"I'm glad you decided to stay," Claudia murmured, stroking her thumb across his knuckles as they watched the anomaly.
Nick Cutter smiled at her warmly, squeezed her hand, then pulled her into his side, arm settling around her shoulders as naturally as if it belonged there. She was just the right height to fit beneath his arm and snuggle into his shoulder. "How could I go, after the almost-farewell that you gave me?" he murmured back, smiling a little wider as a fetching pink blush coloured her cheeks.
"Do you think that Connor and Stephen are alright? With Helen, I mean?" she asked softly, leaning her head against his shoulder. Nick had decided not to go with, but Stephen had protested that someone from the research team ought to accompany the soldiers. Connor, surprisingly enough, had been first to volunteer, on the strength of his database giving him the greatest knowledge of any Permian-era creature; given that not a one of them would trust Connor with a potato gun, Stephen went with to be acting bodyguard for the geek, though begrudgingly and only after Nick had given him a very pointed look behind Connor's back.
"Of course. Ryan's with them, they've got the entire protective detail too. Helen's scary, but she's not that scary," he soothed, tightening his arm around her imperceptibly in comfort.
"Maybe she isn't, but those little...devil spawn creatures surely are," Claudia murmured back.
If Nick had blinked, he'd have missed it. The anomaly shivered, visibly trembled, and for a moment warped out of shape and paled to almost silver before returning to its normal gold-white glow. "What was that?" Claudia asked in awe.
"No idea," he replied stiffly, striding closer and consulting the compass that Connor had left with him to monitor the strength of the anomaly. The magnetic field was still going completely haywire, it wasn't closing anytime soon...so what had that been about? Shaking his head, he pocketed the compass once more and returned to Claudia's side, preferring her company to that of the soldiers', Lester's, or Abby's. She once more resumed her position tucked against his side, and he breathed in the soft, faint scent of whatever perfume she'd put on that morning.
Not even five minutes after the bizarre fluctuation, the anomaly began to distort in a way that signaled something coming through. Nick's arm tightened around Claudia, and he could hear the soft metallic clicks of gun safeties being switched off.
Abruptly, Connor and Stephen came staggering out of the anomaly, practically tumbling head-over-heels on the rain-soft ground, closely followed by a tall ginger man that was half-carrying Ryan, who was soaked in blood and pale as death, then another soldier that Nick had never seen before, carrying a shotgun, and then Helen herself.
As medics rushed forward to tend to Ryan, Nick abruptly noticed that not just people had come through the anomaly. Ryan's free hand was curled tightly in the scruff of a red and white Irish setter, who was panting and shaking beside him. A massive steely grey bird of prey was perched on the mysterious, shotgun-wielding soldier's armoured shoulder, a lean and gangly canine stood beside the ginger bloke, a small spotted cat was tucked beneath Stephen's arm, and a dark furry shape was pressed to Connor's chest. And curled around Helen's neck was a long, greenish-gold scaled body, the serpent's head resting in the base of her throat.
"Okay, that went...a little rougher than expected," Connor panted.
"Yeah, no fucking kidding, Temple," spat the soldier. "Everyone alright?"
"Helen, the hell is going on?" Nick demanded, staring at her in wide-eyed bafflement, or rather, at the snake which had made itself at home around her neck.
The woman he once knew as his wife looked around the clearing at them, the assorted soldiers, and something in her face changed. There was a flicker of fear in her eyes, apprehension, but also one of intrigue, excitement. Before he could ask again or any of them could demand an answer, she turned and ran through the anomaly just as it sputtered out and vanished.
"Fuck!" the ginger swore loudly, and the dog at his side growled.
Stephen sat up, still holding the spotted cat in the crook of his arm, and he twisted to look at Connor. "You good?" he asked, and there was a softness in his voice that hadn't been there before, a note of true concern.
The geek smiled broadly, a true smile, too, not the slightly nervous one he usually wore whenever Stephen was around. That was a full, dimpled, crooked smile that could've powered the National Grid. He nodded, arms around the dark bundle of fur still pressed to his chest.
"What the hell is going on here? Who are you two? What happened to Captain Ryan?" Lester demanded in his whipcrack, no-nonsense voice.
As if suddenly remembering everyone else, Connor, Stephen, and the two strangers turned to face them instead of the spot where the anomaly had been. And just like Helen, their faces changed in an instant, except on their expressions, it was much more obvious. First sharp disbelief, then shock, then disgust, then sick terror and apprehension. Even Stephen looked about ready to be sick, and he was clutching the spotted cat to his chest with the one arm, the other gripping Connor's hand as if the animal and the geek were the only two things keeping him tethered to Earth. "Where's...where's your dæmons?" Stephen asked, his voice weak and dizzy.
"Where's our whats?" Nick asked in bafflement, getting more and more confused by the second.
"Oh God. Oh God, oh God," Connor moaned quietly, beginning to visibly shake. The ginger man muttered out another few choice expletives, kneeling down to wrap both arms around the lanky creature that Nick recognised wasn't a dog at all but a coyote, which leaned into him and whimpered like a common household pet. The soldier had lifted a hand, fingers buried in the large bird's feathers, shotgun hanging limp at his side.
All the while, the medics had been trying to catch the Irish setter, as it refused to get away from Ryan and the soldier would moan if it went too far from him, one bloodied hand grasping blindly at the air. Suddenly one made another lunge towards the dog, nearly catching it by the scruff. Connor scrambled to his feet then, pushing the medic away from the dog, and the before unrecognisable bundle of dark fur in his lap suddenly reformed itself into a large, snarling wolverine that bristled until nearly all its fur stood erect, teeth bared in a ferocious snarl. But then the wolverine's muzzled moved and a woman's voice issued forth from it, thick with fury and a Yorkshire accent. "Try that again, and you'll be a dead motherfucker."
All the medics backed away with expletives of their own, staring at the animal in disbelief, doubting what their own ears had just heard. Seizing the opportunity of their distraction, the setter bounded over to Ryan's prone form and lay in the gap between his arm and his side, muzzle resting on his chest. And they all heard the dog sigh, also with a woman's voice, "Oh, Tommy, we've gotten ourselves in a right mess now."
Nick sat down heavily on the ground where he stood, staring at the people that'd come through the anomaly, feeling like Alice Liddell taking a tumble down the rabbithole to have tea with the Hatter and the March Hare.
Stephen looked back at him, and though it was the same face that Nick had been seeing for the past eight years of his life, he felt that he was looking at a completely different person now. "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," the lab tech sighed, and the spotted cat in his arms nodded, an unmistakably human gesture.
Apparently things had changed more than any of them first realised.