Trust Issues

Jess Parker was an intelligent young woman, and so she had suspected it for a while: Working life was not at all like they made it look on TV. Nonetheless, when she actually did start to work right after finishing university at the tender age of 19, it still came as a shock when reality set in. Although of course, in a job that involved dinosaurs and rips in time, reality was a relative term.

It wasn't the work itself, the knowledge and skills required of her – those she had mastered within the first few days. It was the human side of it that troubled her. She didn't have the usual work problems friends had told her about, like sleazy colleagues who couldn't keep their hands to themselves, or gossiping female staff; even her boss was actually quite nice. James Lester, with all his snobbishness and sarcasm – the dominant tone around here, Jess had noticed – was actually all right once she'd started to be a bit less intimidated by the fact that he seemed to frown upon public displays of – well – being in a good mood. She accidentally found a bottle of 12-year-old scotch in the third drawer on his desk once though, so she was pretty sure he couldn't be all bad.

But she would have liked a bit more support from her boss when it came to her work. After all, she knew the ARC had been created out of a previous, similar institution that had been shut down after several employees had died or gone missing. In order to prevent situations like these, her position had been created – to provide background information, grant the field teams access to the anomalies, and generally be their eyes and ears on site. However, many colleagues, especially the ones that had been working at the previous ARC, seemed unable to grasp how exactly she contributed to the missions. As nice as most people were once she started talking to them, it seemed they somehow expected her to prove herself before being fully respected.

Jess had noticed soon enough that some of her colleagues, and especially the soldiers, who were supposed to rely on her the most, were quite doubtful of her abilities, possibly due to her age, and lately, that had been creating friction. Very often, her information was received rather off-handedly, or ignored altogether. She had noticed on several occasions the men taking different routes than the ones she had suggested, or, at anomaly sites, ignoring her info on a building's layout or the creatures visible on its CCTV feed. Jess was beginning to wonder why her position had been created at all, if no one seemed to want her, and on several days, she was close to tears by the time she left the ARC.

Two months into her new employment, Jess had enough of it. Several times already her instructions had been ignored, generally with disastrous outcomes, and though she knew it wasn't her fault, Jess always felt a little guilty. One day, this problem occurred again. A small unit of Becker's soldiers again ignored her info on the exact location of an anomaly within an industrial building, and ended up running straight into a pair of raptors. One of the men got severely mauled before the other three could take down the raptors. As before, Jess felt bad about the way the mission had ended, even though she knew she had done everything she could.

After the men returned from their not very successful outing, Matt stopped by her place and, with an empathy that surprised her due to his usual distant demeanour, immediately realised that something was wrong. He even correctly guessed what was troubling her.

"Jess, I'm sorry you had to witness this. But you know that none of this was your fault, right?" As surprised as she was, Jess was thankful for his support.

"I know, rationally speaking. I had a visual on the entire building, I told them about every dangerous creature and they simply chose to ignore me. It was their fault, not mine. Still, I mean, in the end, it's all of our responsibility, and there's no use putting the blame on others at the ARC if we fail to work as a team, is there?"
Matt looked impressed by her statement.

"Yes, that might just be right. If only everyone on the team thought like you." With that, and a reassuring pat on her shoulder that startled her because he had never done anything like that before, Matt placed the black box on her desk and walked away.

Finally, Jess knew what she had to do, and quickly logged into the comm system to call Becker. Before she could say anything, however, she heard him saying her name, and stopped to listen for a few seconds.

"Miss Parker told you the anomaly was located in the room you were entering. Why did you not take more time to secure the room? Were your comms down?"

"No." A second male voice answered. One quick look through the ARC's security camera feed told her Becker was in the medical bay with one of his injured men, Fairchild.

"Then what was the problem?"

"Come on, captain, you know we never listen to her. I mean, she sits there, in her garish little skirts, telling us which way to drive – couldn't they have just bought us a sat nav? And what would a nineteen-year-old girl know about that kind of technical stuff anyway?"

"She knows enough to get hired. And if you had listened to her, Williams would not be in ICU right now."

"You don't even listen to her." As much as this seemed to irritate the Captain, Jess had to admit the man was right. She got on well with Becker when they met around the ARC, he had immediately responded to her playful teasing and he seemed to somehow trust her as an ally against Matt, whom he didn't get on with at all. As a person, Becker seemed to like her well enough. But when it came to her work, the Captain was no better than his men. He had never ignored her as blatantly as the men today, but he too had argued with her over her choice of traffic routes or the best way of moving through creature-infested buildings. Becker, of course, denied this.

"I do listen to her. It's her job to guide us, so I let her guide."

"But you don't trust her. Come on, everyone knows you think she's a clueless little girl as well."

There was a moment of silence, and Jess knew enough about soldiers by now to know that this was a glaring breach of respect – both to himself and to her, who was, after all, superior in rank to his men – that Becker should not tolerate. She expected him to reprimand the man sharply, but instead he just answered, resignedly:

"Well, apparently, she's not clueless, so we'd do well to listen to her in the future."

Jess was angry beyond words by now. It was Becker's job to control his men, and to exert his authority if they didn't obey orders – his own or Jess'. Not to imply that he didn't trust her either, but what could they do?

Well, Jess decided, if Becker wasn't going to help her, she'd just have to help herself, using the best - and only - weapons she had: Computers and knowledge.

Forty-five minutes later, Jess called the soldiers into a conference room where she had set up a beamer and laptop.

Without any introduction or explanation, she dimmed the lights and started the presentation, which contained nothing but a series of images of their last anomaly missions, at least the ones that had not gone well. The first image showed two bloodied human bodies in various stages of … well... disassembly.

"March 15th, 3.15 pm. You arrive at an anomaly site just after a sabre toothed tiger has attacked a pair of teenagers. Had you followed my traffic instructions, you would have arrived there a full twelve minutes earlier, and would have most likely been able to save the couple." She pressed a button on the little remote and the next slide appeared, again showing a mangled carcass.

"April 4th, 9.32 am. You arrive at an anomaly site located in the middle of a rugby field. You ignore my advice to circle around the open field in order to be downwind of the creature, a female triceratops. The creature is a herbivore, but accompanied by her young and thus likely to attack anyone it perceives as a threat. Before you can get within shooting range, the animal is picking up your scent and charges, trampling one of your comrades and almost escaping into a nearby residential area."

She continued like this for another ten minutes, stating several more examples of their failed cooperation and commenting on how she could have contributed to a more positive outcome had they listened to her. The slides did not always show dead bodies, but when they did not, there usually was a lot of damage and destruction which could also have been avoided.

After the last slide, she abruptly switched the light back on, making the soldiers flinch and blink into the bright light. Without giving them time to recover, she continued in her usual sweet tone, which she had maintained all the way through the gruesome presentation.

"It has come to my notice that some, if not all, of you, are questioning my efficiency and, in fact, whether I am of any use to the team at all. I hope this little presentation has shown you what exactly it is I do and why it is important. Because not only do I buy you valuable time to save innocent lives, I actually provide info that would save your asses if you cared to listen." There were a few chuckles around the room, and Jess quickly continued, not wanting them to relax too much.

"Now, as Captain Becker obviously sees no need to do so, I have to remind you that I am in fact your superior in rank. The next person who disobeys my orders will be reported to Mr Lester, and serious consequences will follow. I hope we have an understanding?"

There was stunned silence for a few heartbeats, before one very young soldier answered, rather meekly:

"Yes Ma'am."

All the others repeated his confirmation, and with a nod of her head, Jess dismissed them.

The only soldier remaining was Captain Becker, with a rather sheepish expression on his face.

"I guess I owe you an apology now."

"Yes you do. I should not have had to do this. I overheard you talking to Fairchild. You didn't exactly go out of your way to protest when he said you didn't trust me, and we both know he was right." He didn't deny it, which she found very much to his credit.

"The question is: If you don't trust me, how are your men supposed to?" She said it gently, not wanting to aggravate him unnecessarily after already criticising him in front of his men, but he still reacted defensively.

"Well, you know, you don't exactly look professional..." Anger flaring up in her, Jess closed the remaining distance between them, until she stood less than two feet away from him.

"Don't you dare make this about me, Captain Becker! You are supposed to be the leader here, and in a situation where an exact order from a superior is ignored, you are the one to exert your authority and draw the necessary consequences, not allow your men to badmouth me in front of you!"

He pushed himself away from where he had been leaning against the wall and drew himself up to his full height, towering over her intimidatingly, but she was too angry to care, continuing before he could stop her:

"If this is your idea of leadership, maybe you shouldn't have returned to the ARC."

The moment the words left her mouth, she knew they had been a mistake. He reeled back as if she had slapped him, his face frozen in shock, and Jess internally cursed herself. Sure, she had been incredibly angry at him, but she had read his old files, had even tentatively discussed them with Lester, and she knew how hard it had been for him to return. She was about to apologize when he stepped away from her.

"I'm sorry you feel that way."

With that, he practically fled from the room, and it was now Jess' turn to feel that she owed him an apology. Sighing, she switched off the beamer, closed the laptop and left the room in search of Becker. It was probably better not to let this get out of control.

A/N: Even with the webisodes, we hardly see anything about how the new team learned to work together, but it couldn't have been all that easy. I know Becker and Jess seem to get on very well from the start, but I figured, with Becker as traumatised as we see him in the webisodes and the first episode of series 4, he had to have some difficulties adjusting to the new ARC. And Jess is part of the new ARC. I really hope you don't feel like I've made him look too bad. As for Jess: The woman got hired by telling them they should hire her because she was the best. At 19.

Also, please don't be irritated by the fact that I'm currently working on three stories at once (this one, So many days and You slip your heart into my chest). I've already written quite a few parts of both stories, and I'm very productive right now because I actually have a bunch of other things to do, so instead I'm writing like crazy. I'm sure many of you know the feeling. So for the ones of you who kindly reviewed my other stories: Hang in there, I will update.

And on an entirely unrelated note: Can anyone tell me where Connor's accent is from, I mean geographically and/or socially?