Title: Piecing it together
Couple: Sarah/Becker
Rating:G
"I'm missing something," Sarah said to herself as she fast-forwarded through the footage of the future version of the ARC Becker and his team had recorded on their recon mission.
"When you start talking to yourself out loud it's time to get some rest," she heard Becker say. Hitting pause on the remote control she looked over her shoulder and saw him leaning against the doorframe watching her with concern.
"I'll rest when I know what happened to them," she replied, "what about you, have you been getting enough sleep?" He shrugged.
"I'm a soldier I'm trained to be able to work on a few hours of sleep." He walked into the lab and stood next to her.
"Any luck with that?" He asked picking up the artefact from the table. He had found it on the floor in the future version of the ARC and brought it back hoping that it would give them some clue as to what happened, although there had been no sign of Danny, Connor or Abby he hadn't given up hope that they were still alive just yet.
"No," she answered, "I've run all the tests I could think of on it and they all came back negative – whatever was in there is gone now. I've been reading Helen's notebook but her notes near the end are pretty sporadic which is why I'm going over the footage you and your team brought back again." Letting out a sigh of frustration she hit the play on the remote and they watched as the team entered a room lower down in the ARC.
"What was that?" Sarah asked pointing at the solid shape in the middle of the room.
"I'm not sure, it was connected to a load of batteries so it was either some kind of power generator or computer equipment." The view changed to show someone looking down at it.
"Did you see that?" Sarah asked.
"See what?" She hit pause again and played the footage backwards frame by frame.
"Here," she said pointing to the bottom right hand corner of the screen where only the top half of a shape could be seen. "Was that shape empty, like something needed to be slotted into it?" Becker recalled the image in his mind.
"It was hollow and deep."
"Oh you idiot!" Becker looked at Sarah in surprise. "No, not you, I meant me," she clarified."The clue I was looking for has been staring me in the face this whole time. Look," she took the artefact from him and held it up next to the shape on the screen. "This bit on the screen matches the shape of the artefact."
"So what are you saying? It's some type of key?"
"Exactly." Becker looked at her sceptically.
"It's in the notebook Danny gave me," Sarah stated, putting down the artefact she grabbed Helen's notebook and flipped through the pages, "she drew this but I didn't think it was anything important at the time. It's the panel for that," she gestured at the screen. Becker looked at the drawing and then at the screen; it was definitely a match.
"So what you're saying is that machine was created to access whatever was inside the artefact." Sarah grinned at him, pleased that he had caught on so quickly.
"Exactly and it explains why she was so desperate to get it back. Maybe we can get it to work for us." Becker frowned.
"Didn't you say the artefact is no good to us now?"
"Yes, but there must be a way around it, if I could just get a proper look at that machine-"
"Absolutely out of the question," Lester interrupted making both of them jump.
"But-"
"No one else is going through that anomaly it's too dangerous, besides for all we know they could be dead."
"Then don't we owe it to them to find out what happened and if this machine holds the answers shouldn't we work out what it does?" Becker asked and Sarah gave him a small smile to show her appreciation as Lester considered it but before he could give a response the anomaly detector alarm sounded throughout the building.