Danny knelt on the ground where the anomaly had been, holding his head in his hands and fighting the urge to sob in anger and despair. The situation Abby, Connor and he had been in had already been bad enough when the anomaly opener had lost power, now that they were trapped in different times it was even worse.
But it wouldn't get any better by just kneeling here. Danny stood up and took a look at his surroundings, all around him as far as the eye could see there was nothing but bleak, red rocks and arid scubland. Down in the valley was the lake but Danny knew it would be of no help to his survival now that Helen has poisoned it. WIth a sad sense of realisation, he kept walking through the Pliocene, knowing that his only hope was to find an open anomaly, if there was even one to be found that is.
By nightfall, Danny was hungry, thirsty and exhausted. He had spent hours trekking through the scrubland, finding nothing, no food and no anomaly. His water supplies had long since been used up and now he was in danger not only because of his deyhration and hunger, but in his state at this time of night, it would not be long before he started attracting hungry carnivores. Lions, hyenas, sabre toothed cats, all of these creatures would happily attack a weak human. After all, they regularly dined on man's hominid ancestors.
As the sun disappeared over the horizon, Danny set to work on finding a suitable place to spend the night. He soon found it in the form of a lone acacia tree, a welcome sight after seeing nothing but brown grass and rocks all day. He went up to it and touched its bark, it felt rough to the touch but Danny didn't care, as long as it would provide him a place to sleep it was fine.
However, no sooner had he started to climb it, he heard a low growl. He looked up to see a pair of bright green eyes staring at him from amongst the leaves, then as they moved into the ever fading light, Danny saw who they belonged to: a leopard. It had obviously been there for a while because wedged in a fork in the branches was the mangled corpse of a baboon. Perhaps it thought that Danny had come to try and steal its kill. With a snarl it leapt down in front of him, its teeth bared menacingly as it stalked towards him.
Suddenly, Danny heard a soft, almost inabudible voice.
"Daniellllll Quinnnnnnnn" it whispered. Danny looked around for the source of the voice but saw no one. Instead, he saw and heard something even better. With a wooshing sound a new anomaly appeared before his very eyes. Danny gave a whoop for joy, but then heard the snarl of the leopard as it headed towards him. Without a second thought, Danny dashed through the anomaly.
The leopard however stood where it was in front of the anomaly. It had never seen anything like it before but at least it seemed to have gotten rid of the intruder. The leopard turned away from the anomaly and leapt back up into the tree, just in time to fend off a small owl that had been nibbling on the dead baboon's arm.
Danny found himself in a very different place to the one he had left behind. It was a cool, misty place with grass which Danny could feel beneath his feet. But that was not the most extraordinary thing about it. Surrounding him were hundreds, thousands of anomalies. Danny had heard about a place like this once, Connor had told him about it, this must be the spaghetti junction of anomalies. Although it looked diferent to the picture Dany had seen of it, mainly because of the thick mist that was surrounding him, emersing him in its coolness.
"Daniellll Quinnnnnn" came the soft voice again. Danny looked around for the source once more but saw nothing.
"Who are you?" he cried into the mist. "Where are you, what do you want?"
"I wish to converse with you" came the voice like soft rain. "As for my wherabouts, that shall become clear to you very soon."
"How so?" asked Danny.
"Follow the path through the anomalies." As the voice spoke, some of the mist before Danny cleared to reveal a thin strip of long, green grass, which stretched and winded its way between the countless anomalies.
"Follow the path, Danny" came the voice once again.
Danny hesitated, on one hand this could be a trap. But on the other, if it wasn't, it might just help him to get home and be reunited with his friends. Taking care not to step off into the mist, he followed the grassy path.