla? And I thought Baby was bad!"

He glared at them all impartially until they stopped laughing. "Do you want to hear the rest of this or not?"

The shorter one aimed the gun at him, Becker suddenly imagining an ignominious end to a solid career, not dying on his tour of Afghanistan, no, dying in a bloody London car park, shot by some kid in a bobble hat. "Duck!" the kid shouted at him, and he did, hearing the gun go off, and the kid shouting in pain. No doubt as the recoil took him by surprise. As he rolled to his back, he felt himself begin to panic, even as years of training kept him rolling until he was under a car and away from something that looked frighteningly like one of the raptors in Jurassic Park.

"You know," Connor said conversationally, "I really don't know how anyone can confuse a saurornithoides with a deinonychus. They're really not that much alike."

"Except for the speed and sharp teeth," Abby replied conversationally.

"And the claws and tails," Danny added.

"The noises they make," Becker put in.

"Not to mention, Connor, not all of us cut our eyeteeth on the differences between various ancient reptiles," Emily told him.

He grumbled, sinking into his chair, muttering about long necks and arms, and the differences in the toes of troodontids and raptorial therapods. Abby poked him. "I want to hear this." Instead of letting Becker continue, Connor took up the thread of the story.

Connor got back from pulling the alarm, running in response to the sound of gunfire. He saw the gun on the floor and the saurornithoides snapping at something under a car. He raced over, and putting the one lesson in shooting he'd got from an old neighbour who owned a farm and still had an old rifle he used to scare foxes away, braced himself really well and fired the gun at the predator. He didn't hit it squarely on, but it shrilled and backed away, racing off and around, and leaving them all panting, wondering where it would come from next, or if they would be lucky enough it would go back through the anomaly.

The man came crawling out from under the car, looking shaken. "What the hell is going on?" he demanded.

"Escaped cassowary," Connor replied glibly.

"Glibly? You were not glib in the slightest, Temple," Becker told him.

Connor tried to ignore him, choosing to talk over him.

"That was no cassowary," replied the man. "What-"

"Listen," Connor snapped. "We don't have time for this. This is dangerous and you need to get out of here."

He was interrupted by Tom saying, "Conn . . . it looks like there's a pack."

"Oh, hell," Connor said. The other two pulled out their amped up tasers as the snarling dinosaurs began to close in. Tom got off a good shot, knocking out one, but the others seemed to take that as a signal to close faster. "Run!" he said to the man. "We'll keep them here!" He added at a mutter, "Somehow."

"Your confidence was inspiring," Becker told him dryly.

Whatever was going on, Becker could appreciate these men were trying to protect people, and the bobble-topped one had saved his life with that first terrible shot, the dark-haired one had done it with the second. Snatching the gun out of the dark-haired one's hands, ignoring his protest (which, thankfully, seemed to be more worry that someone even less able than he might have got his hands on a gun), and began shooting. He wasn't the best marksman at Sandhurst, but there were certain minimum requirements, and he managed to get solid kill shots on half of them, causing the others to pause, then whip around and sprint in the direction of an odd yellow glow towards the back of the space.The three other men stared at him, somewhat gormlessly -

"Oy!"

- and a few minutes later he found himself recruited to heading up to their car and collecting a folding trolley, loading the dead dinosaurs onto it, and shoving it back through the anomaly. He'd insisted on going through with Connor, wanting to see this time travel phenomenon for himself, then helped them push and pull things from all over the car park until the anomaly was blocked off enough that nothing would come through.

"I insisted they explain everything," Becker said. "Afterward, I made Connor give me the contact information for Captain Ryan. I tried to convince him to let Connor, Duncan and Tom work with them. The tracking they'd set up by then already was impressive. Nothing but student budget and wits, and they had some fairly impressive hardware and techniques to herd the animals. He wouldn't hear of it and threatened to have me recalled to active duty somewhere else very unpleasant." He sighed, tiredly. "I tried for weeks until I was forced to resign my commission or lose the chance to help Duncan, Connor and Tom at all." He made a face. "And now I teach people to shoot at a local gun range." He gestured at Connor. "Including this one."

Abby felt her face set. "I'm going to get through to them," she told her guests. "I know you don't think I can, and I'm not asking you to believe it, but I'm going to."

They just smiled at her sadly, clearly seeing their own previous experience in her determination. The thing is, they didn't have what she had, and that was both the knowledge of what could be, and the in with both teams to make it happen.

---

The hunt for the kaprosuchus was a success, not least because Abby found herself doing the sorts of crazy gymnastic moves that at one time had been Stephen's bailiwick alone, getting her impressed looks from everyone else, and Stephen having some sort of minor aneurysm over it.

Cutter had been pinned down in the abandoned building, unable to escape. Abby had taken a shot with the tranq and missed, leaving her gun needing reloading and without a clear shot from her position. No one else had a clear shot either, and she'd snatched Stephen's gun before he could do anything, taken a flying leap from her high up position, landing carefully as she'd had to learn to in getting out of trees in the Cretaceous, and having to take a diving roll to get under the animal and shoot it.

She'd rolled out of the way as it had fallen on top of where she'd been lying before, coming up with the rifle already shifted in her hands to use as a club if the amped up tranquilisers didn't take right away.

"Christ Abby!" Stephen had roared as he hurtled up to her. "What were you thinking?"

"That Cutter was about to get eaten?" Abby asked him. "You'd have done the same thing if I weren't faster."

"That's not . . . it isn't-"

"I'm pretty sure it's completely the same," Ryan told him. "I seem to recall some pretty silly stunts from you, Hart."

The SFs harassed him all the way back to the ARC and Abby groaned as she realised she'd be spending more time writing more reports filling in the blanks on how things were different at her ARC than this Home Office. As much as she wanted the chance to push for them to accept how brilliant Connor could be, how fantastic Becker was, how clever Danny was and how useful Emily and Jenny could be, it was hard going back over everything, hard remembering all the mistakes they made and on top of that, bloody writing reports.

She was a little grateful when Claudia banged her way into Abby's office, slamming the door behind her and saying, "Can I talk? Because everyone else here's heard this, and they're all tired of it, but I just have to . . . say something!"

The woman looked flustered and frustrated, and Abby, nothing loathe to have an excuse to stop writing more bloody reports, told her, "Sure. Have a seat. What's wrong?"

"I'll tell you what," Claudia, normally pretty easygoing seemed on the verge of apoplexy. "My sister's what's wrong. I had to meet her and our mothers for lunch today and she just . . . why won't she listen to reason? She's been hurt working with Temple's little group of madmen. She could have been killed. Why won't she just listen?"

Abby clamped down on her first urge to take Jenny's side. Claudia's anger wasn't motivated more than a little by her government civil service persona. Most of her motivation looked like fear for the sister she claimed to dislike and reminded Abby of nothing so much as her own aggravation with Jack. "What happened?"

"We got to the restaurant and there she was with her cane, leaning on that policeman boyfriend of hers. Of course, it was the first Mum or Aunt Katherine had heard of him, so there I am, having to play nice while Daniel bloody Quinn, DC," her voice turned mocking a moment, "Sits there and makes snide comments about my job." By the time she was finished, her teeth were clenched and her eyes snapping with fury.

"He always was like that," Abby admitted. "Drove Lester mad. But you're not upset about him, really, are you? You're worried Jenny'll be hurt, badly, and that it'll be your fault for it happening."

Claudia sighed. "You're right, of course. It's just that I keep remembering when she got hurt and the way she just . . . picked them instead of me."

Claudia had been clearing up the kitchen after a romantic dinner with Nick when her front door banged violently open, startling the hell out of her and a moment later Jenny was in her kitchen, furious. "What the hell have you been doing that would get a bloody police detective arresting me out of sheer spite, thinking that I'm you?" she demanded.

"What?" Claudia asked, then suddenly recalled one Daniel Quinn, DC, who had found out about the anomalies after Nick's prediction and their subsequent discovery of the chameleon creature in the old house, and had gone to the lengths of breaking into the Home Office in his attempts to get into the action. They'd threatened him with arrest and a variety of other charges along the lines of treason, and eventually he'd faded away. Or so they thought. "Damnit, I thought we'd got him to back off from this."

"From what?" Jenny asked. "Is this about your job?"

Claudia sighed. It probably wouldn't break her word to the government to admit to that. "Yes. It's all classified and he's taken it as some sort of personal insult that we won't let him in."

"He said you had information about where his brother might be," Jenny said. "I assume that's where his sense of personal insult comes in."

She really didn't want to talk about this right now. It had been a wonderful evening and Nick had been sweet and romantic and a brilliant kisser and instead of basking in the glow of that, she was here, talking to her sister she'd never really got along with about Daniel bloody Quinn. "I would assume so, but we really have no more information about his brother's location than he does now after what he's seen of our work. If he wants to make an idiot of himself arresting people for no reason than his own ego, that's his problem," she grumbled. "Honestly, he's getting to be as bad as that Connor Temple."

"Connor Temple?" Jenny had asked.

Carelessly, little realising what a disaster was in the making by saying it, Claudia answered, "Oh, he's just a former student of Nick's. He was there when the project started, but was . . . an inappropriate choice for inclusion. He's been wandering about and harassing us, much the same as Quinn's been."

Jenny had since simmered down and they'd shared a quiet and (unbeknownst to either of them) last, evening of gossip and friendly chat about things.

It was the last, because Claudia hadn't told anyone at the Home Office, or anywhere else, about her twin sister, so Becker hadn't known it wasn't her when the anomaly with the ceresiosaurus had opened at a beach where Jenny had been spending a weekend in the Brighton. He'd snagged her, telling 'Claudia' to get the holidaymakers off the beach before the whole incident turned into a Jaws film. Jenny had cooperated, if only because Becker's urgency had impressed her, as had the fourteen-foot-long monster which had nearly dragged a child under before Becker was able to shoot it away.

With the fact that the Temple boy's 'team' had beaten them there and saved the child's life, Jenny had questioned the usefulness of the Home Office in dealing with things. She'd lost her temper at her sister, refusing to sign anything and telling Claudia that the only reason she wasn't going to tell anyone was the panic that would ensue from the mess. She'd left with Temple's idiots, and had since spent every lunch meeting with their mothers trying to convince Claudia she should let Temple's people in.

"I actually had considered it," confessed Claudia. "But the way they interfered with the indricotheriums and got that poor Dudley-"

"Duncan," Abby corrected her. "His name is . . . was, Duncan."

Claudia shook her head. "Sorry. I spent all last night reading Harry Potter to my cousin's children." She sighed. "Anyhow, I saw them waving their arms about like idiots, and someone shot the damned bellwether of the group, whatever the technical term is, and . . . it was awful."

Abby, who'd heard the other side of that story, who knew the shot had been fired by Helen as she tried another of her mad schemes, pressed her lips together. What would she tell Claudia? Something that sounded like the worst sort of dog-ate-my-homework excuse? Not to mention that Cutter still probably had a degree of his old, "Helen wouldn't do that," going on. He'd be past her, but he wouldn't believe the worst of what Abby had to say, most likely.

The older woman continued, sounding tired. "She went right to Quinn the next day and told him everything. The next time we ran into Temple's people he'd recruited Quinn to the fold, too."

"And you're not just signing them up?" Abby asked, confused. "It sounds to me like you'd have two complete teams to work with, and I know Becker's the best and Danny was brilliant."

"You can't just . . . let anyone in at any time," Claudia objected. "That's not how things work. Recruiting is to be done carefully and through proper channels."

That was just weird, because the ARC had pretty much never recruited through proper channels. "What about Sarah?"

"Well, Nick insisted on her, and James gave in as a matter of appeasing him," Claudia admitted.

"So how is letting Connor and the others in different?" Abby asked. "Just . . . I need to understand why."

Claudia's breath hissed between her teeth. "Because they're flippant and disrespectful and because the one time Nick tried to work with Temple and his group they just antagonised him constantly. It was unprofessional and unhelpful and the whole thing was a disaster."

"Action Man is coming."

"Matt shot you. He likes to shoot people."

"It's my lifelong dream to hunt dinosaurs."

"What's all this then? A meeting of the Women's Institute?"

"Can you pistol-whip him?"

God knew Connor, Danny and Becker knew how to be obnoxious. When any of them got their backs up, it made fur fly, and drove Lester and Jenny both, completely mad. Duncan had been good at it, no doubt Tom was too. Emily had a sharp tongue when annoyed, and Jenny, well, Abby knew how infuriating Jenny could be when she so chose. Once they'd decided no one would listen to them, they'd probably have made the choice to snipe.

"I can actually see that," Abby admitted.

The other woman heaved another sigh. "At the moment I'm just so aggravated with Jenny, because she's planning to marry that redheaded idiot copper."

"Well, for what it's worth, Danny's a good man and I don't think he'd ever do a thing to hurt her," Abby offered.

"For what it's worth, I'm sorry I stormed in here," Claudia told her wryly.

Abby smiled. "Because I didn't even let you vent properly?"

"And because it's not nice of me to do it to you, especially when you're having to hear me say awful things about people that you still think of as friends and colleagues," Claudia told her.

She just shrugged and smiled and Claudia left in a less volatile mood than she'd arrived in. Abby stared at the report in front of her, trying to figure out how best to word her description of the whole Future Predator incident, wondering if they even existed anymore, given that the future that might have spawned the mutation didn't seem to have come about. Wondering what she'd say to both halves of the teams to convince them not to drive each other round the twist just because they could.

Wondering if her Connor was stuck in the distant past, unable to cross into the here-and-now because of how history had changed the present, alone and waiting for her to come back.

Before Abby was ready, it all went to hell.

It wasn't even a day after learning that Connor had sabotaged his own chance to work with the Home Office that everything fell apart. It started because Abby saw Helen walking down the street, not far from the anomaly she and the Home Office team were heading to. "Shit," she muttered.

"What is it?" Stephen asked.

She didn't want to get into it, didn't want to deal with Stephen and Cutter and Helen and the whole damn triangle that it was. "Nothing," she said. Then waited until his back was turned to text Jenny, who was the hub of Connor's team, telling her that Helen was in town.

The anomaly hovered in the mall, pretty and innocent-looking. Abby felt at her back for the EMD. She still carried it with her, because partially charged as it was, it was still a better weapon for her than the damn ketamine tranqs. They walked slowly through the mall, on the lookout for anything out of place, when she heard it. Abby had hoped to never hear that damned clicking ever again and cursed her own procrastination in telling Cutter and the others about the future predators.

She slowly looked up and saw one creeping down the ceiling towards Ryan. "No you don't," she murmured unconsciously, cursing internally as it turned its head to her. She was pulling out the EMD, hitting the charging button and aiming when the scene erupted into chaos.

Three other predators leapt from the ceiling at the SFs, Cutter dragging Claudia out of the way and Stephen spinning about, trying to track the things, to get a clear shot, and having no better luck than anyone else ever had. Abby got in a lucky shot as one launched itself at Ryan's back, sending it flying, but they were no match for them, and she shouted, "Run! Get to some cover and keep looking at the ceiling!"

She dove for an alcove that would, at least, let nothing approach her from behind or from either side, and pulled out her cell, dialling Connor. He answered, "Tom, you shouldn't call this number-"

She had no time to dissemble. "Get backup down here, now. There's future predators down here and I think I can stop them, but I need someone with computer skills and a laptop to help me, Conn."

"I'll be down as fast as I can," he replied, hanging up.

"What the hell did you just do?" grated out a voice in her ear.

Stephen had joined her, somehow managing to glare out of the corner of his eye while still scanning for the predators. "I called for help, Stephen. I can get them to stop, but I need to jack a laptop into the PA system. I need Connor."

The sound of a gunshot and a thud prevented the sharp answer brewing behind Stephen's eyes. "Not interrupting anything, am I?" Danny asked with his usual cocky grin.

"Not at - duck!" she snapped, bringing her EMD up to bear. Danny was perfect as usual and she landed the shot, sending the thing to the ground where it was promptly attacked by two others. "Let's go, while they're distracted."

Danny and Stephen unconsciously settled into a search pattern, each covering the other's blind spots while Abby led the way to the security offices. Or at least, where she had a memory of them being. "Where are we going?" Stephen asked, professional enough to put off the fight until this was finished.

"The security office," Abby said. "At least, I think it's this way. I need to get to the PA system."

"Why?" Danny asked. "What good'll that do? You going to tell them to run home to Helen?"

Abby blinked. "What does the bitch have to do with it?"

They both ignored Stephen's insulted-sounding exclamation.

"Everything," Danny told her, sounding incredulous. "She had them bioengineered."

"I . . . can't even be surprised about that," Abby said. "I think it never came up. Matt always called them freaks, but a post-apocalyptic future really isn't much of anything to judge evolution on." They'd come up on the door to the room which should have the PA system in it. She kicked it in, to an admiring look from Danny.

"Very nice."

"Abby!" Stephen sounded pained. "What are you doing?"

"I'm going to pound them with a high decibel and super high and super low hertz hit of sound. It'll blind them without making the rest of us deaf," Abby explained. "I called Connor, so he should get here soon." She turned to Danny. "I know it's not good in terms of a job for him, but I need someone with a laptop for this and I'm not good enough with computers to make it happen with one stolen from a store here."

Danny nodded sharply. "Good enough for me."

The familiar sound of a shotgun report echoed through the mall. "That'll be Becker," Abby said with a smile. "And Baby . . . excuse me, Priscilla."

"Danny, can you go and see who there's left of the SFs?" Abby asked. "I know it's a lot to ask, but it's going to get crowded in here, and I know that Cutter brought Claudia along -"

He nodded, ducking into the hall, immediately replaced with Connor. "Becker's heading off with Danny. What do you need?" he asked, pulling out his laptop.

It took only a moment for her to explain and for him to grin that beautiful smile of his at her, and then his fingers were flying over the keyboard. Before he'd finished, the door, which Stephen had jammed shut with a chair, shuddered under the impact of predator attack. Abby joined Stephen in holding the door.

"Damned orangubats," Connor muttered.

She rolled her eyes, even as she braced herself. "This is why Cutter cut you off from naming things."

"It's totally descriptive," he protested, his fingers flying over the keyboards of two separate computer systems, aligning them and jacking one into the other. "They're bioengineered bats and they move like speedy primates, half orangutan, half bat."

"It's as bad as monkey-bat and you know it," she told him. The top of the door broke under the strain and Abby whipped the EMD up, blasting the thing in the face.

"Got it!"

The attack stopped, and Abby pulled away from the door at once, now taking the time to switch her EMD to kill. "Okay, let's go kill a few future-"

"Orangubats," Connor interrupted with a cheeky grin.

They stepped out to see three of them frozen in place. Connor had a grim smile as he shot it three times in the head. Stephen followed his example and Abby took her one shot with the EMD. Then Stephen was hastily dialling his mobile. "Nick?" His whole body relaxed as he heard from the professor. "Yes. It's Abby. Shecalled in Temple's people."

Abby sighed. "Well, this is ahead of schedule, but maybe it's for the best."

"Schedule?" Connor asked as they walked through the mall, systematically checking through the whole place for predators.

"I wanted to do this gradually," Abby explained. "See if I couldn't bring the majority of the SFs on board, then Sarah, then get to working on Lester and Claudia. Once I'd got them on board, I could pressure Cutter and Stephen into working with you, at least at a distance."

Connor's face was blank and she couldn't tell if he approved or not as he said, "Sneaky."

"I must agree. I really didn't think any of Nick's little cavalcade would have had it in them," came a horribly familiar voice behind them.

Abby gritted her teeth and turned to see the smirking face of Helen Cutter. "You know, I was really happy when I found out you were dead. I mean, you have the ability to cause trouble from the grave, but at least we knew there'd be a limit. And now you won't even stay dead."

The other woman blinked, then raised an eyebrow. "How . . . interesting. Meaning?"

"If you don't know what I mean," Abby said, "I'm not going to tell you." She wasn't either. The last thing she wanted was to risk giving Helen ideas.

A loud argument approached, Cutter and Stephen, an irate Emily snapping at them both, Becker and Danny egging her on instead of helping. Then they turned the corner, the lot of them coming to a halt. "Helen!" Cutter and Stephen gasped in unison.

"Great," Danny muttered sourly.

Helen smirked, and said, "Nick. Stephen. Lovely to see you both."

"You're here," Cutter said blankly. "I didn't . . . why, Helen?"

Stephen meanwhile fixed Abby with a look. "You knew. You knew she was . . . she's fine. Why didn't you say anything?"

"Yes," Helen smirked. "Why didn't you say anything?"

Connor said through gritted teeth, "Because you're a destructive harpy, that's why."

"Now, now," she said smiling smugly. "There's no need to be bitter, Connor."

Becker was shaking and furious. "How about Ihave every right to be bitter?" he demanded. "You had your goons murder my sister-"

She looked at him coolly, even as he raised the shotgun. "It's hardly my fault she was foolish enough to get in the way of that shot. They were simply aiming for the dimetrodon behind you." His finger tensed on the trigger, and she added, "I wouldn't do that if I were you. They don't like it when I'm threatened."

Looming out of the shadows came familiar faces. A familiar face repeated several times. "Effing Cleaners," Abby muttered. "You and your goddamned clones."

"What the hell do you want now?" Connor's voice cut across the scene. Sharp and commanding, it was all those flashes Abby had seen in Connor, when he was at his most confident, knew what he was doing and how to do it, but now it was concentrated in this moment and it took her breath away.

Helen had clearly seen something, because she grinned at Abby. "Is that the way the wind blows, lover?" she asked, an undercurrent of laughter to the question. "Because I thought we could catch up on old times." She turned slightly to Nick and Stephen, who were staring, shocked, at the whole scene. "Connor used to do the same thing as Stephen. You know, with your tongue on my-"

"What?" Abby heard herself gasp with Cutter. "You slept with her?" they chorused.

He wasn't her Connor, she knew Helen was a manipulating monster, but the hurt at the thought reared up inside her, and she said, "Connor? You slept with Helen?"

"One mistake," Connor ground out. "One mistake and it got Duncan killed. You don't get to judge anything, Maitland. You haven't been here for any of it."

"Oh, are you jealous?" Helen said with a delighted smile.

She felt a snarl on her lips and she said, "No, I just don't like women who sleep their way to whatever they consider success."

"I don't understand, Helen," Cutter said, sounding lost.

"Something around here has changed, Nick, and I'd really like to know how and why," Helen said.

And Cutter told her. "Somehow, something Abby did in the past, along with Temple, there, changed things in the here and now. She's not the one we're all used to."

"Bloody hell," Connor hissed. "Cutter, you idiot."

Abby snapped. She was through with Helen and her games. She brought up the EMD, still set for fatal shots and fired. Except that Stephen saw and shoved her over, shouting, "Helen! Look out!"

The shot went wide and hit Captain Ryan. "No!" Abby screamed. "No, no, no, no!" She threw the weapon aside, was blocked by two of Helen's damned Cleaners and slammed a foot into one's head and spun around to slam an elbow at another. Two broken necks she barely noted as she tried to get to him, hoping she could start CPR. She wasn't even aware as Helen ordered her clones to follow her out as she tried to reach the soldier.

Someone grabbed her and she didn't even think as she slammed her head back, hearing a muffled shout of pain and kicked backwards, making them let her go. Scrambling she reached his side, starting CPR, trying to pump his chest, feeling nothing. No breathing, no pulse. Someone else was beside her and she nearly hit them too, spotting the defibrillator just in time, seeing Becker join her in trying to revive the man.

Matt's design was good. It was the best.

Captain Tom Ryan was dead.

"What have you done, Abby?" Cutter demanded. "You tried to murder my wife-"

"She's not your wife anymore, Cutter," Abby snapped through the tears streaming down her face. "She hasn't been ever since she left you for fucking prehistory. She's gone mad and all she'll be is trouble. I should know."

"You tried to kill her in cold blood," Stephen snapped back. "This isn't your reality -"

"Enough is the same, Stephen. It's the same that she left Cutter, it's the same that she's tormented people just because she can, it's the same she made those goddamned clones of hers and it's the same that she fucking slept with you, Hart!" she finished. "Don't try to sit there on your high moral ground when you're half in love with the woman who cheated on your best friend with you!"

"Don't try to lie to cover your own mistakes, Abby," Cutter said sternly.

At the same time, though, Stephen replied, "I may have slept with her, Abby, but at least I've never killed anyone in cold blood."

"No," Connor sneered. "You're just so convinced of your own superiority that you'd rather ignore us time and again, rather than work with us, willing to let people die for your ego."

Cutter stopped dead, staring at Stephen. "You . . . and Helen?"

"Didn't catch that bit about his tongue before?" Danny said with a bleak, dark version of his cheeky grin.

The professor looked lost as he took in the two men his wife had slept with, the dead clones she'd arrived with and Ryan dead on the ground. "This is your fault," he told Abby. Then he glared around impartially. "You and your little team of incompetents had best stay the hell away Temple, or I'll make sure you're all thrown in prison for any trumped up charge I can make stick."

"Congratulations," Connor told her with a black and malicious smile on his face. "You've just succeeded at making all our lives harder, and getting me fired. Keep the hell away from us, Maitland." Then the smile faded and he stormed off, followed by the rest of his team, leaving Abby alone with Ryan's body and the silent SFs.

---

The SFs were so kind about it all, Abby wanted to throw up. Lieutenant Jacobson told her everything was alright, that they, at least, didn't blame her, they trusted that if she'd tried to kill Helen there had to have been a valid reason and it was Stephen's interference that had sent the shot wide.

None of that mattered. He was dead, and she'd done it. His parents, family, friends, did he have a girlfriend? Wife? She'd never found out, and they'd all have to deal with losing him because Abby had taken a pot shot at Helen. The whole scene sickened her, terrified her, and suddenly Abby couldn't stand it anymore, bolting to her feet and running away. It was all a blur how she got home, flashes of what might have been a bus came to her, but nothing was really clear or real until she was finally behind the door of her flat, the world outside ignorable with the deadbolt shot and the chain on.

Then her knees gave out and she sank down, back against the door, sobbing. Rex came over to her, cheeping anxiously, but even he couldn't do anything to stave off the empty, horrible feeling inside her. She'd got Connor fired, maybe someone else on his team too, Cutter didn't trust her anymore, Stephen didn't trust her, Danny and Connor and probably Becker too all hated her and she'd killed Ryan. As her mobile rang, she pulled it out, staring at the display a moment. It was Claudia.

She let it roll over to voice mail. No need to hear more condemnation from that quarter. It started ringing again a few minutes later. Lester. Voice mail. Jenny. Voice mail. When the display lit up with Connor's name, a sob tore from her throat and she flung the phone across the room, sending Rex spiralling up to the rafters and smashing the mobile into the opposite wall, breaking it into pieces. She huddled against the door, not moving when it vibrated with the pounding of someone knocking and Becker calling her name through it. He was replaced with Emily, then Tom, finally Connor, and it was all she could do not to start bawling loudly enough to be heard through the wooden barrier keeping the world out.

Eventually they left, and with a shaking breath, Abby went to her computer, firing it up, turning off the wireless access. For hours she wrote. Starting at the beginning and leaving nothing out. This was no careful report, this was a bald-faced retelling of everything. From start to finish, she told them.

Meeting Ben, seeing Rex, the scutosaurus, the gorgonopsid, coming home and Connor being tricked by his friends, the mess with the arthropleura and how Connor got back on. She told them about Helen's return, her tricks and games. She told them about Cutter, staggering from an anomaly asking after a woman who'd never existed. She told them about Helen and Stephen and the horrible footage Connor had rescued from Leek's little madhouse of Stephen, stoic and brave, dying to save everyone and because he wanted to make up for his mistakes. She told them about Sarah and Becker and Cutter dying, leaving them all dizzy and confused without him.

She wrote about Danny appearing and taking over as leader, in a way as seamlessly as anyone could have. She wrote about Christine Johnson and running and hiding and the ARC taken over by someone else's soldiers because she was a power-mad madwoman. She spoke of how Helen came back again, because torturing Cutter and Stephen for eight years with her disappearance, getting Stephen killed and murdering Cutter hadn't been enough. Her plan to kill everyone, to destroy humanity before it even had a chance to start, and how she and Connor hadn't been able to keep up with Danny.

She wrote about a year of terror and loneliness, knowing they were the only ones they had. A year of despair, listening to Connor go on about cappuccinos and how she hadn't understood how he could keep hoping in the face of everything, how she'd been certain they'd die there, never seeing home or their friends again.

Her fingers flew over the keyboard, on and on, telling about coming home, but it not being home, because there was no flat, no Sarah, no ARC as they knew it. Danny was still missing, and all that was left was Becker and Lester. She wrote about Jess and her boundless cheer, her brisk efficiency and her colourful clothes and impractical shoes. Matt and his stiffness and stoicism and his determination not to throw away Connor and Abby the way Burton wanted. Duncan and the kaprosuchus, Rex and the menagerie, Emily and the new ARC, Jenny's wedding and the way she and Connor started to fall apart because of Philip bloody Burton.

Then it was time for the story of Ethan, the pair of anomalies in the old prison, Danny's return and his subsequent chase after his brother right back through, with all of them wondering if he'd ever make it back again.

A whole year of seeing Connor fall for Burton's every flattering word and the knowledge that part of the fault for Connor's susceptibility was the way they'd all taken the mick at his expense for so long, and how he just lapped up people telling him he was good and smart and deserved respect. Because he'd had so little of it in his life that it had left an indelible mark on him that she'd never even realised until too late.

Matt and his quest to save the future, Emily's return and the discovery that Burton's plan was at Helen's behest. The fact that Helen, from beyond the metaphorical grave of her prehistoric death at the claws of a raptor in the era of the earliest humans, had managed to try to destroy them all again.

It was pages and pages of text, she didn't stop, didn't think or edit, just wrote. An outpouring of everything that had happened, everything she'd been keeping mum about because it didn't matter anymore, had already passed or had hurt too much to tell.

Connor, triumphantly standing on the generator, sure he'd finally stopped it, dragged backwards into the anomaly that Burton had managed in the end, Matt and her going through, pulling him back and Burton's realisation he'd been tricked by Helen stroking his ego and his sense of grandeur. All the hurry up and wait, the predators in the ARC, Jess, bloody and terrified, alone with Lester's head in her lap and their relief when Connor constructed a plan to stop things. The horrible moment they'd all thought Matt dead and the joy and relief of it all being over finally.

She wrote of a year of relative peace. No Helen, just simple, straightforward anomalies and clearing up the mess left by the creatures coming through. Of going to clean up after the oviraptor and coming out to find her whole world gone, finding Connor evaporated as though he never was, with a stranger in his place and the dead come back to life. She confessed her plans, her secret meetings with Connor and his team and her hopes of bringing them together.

Then came the pages of every bit of detail she could remember from Connor about how the locking mechanism worked, the ADD, his dating calculator and the Sun Cage.

It took her all day to do. She finished by tendering her resignation, reconnected to the internet for long enough to email it to Cutter, Connor, Jenny, Claudia and Lester, then she shut the computer down and went to bed. Her plan was to start job hunting in the morning, find somewhere to be that took her away from everything. She'd start fresh, move to America or Australia if she had to, but it was over. She couldn't do it anymore.

For the next two days she was either hiding in her apartment or working from an internet cafe with a brand new email address so that if Connor or anyone else looked, they wouldn't see any activity from her. She looked for work anywhere but London. Searching for places that would take her in Scotland and Ireland, across the channel in Paris and further afield in New Zealand. All that mattered was getting away and finding something that would keep her from crossing paths with anyone from her past again.

She woke one morning to the sight of Connor, next to her, and half asleep she pulled him into a kiss. He seemed hesitant a moment, but she didn't care because after the nightmare it was wonderful to slide her fingers through his hair and taste him again. She said when it broke, "I had the worst dream Conn. That we'd gone through an anomaly and you just vanished."

"I'm not him."

"What . . ." she took in the sight of Danny, Becker and Claudia, standing behind him. Memory came rushing back. "Oh. I'm . . . sorry," she said lamely.

"I . . ." he turned to them. "Can you give me a minute?" he asked, over his shoulder.

"Sure," said Claudia, chivvying the other two men in front of her. Abby blinked in confusion at Danny's cheerful wink.

"I'm sorry," she told Connor again. "I just . . . I miss him." She closed her eyes against the grief. It didn't matter if there was a Connor Temple in front of her, hers was as good as dead.

"I'm not him," he repeated. "But Tom has a theory, and that email of yours . . ." he trailed off. "It might be a bit complicated," he told her.

"Okay," she said, slowly. She wasn't really sure why they were there, why Claudia was there with them, but she owed him that much for having probably ruined his life.

"See, when the timeline changes, the only changes that will affect you, as in your memory and who you are and all, are the ones that happen in the past of when you are. So if you're in the Oligocene, you can't be affected by anything that happens in the Pliocene, for example." Connor took a breath, running a hand through his hair. "That's why Cutter's trip through the Permian meant he could come back to find Claudia gone. Because the changes happened after the when he was in. It's also how Helen was able to come back to life. She was in the Pleistocene while you and . . . the other me, while you were both in the Cretaceous. All the changes that were happening were afterthat point in time. It basically makes you immune to those changes."

Abby nodded. "Right. With you so far, since I've seen that."

"The thing is," he said, "That when you or Cutter came back, or you and me or . . . whomever, when you come back to the present, you're coming back to . . . I suppose you could call it an empty place. When you travel to back before you were born, there's still an empty place. But when you and . . . the other me came back, history had changed so that there was already a me here. Now, there might still have been two of us, but I think that the change that happened may have occurred asyou were crossing the threshold. When you were on the event horizon, as it were. There was a place for you, but your Connor, he got trapped in the moment of change and got . . . effectively merged into the new timeline."

Abby stared. "That . . . I almost understood that," she said. "But not really. So, you're saying that because we were inthe anomaly while the change was happening, and Connor already had a double here from the change that he . . . sort of melded with . . . you?"

"Pretty much," he told her.

"How would that even work?" Abby asked.

Connor shrugged. "It's just a working theory, but the anomalies are electromagnetic fields, you know. And brain activity is a function of electrical impulses running from one neuron to the next. There's not such a dissimilarity in the type of energy there."

There was something here, something he seemed to be trying to tell her, but Abby couldn't for the life of her figure it out. "So, that's . . . at least that maybe explains things," she said distractedly. "Why are you all here with Claudia?"

"She and Jenny talked, after that email of yours," Connor said. "I think they buried the hatchet. Abby-"

She didn't want to hear him tell her again he wasn't who she wished so hard he was. She was decent, even if it was pyjamas, so she went downstairs to see Danny taunting Rex again. "Please stop that," she said tiredly. "Claudia, hi. What . . . why are you here?"

"Working out how to smack some sense into my idiotic Scottish boyfriend," she explained. "Blaming you for Ryan's death, more, blaming you for something his ex-wife had clearly arranged is simply beyond the pale." Claudia smiled at her and said, "I do hope we can talk you into taking back your resignation, because James is simply not going to cope well with being caught between Temple and Nick."

"I don't understand," Abby said blankly.

Danny smiled gently. "What she's saying is, Connor was an idiot. You were doing your best and you were right to call in help. What happened between Cutter and Connor is due to them, and," he raised his voice, "Certain people decided to blame the wrong person because they were feeling stupid about having their bad relationships paraded around."

"Yeah, yeah," Connor grumbled as he ambled down after her. "I am sorry. You were just trying to keep people safe."

"I killed Ryan," Abby said, feeling even worse as she finally spoke the words aloud.

Becker was beside her in an instant. "No. You tried to take out the enemy. It is notyour fault that Hart prevented you from taking that shot." His face was serious and his hands clasped her upper arms as he clearly tried to force her to focus on what he was saying. "I know it feels terrible, but he was a soldier and a good one. If anyone can understand the sorts of mistakes that happen, it would have been him. You can't blame yourself."

She hadn't even noticed Sarah was there until the woman said, "I'll work on Stephen, Abby. He's feeling pretty confused right now, especially with how you've changed." Then she looked over at Rex. "Is this why you never let anyone into your flat?"

It was so much at once, because Abby hadn't expected they'd do this, hadn't thought Claudia would side against Cutter or that she'd see Connor again. So she focussed on the relatively inconsequential, because it all was leaving her shaky. "Yeah. I wasn't supposed to keep Rex, but when Cutter came back, Rex followed him back out the anomaly."

"He's cute," Sarah declared, gently scratching Rex on the head, listening to him croon. Then she said, "You know, I wish you'd explained more about where you're from, but from what Claudia said, it sounds like part of it were pretty awful."

Ryan and Stephen and Cutter and Sarah and losing their home twice over in the ARC and the flat, Abby felt a watery smiled cross her lips. "I really didn't want to talk about it."

Claudia cut through all that, saying, "So, James has arranged a proper meeting for both groups, and I rather suspect he'll want you there as the one person who can vouch for the abilities of everyone there. Your resignation has not been accepted." She gave Abby a stern look then a smile as she said, "So, get dressed, because I think James wants to scold you for keeping secrets."

Indeed, Lester did scold her, then he told her he was sorry and that she had his sympathies in that perfunctorily sympathetic way he had. By the time that was done, both teams had arrived, and Abby found herself frozen in the doorway, seeing Connor vociferously arguing with Cutter, Stephen shell-shocked to the side while Sarah whispered something to him, Jenny and Claudia deep in conversation while Danny stood awkwardly to the side of the pair looking oddly harassed and Becker was deep in conversation with Lieutenant Jacobson, while Emily looked around with curious interest at the office.

Then they all noticed her and the room fell silent. And they all just started staring at her.

Well, this was uncomfortable. More so than when she'd first met up with the whole of Connor's team, more than the first meeting with everyone at the Home Office in this new timeline, more so even than living with Jess Parker, and that was whole levels of uncomfortable she hadn't even known existed, and she was used to living with Connor.

"Er . . . so . . . hi?" she finally offered.

Cutter broke the silence in his own inimitable style. "I just can't believe Helen would do this, any of it." He gestured with a sheaf of paper, then threw it to the table. Abby was just barely able to make out from that distance the familiar shape of the paragraphs. It was her . . . report? Confession? Whatever it should have been called.

From the other side of the room, Stephen said slowly, "I can." When Cutter whipped around to stare at him, Stephen repeated, "I can. She's always been manipulative, Nick. You know that, you complained about it often enough, before." Then he took a deep breath. "And when she came to me, before she vanished, she was able to twist everything around, made it sound like the affair was a good idea." He chuckled darkly. "It didhelp when she flattered my ego."

"'Oh, you're so much smarter than Nick, brilliant, you know,'?" Connor asked. "Yeah, she did that to me. The ego thing's really nice."

Danny muttered, "I told you she was old enough to be your mother."

"She really didn't act motherly," Tom said, wincing. "I should know. I walked in on it."

Cutter was stubbornly shaking his head. Lester chose to cut all discussion of that off at the knees. "As entertaining as your little relationship dramas may be, I have better things to do with my time than watch a cut rate impression of American daytime soap operas."

"James is right," Claudia said, poking Cutter sharply. "We're here to discuss bringing everything together into one place. It truly is ridiculous the way we're fighting over territory, and Abby is quite right that we ought to use the resources currently at our disposal." She turned to Abby. "I'm asking you to suggest something, because you know what everyone here is capable of, and you'll have a far better idea of how to distribute resources."

The spotlight now back on her, Abby took a deep breath and said, "I think we should just break everything down into two response teams." She smiled wryly. "As much as I personally would love to try to get back to one of the teams I'm used to, I doubt everyone'll get along well enough to do that."

"So, what do you suggest?" Lester asked, his eyes boring into her with his usual sharp intensity.

Abby started to slowly think aloud. "As far as being in the field is concerned, I think we need to put Cutter in as one team leader, and Danny as the other."

Tom immediately objected. "Connor's the one in charge," he said. "He's the scientist and this is supposed to be about the science, isn't it? That's why you're leaving Cutter in charge of one."

"Actually, that's habit," Abby admitted.

Stephen snorted. "Also because Nick's too bullheaded to let anyone else take charge."

"I am not," Cutter began indignantly.

Abby, Sarah, Claudia and Stephen simultaneously snorted with laughter. "Yes you are, dear," Claudia told him.

"You were saying?" Lester said, effortlessly dragging everything back on topic. "About Mr. Quinn?"

"Well, however we distribute the teams, Danny and Stephen need to be on different teams, because they bring the same sort of skill set to dealing with anomalies," Abby explained.

Jenny grinned, "Is that, I'm-completely-mad-and-I'll-do-anything-to-make-the-shot?"

She grinned back at her friend. "That's it, exactly."

"So, we'll have two hot-dogging madmen," Claudia muttered. "Wonderful. Insurance premiums will skyrocket."

Another point, "I think, if Jenny's up to it, we should also have her on one team and Claudia on the other. For crowd control and telling people the mammoth's an escaped elephant and all. It's what Jenny was hired for in my timeline, and I think having her take the PR would be good. It'll also give us a sort of consistency in the public eye if people mistake her and Claudia for each other." She'd spent enough time with Jenny that she'd learnt a few of those public persona tricks.

"A not unreasonable idea," Lester agreed. "Ms Lewis, I do believe that we have access to some better grades of care than might be otherwise available to you. I will be certain to arrange the chance to have your injuries looked at again."

Jenny smiled, Danny took her hand, nodding acknowledgement at the gesture then smiling down at his fiancée. Connor chose to put his two pence in, then. "If we're trying to create an equal distribution, then Tom and I are going to have to be on different teams."

Tom's eyes were wide. "Conn . . ." he said, sounding hurt. "Why?"

"Because, Tom, we need someone on each team who handles the physics," Connor said gently. "This is just for in the field. We'd still work together in the lab and all, but this is about having the right person there to take the readings and improvise with computers and all." Then he turned to Lester. "And I think we definitely should take a page from Abby's original timeline and have Becker take over as the person in charge of the soldiers attached to the . . . field teams."

"Some of them, a lot of them, won't like that," Jacobson said, shaking his head. "Becker here may be fully competent, but there's a certain amount of bad feeling. It won't help that he's younger than most of us."

Sarah spoke up then. "Well, then why don't you try splitting the command of the forces, the ones who are okay with Becker going with him, the rest going with you," she nodded at Jacobson, "Since you're currently the ranking officer?"

"Put Danny in charge of security, then," Abby said in a burst of inspiration. "Overall head of the department, so to speak. He's old enough," she paused, letting Danny send her a mock-affronted look, "That they won't complain about that, and since he's from the police, it also won't feel like a complete civilian taking over. And he's certainly good enough at breaking into places to figure out how to stop it."

Sarah nodded, backing Abby up. "Then we can trade off which teams of SFs are going with which scientific team as backup, getting everyone used to working with everyone else."

Becker finally spoke. "At least until we've worked out who works best with whom," he cautioned. "Better to have solid teams that know each other's strengths and weaknesses than to constantly play around with things."

"What about me?" Emily asked. "This is all well and good, but I do think my role could be better defined."

"Oh, we're definitely on different teams," Abby told her. "Emily's as good as I am, better actually, at understanding prehistoric animal behaviours. She's lived with them long enough." She smiled at the other woman. "And she's not a bad shot, either."

"She'll have to get checked out on the range," Cutter said abruptly. "All of Temple's people will."

Connor's eyes narrowed a little. "Then we will. I'm sure that you won't have a bit of a problem with Danny or Becker."

The professor glared. "I was thinking more of the rest of you."

"You aren't so determined with Miss - sorry, Dr. Page," Connor returned. "You let her come along everywhere without anything to defend herself and no expertise related to this sort of fieldwork." He shot Sarah an apologetic look, but immediately returned to glaring at Cutter.

"We know she's useful to us, Temple," Cutter growled. "All I know your team has proven is that they're all willing to listen to someone with the practical intellect of a toddler."

Connor developed a vicious smile in response to that sally, saying, "All weknow about your group is that you don't have the technical wherewithal to build a decent anomaly detector with all the resources of the government behind you. Our taxes at work."

That hit Cutter where it hurt, and Abby knew she was watching a train wreck. "Both of you stop it!"

"Personally, I wonder about why we're listening to Abby about this when her judgment's compromised with a version of your that's clearly completely different," Cutter said. "One that wasn't a gormless idiot in the face of the anomalies."

"Cutter!" Abby tried.

Connor sneered right back. "Of course, her judgment regarding you is just as compromised. That Cutter seems to have been shaken off his bloody pedestal of self-righteous refusal to admit he might be wrong!"

"Connor, please!"

"Both of you, stop!" Lester interposed himself between them, glaring the two sides down impartially.

She couldn't help herself when she said, "First, Cutter, Connor was a gormless idiot for the first year, and you didtry to throw him off the team. If we hadn't been desperate when Stephen was dying from the arthropleura's bite he never would have got back on. But you, the other you, gave him the chance and he proved himself." She glared, remembering the parasite and Tom dying, "And never tell me a man willing to step in front of six guns to protect a friend without flinching is emotionally a toddler."

She turned to Connor. "Don't even think about smirking Connor, because Cutter's a damn good scientist and it's his lead that's let them start to figure out the maths for the pattern to the anomalies' appearances. They've predicted them, which is more than you've managed, so get off your high horse about who's doing the real science."

"Well said," Emily spoke into the silence. "So, now that we have dispensed with the usual unnecessary masculine posturing, perhaps we can return to the purpose of this meeting?"

Jenny and Claudia shared identical amused smiles, and Claudia handed a sheet of paper with two neatly written lists on it to Lester. He looked at it, nodded, and said. "Very well. This is a temporary arrangement only, as Misters Temple and Brantford's," he nodded at Connor and Tom, "Skills are very much in demand here to design an effective anomaly detection mechanism, they will not be going into the field in the short term. Ms Maitland will remain with Cutter and Hart, Lieutenant Jacobson will command one half of the available forces in support of that team. Ms Merchant, Lieutenant Becker and Mr. Quinn will make up a second team, with Lieutenant Becker in command of the other half of the SFs. Ms Brown, Ms Lewis, I trust you both to decide between the pair of you who will be accompanying which team in respect of dissembling to the public. I expect everyone planning to go into the field will pass the necessary checks on the gun ranges before going out, which means, Dr. Page, you will be staying in the lab from now on." He gave everyone present a single supercilious dark look. "If I hear a word of any more childish displays of unnecessary machismo, that person will not like the results."

He turned on his heel and left. "Well, that tells us," Connor said, his good humour reasserting itself.

"As long as I'm not going to have to work with a bloody adulterer," Cutter said in a tone meant to be soft enough to ignore, but loud enough to be heard.

Stephen didn't ignore it, his jaw working as he said, "Then maybe, Nick, I should trade places with Quinn."

"What?" Cutter asked, then the realisation swept over him. "Stephen."

"After all, you'd been separated from Helen for eight years before she ever showed up again. You can't even really think of yourself as married to her anymore, can you? Whereas when Islept with her, it was before she left."

"Oh, please don't do this," Abby pleaded. "Stephen, it made everything fall apart back in my timeline and I don't want to ever see footage of you ripped apart by a pile of predators again."

Cutter stared, then shook his head. "I have to . . . excuse me," he said, turning on his heel and leaving.

Claudia looked torn, and Abby told her, "Go on. I'm sure we can handle giving people the grand tour. Such as it is." Once she'd left, Abby turned to Connor and his people, the people who were once her teammates and hopefully would be again, and said, "How about I show you all around, and then maybe we can try to figure out where this is all going to move when it becomes clear there isn't enough space for us all."

"Works for me," Danny said. "Well?"

There was a general murmur of agreement and they walked through the office space, Abby pointing out where various science departments had their liaison desks, showing the media room, which impressed Emily, if no one else, and where everyone's offices were. She led them down to the makeshift barracks and shooting range that had been appended to the building, suggesting that Stephen and Lieutenant Jacobson check everyone out while they were down there, just to get the whole thing over with.

Jenny shocked Stephen out of his gourd, as she had shocked Connor, Caroline and Abby in the previous timeline, by handling the rifles with contemptuous ease, Tom had barely squeaked by, but he wasn't going to be there for his shooting anyhow, Danny and Becker barely paid any attention at all, carelessly shooting at the stationary targets with their own brand of contempt, and Connor put in a solid performance.

Then it all degenerated into a testosterone-fuelled competition between Stephen and Danny about who could shoot better, and Abby rolled her eyes, leaving the pair of them, and most of the rest of the two teams behind as a cheering section, leaving with Tom and Connor.

"So," she said. "Do you think maybe this could work? That maybe you could try not to antagonise Cutter? Or at least not bite back too much?"

Tom shot his best friend a look Abby couldn't interpret. "I think that'll be easier than you think."

Abby blinked. "What do you mean?" she asked.

"You didn't get what I was saying before," Connor said. "I didn't get to finish . . ." he stopped, turned to Tom, and said, "Could you find somewhere to be for a minute?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Tom waved a hand. "You owe me huge, Conn. I expect to get it back in kind."

"I've got a line on that signed photo of Tricia Helfer with the really torn uniform," Connor told his friend. "I'll get on that before it goes away on eBay."

Tom nodded decisively. "Your tribute is accepted. If I do not receive it, my vengeance will be swift." Then he ambled away, pretending like he wasn't going to wait around the corner listening in.

"It'll have to do, I guess," Connor said, heaving a sigh. He turned back to Abby. "It's just . . . it started the day you came through the anomaly. At least, that would explain the timing."

He looked conflicted and sad, and Abby put a hand on his cheek, forcing him to look at her as she had so many times when he'd let his lack of self-worth beat him down. "Tell me. Whatever it is Conn, we can deal with it."

"I'm not him," he said to her. But as she flinched, pulling her hand from his face, feeling the hurt again at those words, he caught that hand and held it in place. "But for weeks and weeks I've had these dreams, Abby. I remember a burning building and carrying Cutter out of it. He was dead."

She felt her heart begin to race.

"Connor already had a double here from the change that he . . . sort of melded with . . . you?"

". . . the anomalies are electromagnetic fields, you know. And brain activity is a function of electrical impulses running from one neuron to the next. There's not such a dissimilarity in the type of energy there."

"We were somewhere, a large room, and Jenny was there, and some girl, I don't know who. And you were there and you walked away, staring down a smilodon."

"Connor," she said. But she didn't know what else tosay. What did you say when someone starts telling you they remember things they shouldn't be able to?

He shook his head as though to dislodge a thought. "I thought I was going mad. I thought they were just dreams, maybe something from trauma." A half step closer. "Then Tom showed up, telling me that you were claiming to be from another timeline. One where maybe you and I'd been . . . close. And when I saw you at the theatre, you weren't anything like Maitland. You were something else. Tom saw that I was being weird."

She didn't dare interrupt. It felt like the moment itself was balanced on a knife's edge.

"I remember being in Lester's flat, with the diictodons. They were eating his suits," he told her. She couldn't help the laugh that escaped. He'd told her about that, about the adventures the pets had had while he'd been booted out in favour of her brother. "When you asked that evening at Jenny's, about where your Connor could have gone, I hadn't really twigged to the fact that there'd been another me."

The words slipped out before she could stop them. "Tom noticed, he figured it out."

Connor nodded. "He did. He asked what was wrong with me and I told him about those dreams finally. That I remembered having Fred and Wilma at your flat, only calling them Sid and Nancy. He came up with the theory, and then when everything fell apart, you sent that email. The one with everything in it."

"You remembered?" she asked in nearly a whisper. To say it any louder might have been overconfident, might have made him . . . not hers, tell her she was wrong.

"Some things. Enough that it's like there's two of me in here, sometimes. He . . . I . . . the other Connor, he told you he loved you the first time when you were dangling from a cliff, didn't he?"

That hadn't been in the report. Some things were too personal, even if you were baring your soul. "Oh, Connor!" She kissed him, feeling that joy she only ever got from Connor.

The smile on his face was sad as they pulled apart. "I'm not him," he told her one more time. "But maybe, do you think we could see if, in time, I could be?"

It wasn't perfect, nothing was, but behind the harder edges of this new Connor lurked hers, and she'd be damned if she let him go again the way she had so many times before. "If you can put up with how much I'm going to be yelling at you," she said.

"I'm not going to let you walk all over me the way you did to him," he said. "I quite clearly recall certain people taking the mick about my cleaning skills."

"I wouldn't if you didn't insist on leaving your bloody pants in the microwave," she told him.

"Too much information!" Tom shouted from around the corner.

"Why are so many of my friends bloody prats?" Connor asked her conversationally as they headed down the hall. "No, forget that. Why do you think they haven't updated the computers here in five years?"

Abby smiled. "I expect it's next on the agenda, after coffeemakers that think and nuclear powered cyborgs."

"Buffy? Abby! I succeeded at corrupting you!"

It definitely wasn't perfect, but she could work with this.

Unsurprisingly, there had been some birthing pangs of this new version of the ARC. Connor and Cutter had fought like cats and dogs over control of the project and the new offices, Jenny and Claudia were still sisters and that continued to inform all their battles, some of which degenerated into arguments about who'd taken who's dolls when they were six, Sarah had spent a great deal of time angry at being taken off the field teams and Lester had taken to harassing anyone within reach from Connor's group about creating a backlog of comprehensive reports, Cutter and Stephen about Helen and Abby about backing him up.

There were some surprises along the way, some of them even good. Stephen, once he'd got over losing his position as the only mad marksman of the anomaly teams got along shockingly well with Danny. They'd found some sort of shooting-related common ground, and Stephen held deep sympathy for Danny's previous break-ins when it became clear the other man had just wanted answers about his brother. Becker, despite all previous worries, had no trouble settling into a position as the man in charge of part of the SFs and security. Indeed, he was the one person from the new team that the SFs had no trouble accepting. Abby decided it was the hair. Its stern immovability just made you believe Becker was soldierly like that.

Connor and Cutter's fights over how the ARC was to be laid out turned out to be best handled by Emily. As a woman used to organising events and balls, households and house parties, she'd stepped in and made sure the facilities were equally distributed, handled seniority with the ease of someone who always knew who to seat where at the table, and Abby was particularly pleased when the things like the canteen, showers, locker rooms and the like were all of a much higher standard than before. Connor and Tom's new ADD, a combination of radio and geomagnetic field detectors, had pride of place in a central staging area, while Cutter's mad pile of tubing that was his model of the anomaly map was given a room designed to hold it.

Still, this was a new Connor, one who took a sort of mean joy in scaring people with his new knowledge from the other timeline. First it was Stephen's favourite kind of biscuits, eaten tauntingly in front of him, then it was Cutter's hatred of his major academic competitor, Dr. Parsons, whose work Connor used to great effect. He was nice to Sarah, handing over a set of geographical locations he'd determined through astronomical references in texts in the previous timeline, have had to take account of the shifting of the Earth's axis in order to do so accurately. Tom eventually put a stop to it by threatening to let Connor's secret about the personality merge out.

Abby took it out of both their hands by telling everyone. "Connor, stop taunting Stephen and Cutter. Just because you're angry with him over things he's said to you doesn't mean you should act like a vengeful brat about it. Also, you're scaring Sarah with the psychic act, stop it."

"But Abby-"

"Don't 'but Abby' me," she told him sternly. "Just because you can remember things people did in the other timeline doesn't mean you should use your powers for evil."

"Other timeline?" Cutter demanded. "What does that mean?"

Connor glared at her and she just smirked back. As much as she missed her original Connor, there was something infinitely more fun about this one who always gave as good as he got. "I didn't realise until Abby sent out that email of hers that I'd somehow been merged with the Connor from her timeline. I get intermittent memories from him about things."

"So, you're not really advocating Parsons' stupidity?" Cutter demanded.

"Pfft, no. The man's an idiot," Connor said. Soon he and Cutter were involved in the chapter and verse of everything wrong with Parsons' theories, and the whole thing settled the power plays between them because this Connor got really mean about people whose theories he didn't like.

Not long after they moved into the new building, Connor had moved in with her. It was like they'd never been apart some days as she plagued him about leaving his clothes in weird places and he made her play video games, they'd snog on the sofa and gave up on separate beds after only three days.

Other days it was like they were strangers, as they fought so much more now that Connor felt no need to back down, since he knew he'd already won her heart, and they both hurt each other more as a consequence. But with the larger teams and Cutter and Connor's relationship more one of equals than student and mentor there were a lot more evenings with the flat full of people, chatting and staring at Rex, Fred and Wilma, who got on as well as Abby remembered. And that was no bad change either. The way she and Connor had lived in each other's pockets hadgot a little weird after a while.

It was Lester who produced the biggest surprise in a way. He'd insisted that Connor and Tom build a central hub, somewhere they could have someone hack systems and relay information to everyone as needed instead of forcing Connor or Tom to do it in the field on the fly.

Abby came in one morning to the sight of Tom making annoyed noises and Stephen looking frightened as he hid in Tom's office. "What's going on?"

"Lester's brought some . . . teenager to act as a hub when we're in the field," Stephen announced. "There is something wrong with that girl. She took one look at me, said she'd read my file and practically knows me, then fluttered her eyelashes at me." He looked truly disturbed. "I think she might fancy me."

Abby rolled her eyes. "Stephen, all the girls fancy you, you're too pretty not to and you know it."

Then she headed for the hub to see, much to her delight, "Jess Parker! I can't believe it!"

Jess' eyes were wide, and then she broke into a smile. She was dressed in her usual highly colourful manner, her shoes impractical and bright blue, but gorgeous, getting her approving murmurs from Jenny, the skirt short and green, her top a swirling turquoise and blue that she made work as only she could. "You're Abby, aren't you? I saw in your file that you knew me in that other timeline. We were friends, then?"

"We were," Abby said with a smile. "Roomies for a while, too, after Connor and I got back from the past. He used to twit you about your Mac at home."

Cutter looked like someone had just told him they were putting a serial killing six-year-old on the team. "She'sthe Jess Parker you complained about missing?"

"She'sthe best field coordinator we could possibly have," Abby told him. "I mean, it's her first day, Becker told me there were some hiccoughs early on, but that's to be expected."

"You'd best have faith in her," Lester said dryly. "I think I've used up all my influence with the Minister for the time being to hire her on."

"You won't regret it," Abby promised him.

"Especially when you start trying to pretend she's your secretary," Connor said from behind. "I seem to recall something about abusing her position to get yourself out of traffic."

Jess' eyes narrowed at Lester a moment as she said, "Right. I've got your number, then."

"I think I like her after all," Cutter remarked idly at that. Anyone who bothered Lester was fine with him. Then she went and squealed at Danny about having read his file and the poor man looked ready to take to his heels.

"I knew she did it deliberately," Connor muttered in her ear.

All around Abby were the familiar sights of the ARC. The computers, the detector, Jess already happily harassing Becker, Stephen and Cutter joking to one side, Jenny twitting anyone around her and Danny trading quips with Sarah while Emily just enjoyed the atmosphere. Connor wrapping his arms around her and gently nuzzling into her hair, relaxed enough again to dispense with the fatigues and wearing his old waistcoats and scarves.

It was the unfamiliar that made her truly happy, though. Cutter smiling besottedly at Claudia, Stephen and Danny joking together, Tom and Jess chattering about the abilities of the ADD, Sarah and Emily bonding over being dragged arse-backwards into the whole anomaly mess. Connor bold enough to not care in the slightest for what anyone else thought as he kissed her.

It was practically perfect.

"Connor! Why have you put pink bows all over Priscilla?!"

Connor meeped and took to his heels, detouring to grab a tranq when the ADD went off and Jess said in suddenly crisply professional tones, "The anomaly's located at St. James' Park, close to the Churchill Museum. I think it might be in the lake."

Abby scooped up her brand new black box and a spare for Connor, grinning as Danny followed with his own and they headed for the car park.

"Becker! There's no need to be like that with my Leia action figure!"

Now it was perfect.