Nick shut himself in his office – he had an actual bloody office here, good God – and slid down the wall to sit on the floor, forcing himself to breathe slowly and steadily despite the fact that he felt like either ripping out his own hair or running for the door screaming. Neither were options at this point, so he bowed his head forward between his knees and made his lungs work.

He'd done something to change history. Claudia Brown was gone. Oh, God, what had he done? Everything was wrong. He could almost feel it, like the earth had slid apart and then come back together, except all the pieces didn't quite line up like they had before. Claudia Brown... He touched his fingertips to his mouth, remembering the pressure of her lips on his. She was real, she had to be. He couldn't just imagine a person, especially not a person like her. He wasn't mad. Hopefully. Maybe. He let out a low moan and thumped his head back against the wall.

The door whispered, but he didn't bother looking up, at least not until a quiet, familiar, and absolutely loathsome voice murmured, "Nick? You alright?" Stephen stepped into the office and shut the door. "Nick?"

It seemed childish to give him the finger, so he didn't. Was that a sign of maturity? Felt like it. "Bugger off." Alright, maybe not that mature.

Stephen didn't bugger off. Bastard was always too bloody stubborn for his own good. "Cutter, everyone's gone home. You've been sitting in here for hours," he said in a gentler voice than Nick had heard him use for a long time. "You ought to go home."

Surprised, he glanced at his watch, and Stephen, adulterous arsehole, was right. It was nearing midnight. But the idea of going home was terrifying all in its own right. Jesus, did he even live in the same house? Or would he be stuck wandering around like a vagrant? He didn't know what else had changed. Fuck, for all he knew, he could walk outside and see a sodding flying car. His head hurt. "No," he answered. "Can't."

The cheating prick raised an eyebrow. "Can't or won't?"

Can't, Nick thought. Won't. Both. Fuck off, would you, I'm trying to have a breakdown in peace. The idea of leaving this place, this...ARC, was suddenly the worst possible idea in the history of ideas. Right up there with letting a bunch of idiot boffins play around with rips in the fabric of space-time and the evolution of history. This building, this place was completely foreign to him, and yet somehow, he was scared to leave it, to walk out of the climate-controlled interior into a world that had suddenly become as mysterious and as terrifying as the monster under the bed. Maybe that was cowardly, but he didn't particularly care. He'd just changed history and erased someone from the present, he was allowed to be a bloody coward for a moment.

"Cutter?" Stephen repeated, concerned by the lack of response.

"I said, bugger off. I'm not leaving." Not until he felt like he could stand without vomiting or could look outside without having a panic attack. This was his office. Even if it hadn't existed to him before today, it was still his sodding office, and he wasn't going to leave this place. "The ARC," he murmured under his breath, turning the name over in his mind, looking up at the ceiling of this strange place that had somehow become safe haven. Christ, his life was buggered.

"Anomaly Research Centre," his oldest friend and newest enemy supplied, as if he wasn't certain that Nick remembered what it was called. He'd apparently given up on coaxing Nick out of the office and was sitting on the floor with him, maintaining a careful safe distance to ensure he was out of reach of a sudden punch or kick. "Connor came up with it. I think he just wanted the chance to say that we're taking creatures to the ARC, and not 'that' one."

Nick actually laughed. Call it a miracle.